A. C Grayling

Anthony Grayling offers a definitive examination of the arguments for and against religion and religious belief, and an in-depth exploration of the humanist outlook that recommends itself as the ethics of the genuinely reflective person.

"The foundations upon which our democracies stand are inherently flawed, vulnerable to corrosion from within. What is the remedy? A. C. Grayling makes the case for a clear, consistent, principled and written constitution, and sets out the reforms necessary - among them addressing the imbalance of power between government and Parliament, imposing fixed terms for MPs, introducing proportional representation and lowering the voting age to 16 (the age...

"...Grayling has distilled the work of hundreds of authors and more than one thousand texts using the same techniques...that produced the holy books of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic religions. Their wit and advice, human stories, tragedies and yearnings, love and consolations are shaped into fourteen constituent parts that recall the Bible in structure: Genesis, Wisdom, Parables, Concord, Lamentations, Consolations, Sages, Songs, Histories, Proverbs,...

Do we take our liberties for granted at the risk of losing them in the war on terror? Grayling (Descartes: The Life and Times of a Genius), a professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, and a leading British public intellectual, believes so. This book is, in some respects, an old-fashioned, triumphalist history of the rise of Western liberty since the 16th century (with Martin Luther, John Locke and Elizabeth Cady Stanton playing...

"Explores the eventful intertwining of outward event and inner intellectual life to tell, in all its richness and depth, the story of the 17th century in Europe. It was a time of creativity unparalleled in history before or since, from science to the arts, from philosophy to politics ... Grayling points to three primary factors [behind this epochal shift]: the rise of vernacular (popular) languages in philosophy, theology, science, and literature;...

A. C. Grayling's lucid and stimulating books, based on the idea that philosophy should engage with the world and make itself useful, invariably cause discussion. The Challenge of Things joins earlier collections, collecting Grayling's recent writings on the world in a time of war and conflict. In describing and exposing the dark side of things, he also explores ways out of the habits and prejudices of mind that would otherwise trap us forever in the...