‘Mark is a great teacher who helps to bring clarity to some potentially very intimidating subjects.’
‘It is much better to be talk philosophy than to read it.’
‘I never spent Sunday afternoons looking forward to Monday until I joined this course!’
What was so unsettling about meeting Socrates? How did the ancient Greeks answer the great question of how to live well? What views did they have on the nature of things, and why do those ideas matter today?
The aim is to learn not just what different philosophers have argued, but how these rich traditions can resources us, body, mind and soul. Over six weeks we examine the pre-Socratics, Socrates and Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Sceptics and the Cynics.
Falling in love is widely celebrated as the pinnacle of the experiences life can offer. This is one of the most pernicious and dangerous myths of our time. In fact, the best kind of love is… Well, is what? Join celebrated Mark Vernon for a symposium, with wine, on love.
In truth, contends Dr Vernon, there are different kinds of love that we learn about in different phases of our lives. Life tends to go well when we have good access to these different ways of loving. In this evening of talk and conversation, we will explore the different loves, what can go wrong with them, and how it can go well.
It turns out that there are three modes of loving. First, there is self-love, narcissism, which is required so that we can be comfortable in our own skin. Then there is the love of another that, when it is returned, nurtures us in trusting and loving others. And thirdly, there is love of life itself, which allows us to be open to all that life throws at us, firing our passions, creativity and courage.
Along the way, we’ll think about questions such as how many friends might one have, why love is not possible in a happy world, and whether love is really evolution’s way of blinding us to the difficulties of raising young.
Do, please, consider signing up for the Modern Philosophy course at The Idler Academy, beginning next Monday, 25th February. There are still places. I'd be delighted to see you there.
‘Mark is a great teacher who helps to bring clarity to some potentially very intimidating subjects.’
‘It is much better to be talk philosophy than to read it.’
‘I never spent Sunday afternoons looking forward to Monday until I joined this course!’
We consider first Thomas Aquinas, who was probably the greatest interpreter of Aristotle ever and one of the most brilliant philosophers of the medieval period though often forgotten today.
The following Monday we turn to Descartes, who was a modern sceptic though in some ways quite unlike the ancient sceptics, a difference that some feel has led modern philosophy up a dangerous cul-de-sac.
We then come to the empiricist and idealist traditions, associated with towering figures like Hume and Kant, that in some ways bring the differences between the Epicureans and the Stoics into the modern world.
Then we spend a couple of weeks looking at the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of science - twin themes that were major components of ancient thought, though of course have also changed dramatically in the modern world.
By Mark Vernon on Saturday, February 2 2013, 09:08
A couple of things coming up that may be of interest:
Sunday 3rd February, 6.05am & online.BBC Radio 4, Something Understood - Towards a New Consciousness, with Mark Tully, also interviewing myself, the programme having been prompted by this piece.
Sunday 3rd February, 1pm.Idle Sundays at Selfridges - Aristotle, Epicurus and the Vita Contemplativa, with one Dr Mark Vernon.
By Mark Vernon on Wednesday, January 30 2013, 15:36
Love: All That Matters is finding its way into the shops and amazon. The following QnA might be useful in saying a little more about it...
Does the book have a key idea?
Yes. There are different kinds of love that we learn about in different phases of our lives. Life tends to go well when we have good access to these different ways of loving. So the book explores how we learn about the different loves, what can go wrong, and what can go well.
What are the different kinds of love?
Recent developmental psychology suggests that there are three basic modes in which we love. There is self-love, which is required so that we can be comfortable in our own skin. There is the love of another that, when it is returned, nurtures us in trusting and loving others. And there is love of life itself, which allows us to be open to all that life throws at us, firing our passions, creativity and courage.
Why did you write this book now?
In the 1950s, the psychologist Erich Fromm wrote a brilliant short book on love, The Art of Loving. Many of its insights still stand, but it does read as dated now, particularly about the relationships between men and women, and also about homosexuality. Also, Fromm wrote before modern developmental psychology. So I felt it was a good moment to update, in a way, Fromm's The Art of Loving.
Are these new ideas?
