Baby Rhino! 27 Aug 2013 | 08:18 pm

The Virtual Stoa has been down for a few weeks. Sorry about that: the WordPress installation came under some kind of sustained attack, the hosting company took it down, and I only just heard what I ha...

A Short History of Swivel-Eyed Loons 18 May 2013 | 08:38 pm

So today a handful of newspapers quoted a senior Conservative Party politician as saying: “It’s fine. There’s really no problem. The MPs just have to do it because the associations tell them to, and t...

Adam Smith on Strivers and Shirkers 8 May 2013 | 05:10 pm

The poor man’s son, whom heaven in its anger has visited with ambition, when he begins to look around him, admires the condition of the rich. He finds the cottage of his father too small for his accom...

Leslie Stephen on The Times on the American Civil War 19 Jan 2013 | 04:22 pm

I HAVE, I hope, raised a prima facie presumption that the Times was labouring under some delusion. It had omitted some element from its calculations, sufficient to distort the whole history of the str...

Bob Hargrave: Philosopher. Sceptic. Corruptor of Youth. Dead. 26 Oct 2012 | 04:25 pm

This video was made over two decades ago, and was shown last week at Bob’s memorial service. Now it makes its debut on YouTube.

Happiness is a New Bookshelf 25 Oct 2012 | 07:03 pm

Dustbin of History 15 Oct 2012 | 01:59 pm

The window of the local Oxfam bookshop, just now. [Cue jokes about how it was never about the bike.]

From the Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson 14 Oct 2012 | 08:41 pm

You promise, in your letter of Octob 23. 1787. to give me in your next, at large, the conjectures of your Philosopher on the descent of the Creek Indians from the Carthaginians, supposed to have been ...

Perpetual Peace and European Union 12 Oct 2012 | 02:51 pm

On the occasion of the awarding of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, I’m reproducing over the fold a chunk of an old lecture I gave in January 2010 on the eighteenth century debate about perpetual peace ...

TCB 12 Oct 2012 | 12:51 am