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  Featured books:

  Brenda Almond's Exploring Philosophy, and Exploring Ethics, Michael Bavidge and Ian Ground's Can We Understand Animal Minds?, and Martin Cohen's 101 Philosophy Problems as well as Political Philosophy and his eclectic collection of 'thought experiments', Wittgenstein's Beetle, reviewed here by Zenon Stavrinides.  Not to forget, our former Director of Studies, Geoffrey Klempner's Naive Metaphysics which is one of a number of downloadable e-texts available from the Pathways distance learning programme.

Wittgenstein's Poker by David Edmonds and John Eidinow is a fascinating look at the strange affair of the first and only (and stormy) meeting between the millionaire and the pauper - Karl Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. We include the book here for the insights into the philosophical background to the history of the Society and Russell, as well as details of the sad story of Professor Shlick, one of the Journal's many distinguished contributors, whose article, 'Unanswerable Questions', was perhaps his last published work.

Recently discussed in the Journal, and illustrating the breadth of the subject of the Society's interest in philosophy, is Nancy Etcoff's fascinating and well, at least slightly, philosophical investigation of the 'science of beauty'.

Another unusual book to look at is Private Worlds by George Dupenois, one of the distinguished members of the Philosophical Society of England. And we offer in depth analysis and ruthless reviews of many books on our reviews index pages, too, including a comparison of two of the leading philsophical source books, the erratic but still useful Routledge Encylopedia (click here to go straight to the bookshop) and the Oxford Companion.

The Philosophical Society of England was very proud of its famous patron in the first half of its history, Bertrand Russell, and whose History of Western Philosophy has not been surpassed. We review it here.

Brenda Almond is, amongst many other important philosophical roles, President of the Society. Her controversial new book, 'The Fragmenting Family' is typical of her aims in 'applying' philosophy to issues of current concern. Michael Bavidge is Chairman and Geoffrey Klempner was for many years our Director of Studies, and of course, maintains close links. Martin Cohen is Editor of the Society's journal The Philosopher. and a philosophy writer whose books on the great problems of philosophy, the history of political thought, and most recently applied ethics, have been translated into many languages - including Chinese, Estonian, Korean, and even (samizdat versions!) Iranian.

Two of the most widely quoted philosophy problems are on the books page from his book along with some some 'pedagogical notes' for those bent on using the problems in class.

Excerpts from Naive Metaphysics can be found at About my book on Geoffrey Klempner's Pathways web site.