They are, in the sense that developmental psychology has progressed in recent years. But it fascinates me how they link with ancient ideas too, remembered in myths and philosophy. So the book looks at a number of ancient myths, some well known like that of Narcissus; others almost forgotten, like the story of Eros and Anteros, which I think has many things to tell us about the struggles people find when they are in a couple
Is romance the highest form of love?No. I really think that the adulation of romantic love is a danger. The belief that there is one other person out there who will perfect your life is a powerful fantasy, hard to resist even by those who don't believe it. Romance is fine, but it must lead us to love life itself, with another, but not perpetually gazing into our beloved's eyes.
Is there a highest form of love?
We need to be fluent in the various kinds of love. That said, I think that the love of life itself, manifest in creativity and friendship, is the richest flowering of human love. This is being able to stand in love. I talk about divine love too, the perception which may come that although we are thrown into life, life is underpinned by love. This sense is what religious people call God.
I took part in a discussion about the value of atheism in The Battle of Ideas last year, the video of the session now being available online.
I basically argued that the three biggest hitters - Freud, Marx and Nietzsche - were almost certainly wrong in their analysis of God and religion, but are very useful for believers to engage with. (I'm about 15 minutes in...)
'A real Tardis of book, with so much wisdom and information packed into so small a space, and elucidated with a brilliant clarity. Sourcing mythology, modern psychology and philosophy, it shines a light on this most commonplace yet complex of emotions.' Tim Lott
By Mark Vernon on Saturday, December 15 2012, 10:10
I took part in a discussion about moral realism with Angus Ritchie and Julian Baggini at the LSE a week or so back, now online as a podcast.
I tried to talk about the moral imagination and moral emotions that draw us on a process of moral discovery, rather than whether there are moral facts. I feel that to ask that question up front is to put the cart before the horse, and leads to a rather dry debate, oddly disconnected from life.
Iris Murdoch's notion of the 'wider horizon' also appeals, her sense that the moral life stands beyond and before us, and is therefore transcendent. In this sense, morality is objective; that the good, beautiful and true is not made by us, but sought by us, and even seeks us.
By Mark Vernon on Wednesday, December 5 2012, 09:00
I hugely enjoyed debating with Giles Fraser on whether you can be spiritual without being religious. The discussion is online here.
Roughly, I was advocating that spirituality comes before social action - it's a fruit, not a root - lest the Christian concern for justice become anxious, guilt-driven and deadening. Giles can't stand the word spirituality, though it seems plain to me that much of his appeal stems precisely from his spiritual vitality...
By Mark Vernon on Tuesday, November 27 2012, 15:05
What was so unsettling about meeting Socrates? Why would you want to be a Stoic? How did Descartes radicalise the philosophical agenda? What is philosophy anyway?
These questions and more are explored in a series of evening classes on ancient and modern philosophy at The Idler Academy, the west London home of philosophy, husbandry and merriment.
The aim is to learn not just what different philosophers have argued, but how these rich traditions can resources us, body, mind and soul. On the ancient philosophy course we examine the pre-Socratics, Socrates and Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Sceptics and the Cynics. On the modern philosophy course we consider the work of late medievals, Descartes, Hume and Kant, Nietzsche and Foucault, Popper and Kuhn, and others. Full details can be found online.
The evenings are taught by Dr Mark Vernon. Previous participants have said: 'I never spent Sunday afternoons looking forward to Monday until I joined this course!' 'It is much better to talk philosophy than to read it.' The price is £150 for six evenings, beginning in January.
A striking Christmas present? A wise gift for yourself? Book now: places are limited!
By Mark Vernon on Tuesday, November 13 2012, 11:34
I preached a sermon for the first time in a long time last week, and it felt like a sermon not a talk. It was at St Edward's, Cambridge, the broad question being how to follow your heart?
In part of my sermon I make something of this Sufi story:
Unjustly imprisoned, a tinsmith was allowed to receive a rug woven by his wife. He prostrated himself upon the rug day after day to say his prayers, and after some time he said to his jailers:
“I am poor and without hope, and you are wretchedly paid. But I am a tinsmith. Bring me tin and tools and I shall make small artifacts which you can sell in the market, and we shall both benefit.”
The guards agreed to this, and presently the tinsmith and they were both making a profit, from which they bough food and comforts for themselves.
Then, one day, when the guards went to the cell, the door was open, and he was gone.
