Philosophy seems to be on a hiding to nothing. It has a 2,500-year history in the West and an extensive back-catalogue – of problems. There are questions about what exists, and what we know about it, such as: Do we have free will? Is there an external world? Does God exist? and so on. There are also questions of analysis and definition such as: What makes a sentence true? What makes an act just? What is causation? What is a person? This is a tiny sample.
January always feels like the longest month of the year. It feels like ages ago we celebrated new resolutions and new beginnings and already I may have failed to keep up with the days without sugar, or with ‘Dynamo’ the Parisian version of Soul Cycle. Most days were rainy and we saw the sun for just a couple of days, but we had a few spectacular sunsets and even a day and a half of snow. Coming to the end of this endless month, here are some wonderful things that happened...