Can happiness be measured?
Can we measure wellbeing scientifically? Economist Richard Layard, supporter of the new national happiness index, believes we can; philosopher Julian Baggini is having none of it.
ReadAuthor: Julian Baggini
Do our lives need a narrative?
For many philosophers and psychologists, the idea that we need a life narrative is something of an understatement. It would be more accurate to say that we just are the stories we tell about ourselves…
ReadWhy so many restaurants are missing a table 13
I am sitting at a table that doesn’t exist. I wanted to eat out at a table 13, defying superstition ahead of tomorrow, the third Friday the 13th in this unusually inauspicious year. But it’s hard to find one. Only two of the UK’s 14 best restaurants have a table 13, most simply skipping from 12 to 14. Here at Le Gavroche, the closest I can come is to dine at table 12a, a kind of phantom table 13, the cursed spot that dare not speak its name…
ReadBlackwell’s Book Podcast
“On this week’s programme we have two guests: Antonia Macaro and Julian Baggini, the eponymous shrink and sage, whose unique brand of self-help with a distinctly cerebral flavour is a regular feature in the FT Weekend magazine. Antonia Macaro is the shrink, an existential therapist and philosophical counsellor with many years’ experience. And Julian Baggini is the sage, the founding editor of The Philosophers’ Magazine and the author of numerous successful works of popular philosophy, some of which we have previously featured on this programme. Together they aim to bring the insights of philosophy, psychology and therapy to bear on some of the big questions we all grapple with at times in our daily lives.”
ReadHope against hope
The suggestion is that we don’t need hope at all. All we need is a purpose for our action, a purpose that need not be conceived of as a hope. When people plan to, try to, aim to, work to, they are taking steps to achieve a desired goal. But when someone says they merely hope to, nine times out of ten what that tells you is that they have not yet set about doing what needs to be done to realise that hope.
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