Many years later, when this man’s innocence had been established, the man who had imprisoned him asked him how he had escaped, what magic he had used. He said:
“It’s a matter of design, and design within design. My wife is a weaver. She found the man who had made the locks of the cell door, and got the design from him. This she wove into the carpet, at the spot where my head touched in prayer five times a day. I am a metal-worker, and this design looked to me like the inside of a lock. I designed the plan of the artifacts to obtain the materials to make the key - and I escaped.”
‘That,’ said the Sufi, ‘is one of the ways in which man may make his escape from the tyranny of his captivity.’
Despite being in an era of multi-faiths and spirituality, it is argued that we have lost touch with the innate knowledge and sense of religion that previous generations could draw on. Whether or not you choose to engage with spirituality or religion, today's world at a personal, cultural, social and geopolitical level is profoundly shaped by religious differences as well as commonalities. Mark Vernon and Ziauddin Sardar examine how people and traditions are engaging with the divine today, in particular with God and Muhammed.
I've just seen this film of a conversation I took part in last year, using the possibility of intelligent aliens to reflect on what it might be to be human.
If 'God is dead', then why are so many of us still talking about Him? Join author of God: All That Matters and How to Be an Agnostic, Mark Vernon, as he looks at contemporary attitudes to God through the lenses of philosophy, science, theology and psychology.
They are billing it as an event for the staunch believer, the New Atheist, the undecided and everyone in between. Yikes!
'He is, quite simply, one of the few writers in England today who really understands the impulse to religious belief and how a faithless age can respond. There are few others I trust to bring such intelligence and sympathy to these issues.' Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian
Religion’s 20 biggest questions answered in accessible and thought-provoking mini-essays.
Can you prove God exists? We began with the ways that believers have attempted to prove the existence of God, or not, examining cosmological and design, ontological and moral reasons for faith. What do they show? What do they fail to achieve? And why do people go on believing for all that no ‘proof’ convinces everyone?
Monday 23rd April
Why science and religion aren’t really at loggerheads. The relationship between theology and the natural sciences is often presented as a zero sum game: if you go with one, you must reject the other. In truth, though, the relationship between the two is much more intimate and it is only in recent years that a great divide has been proposed, one that is arguably narrowing again in our time.
Monday 30th April
Is the Bible true? Fundamentalism is a product of the twentieth century. It rides roughshod over the rich traditions of reading holy scriptures which perceive the truth of the text as in between the word on the page and the life of the believer. Interpretation is not an optional extra. The literal truth used to mean that which is true in life, not in a book. So what went wrong?
Monday 14th May
If God exists, why is there suffering in the world? The problem of evil, as it is called, the question of how an all-powerful, all-good God can allow suffering, is probably the number one reason that people find it hard to believe. And yet, for our forebears, it seems that the opposite was the case. Suffering led people to turn to God. ‘Religion is the wound, not the bandage,’ as Dennis Potter put it.
Monday 21st May
Is nature the new divine? Or to put it another way, is God green? Many increasingly think so. Ecological movements are some of the most energetic and imaginative spiritual movements thriving on the planet. So is traditional religion the enemy of the environment, or does it have resources within it to mobilise the masses of people required to save the planet?
Monday 28th May
Can you be good without God? Most people, these days, know an atheist who lives an inspiring moral life. The link between God and goodness seems to have be severed. Indeed, many would argue that it needs to be severed, for fear that morality might go the way of theology in people’s lives. And yet, is there any truth in the notion that without God, everything is permissible?
Monday 11th June
Can you be spiritual without being religious? Religion is a bad word in many people’s vocabulary. It conjures up memories of school chapel, flawed parish priests, or bloody crusades. Who wants to be tied to one tradition when there is meditation and yoga, shamanism and tantra to chose from, to learn from? Or maybe there are risks in a consumerist approach to spirituality?
Monday 18th June
Is the heart of all religions roughly the same? It’s called the perennial philosophy, the idea that behind all spiritual traditions lie timeless, universal truths. Often cited is the so-called Golden Rule. But what is the perennial philosophy, and how did it come about? And does it really stack up, or risk leaving you pursuing the spiritual dimension in a kind of religious no-man’s land.
