Unless we’ve defined it, pinned it down like a butterfly, we feel that it lacks something. But maybe that lack is what makes it so numinous.

As so many take to heart, and as a matter or principle, the rights of the individual, so they object to any intervention.

Seventy-five years before John Stuart Mill published 'On Liberty', Immanuel Kant published 'What is Enlightenment?'

Never before have I been interested in portraits. And yet, for some reason, at the National Gallery, I found myself staring into faces.

As is often the case, while I was working on that mammoth project, a podcast popped up which referred to my current preoccupation.

The other day I received an email from Dabinder Basra. The name was vaguely familiar but I wasn't sure from where.

I do feel that this is an important document and that it sheds light on some of our current concerns.

It somewhat astonishes me that I am doing this. But there we go.

Education is so important. The arts can provide an alluring and engaging path to self-understanding, empathy and ethical development.

So, the last post on John Stuart Mill's 'On Liberty' was a long one... now, I warn you, this one is too. And it's not the end...

This post is a mistake. A huge mistake. I wanted to look something up in John Stuart Mill's 'On Liberty' and ended up getting carried away.

I have known people who have created a fantasy and live in a delusion. This can be empowering, but seems likely to be destructive.

The word altruism comes from a root meaning others - hence 'othersism' is a good definition.

Am I alone? The one real screwer-upper among my middle class friends? It's possible. It really is possible.

I agree with Bob Solomon that emotions are not entirely under our control, but that they are more under our control than we like to admit.

It's not simply a case of being conscious or not conscious of emotional experiences: there is a whole scale of awareness.

I have just read this on Aeon and it chimes with much that I have written on these pages - though expressed far more eloquently.

They are moments of living art, when the self is shaped by the finest artist.

Who is this 'I' who is paying attention? That's another step into the mystery world of consciousness that none of these meditators explain.

Sophie-Grace Chappell is writing a book on epiphanies. And I remembered that three and a half years ago, I wrote to her.