• A brightly lit hallway lined with red numbered mailboxes or storage lockers on both sides. The walls, drawers, and lighting fixtures are all red, creating a striking monochromatic design. The polished floor reflects the light, and a white desk is visible on the left side near the entrance.

What do Monks and Friars have in common?

By Eva Pascal What do Buddhist monks and Christian friars have in common? Quite a bit, in fact. While travelling widely across Asia in the late sixteenth century, Franciscans had rich encounters and exchanges with Buddhist monks that led them…

On Wasting Time

By Claire White In France, the turn of the millennium ushered in a bold, and controversial, act of legal reform that sought to reshape the French citizen’s working life: the introduction of a 35-hour working week. For many, the law…

Deanna Womack

Images of Islam

By Deanna Ferree Womack Images of Islam abound these days, and many of them are troubling. Those who speak loudly and most forcefully define Islam in the narrowest of terms, making one image – the militant extremist – into a…

Cover image for A Process Philosophy of Signs by James Williams

Behind Red Doors – Signs, Process and the Political

In January 2016, a scandal broke out in the UK when the Times reported that asylum seekers’ homes could be identified by distinctive red doors, making them vulnerable to attacks. Coincidentally – but not where signs and the political are concerned – A Process Philosophy of Signs opens with an account of threatening identification on doors.

Alfred North Whitehead and the Edinburgh Connection

By Leemon B. McHenry. 15 February is the birthday of British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, born in 1841 – he would have been 155 today. Whitehead delivered his masterpiece of metaphysics, Process and Reality, at the Gifford Lectures…

Nancy in Love

‘It is possible that one day I will no longer love you, and this possibility cannot be taken away from love – it belongs to it. It is against this possibility, but also with it, that the promise is made, the word given.’ – Jean-Luc Nancy

Fitting Nowhere

Written by Ghada Karmi, this extract is one of a hundred featured in Being Palestinian: Personal Reflections on Palestinian Identity in the Diaspora, edited by Yasir Suleiman. Now available in paperback for £16.99.  For most of my life, being Palestinian has been…

When conservation is not enough

By Dominic Hinde In its nine years in power, Scotland’s Scottish National Party (SNP) government has sought to redefine many areas of how the country is governed. In many fields, from healthcare to education, the party has attempted to create…