The starting point for Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is that our objective, as humans, should be to strive for happiness, properly understood. The Greek concept of Eudaimonia is not, Aristotle asserts, a blind-eyed pursuit of hedonistic pleasure. …

This is an interesting question. I would argue that all 'needs' are relative to (and reflect) a specific desire. At the most basic level, a need for food and water relate to a desire to live. If we abstract upward, the 'need' for goods of conspicuous consumption relate to a desire for social validation and acceptance. Veblen does not explicitly make this point - he merely describes the role that consumption plays in signifying social status. He does, however, touch upon needs and desires implicitly, noting that when one becomes accustomed to a certain standard of living, it becomes very difficult to regress and what once seemed like luxuries start to feel like 'needs.'

What does it mean to be yourself? Is the self merely a collection of the physical parts which constitute one’s body? Surely not, for that would imply a continual death and rebirth as one’s body regenerates and rebuilds over time; it would imply that cosmetic surgeries or operations fundamentally change…

If ‘the past is a foreign country,’ as the celebrated first line of L.P Hartley’s The Go-Between makes it out to be, then the novel itself amounts to a first-class ticket, transporting us to a world that is at the same time so distant yet so clear. To enter the…

The bright colours, hoards of people from all nationalities, and buzz of activity at Charles de Gaulle Airport’s Terminal Two are very much reminiscent of nights spent in the streets of Marrakesh and Mexico City. Waiting in the queue for passport control, I could very much be in line for…

On a searing hot June day, one century ago, Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. So begins Virginia Woolf’s infamous tale, the tale of a respectable lady, an ordinary day spent in London organising a party, yet one which fuses together the lives of so many and…

It may be almost a quarter of a century since the twentieth century drew to a close and we crossed over into the then unknown frontier of the twenty first, though a careful examination of history reveals that many of the origins of today’s problems, from conflict in the Middle-East…

A core tenet of any consumerist society is that there must be choice. We live in a world spoilt by choice: our supermarkets contain aisles of options just for cereal, picking a career involves a careful analysis of the millions of doors open to us, and the breakdown of rigid…

There’s a certain appeal to political action. It’s effects are immediate. There’s a sense of getting things done. Progress is made, and the march of history goes on. Yet the often-perverse effects of political change, whilst well documented after they occur, are rarely given attention they deserve. …