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25th Sep 2012	Matthew Gandy	The Wheatsheaf
Landscape The term landscape, derived from the sixteenth-century Dutch word landschap, was originally used for the demarcation of land but has subsequently become associated with a way of seeing space from a distance.

28th Aug 2012	Andrew Edgar	The Wheatsheaf
What is a Legitimate Enhancement in Sport? What really counts as "fair" when it comes to winning?

31st Jul 2012	John Roberts	The Wheatsheaf
Errors How, and under what conditions is error productive, and is there anything consistent to its productiveness? What kinds of errors and mistakes are constitutive, for instance, of science, political praxis, art, philosophy and psychoanalysis?

26th Jun 2012	Robert Kesseler	The Wheatsheaf
How Do Art And Science Visualise Life? It's tempting to imagine that the presentation of microscopic or very distant objects - stuff which can't be seen with the naked eye - is simply a matter of adjusting the scale of an image of the object. It's far more complicated than that.

29th May 2012	Iain Boal	The Wheatsheaf
What Are The Legitimate Ends And Means Of Protest? Iain Boal asks what it means to protest and when, if ever, it's a good tactic.

9th May 2012	Andrew McGettigan	The Wheatsheaf
Different Class: Do We Learn Better From Books Or Teachers? In a time when a vast amount of information is available online, are we better off teaching ourselves through study or going to an expert for instruction? Is teaching yourself more effective, more creative or more authentic than learning from someone else? Are gurus dangerous or is learning at its best always a social encounter?

24th Apr 2012	Aislinn O'Donnell	The Wheatsheaf
What Form Of Education Should We Offer Prisoners? What should we expect prisoners to get out of their education -- skills, knowledge, discipline, maturity, self-confidence or something else entirely?

11th Apr 2012	Andrew McGettigan	The Wheatsheaf
Different Class: Can Excellence Be Taught? We kick off with a classic of ancient Greek thought: Plato’s dialogue Meno, which deals with questions of what it means to learn and be educated and what we should teach our young people to prepare them for civic life.

27th Mar 2012	David Cunningham	The Wheatsheaf
Are Cities Important To Philosophy? We explore the relationship between philosophy as an activity and the urban environment in which it so often seems to take place.

14th Mar 2012	Jonathan White	The Wheatsheaf
Different Class: Is Knowledge Power? Everyone's familiar with the idea that "knowledge is power". But how does power really operate and what's its relationship to knowledge? Is it exercised solely by the elite or are its formations more complex?

28th Feb 2012	Ilora Finlay	The Wheatsheaf
What Does It Mean To Die Well? Baroness Finlay invites us to re-examine the euthanasia debate from a different perspective.

8th Feb 2012	Jonathan White	The Wheatsheaf
Different Class: What Does It Mean To “Be Yourself”? Erving Goffman wasn't the first to suggest that the human world is like theatre but in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life the dramatic metaphor is central.

31st Jan 2012	Paul Mason	The Wheatsheaf
What Would Be A Socially Just Solution To The Current Economic Crisis? Newsnight's Paul Mason joins us for a discussion about what would count as a good solution to the crisis.

11th Jan 2012	Jonathan White	The Wheatsheaf
Different Class: Who Are “The Elite”? At a time when the phrase “We are the 99%” has gained popularity, the idea that somehow an elite – the 1% – has taken more than its fair share by stealth has been transformed into a rallying cry for protesters across the United States and elsewhere. There is nothing new in this analysis, however. C. Wright Mills classic, The Power Elite, was published in 1956

16th Dec 2011	The Big Ideas Team	The Wheatsheaf
Christmas Social Raise a glass with us to another year's excellent thought and discussion.

29th Nov 2011	Jeremy Jennings	The Wheatsheaf
Are Public Intellectuals Important? Does the "public intellectual" have a distinctive role to play in modern society? Or is it a case of "If you can, do"?

7th Nov 2011	Jonathan White	The Wheatsheaf
Different Class: Should we be utopian? Many of the most influential political projects: that is, they've aimed at creating an ideal society, and have had a definite idea of what that society might look like.

25th Oct 2011	Dr Maria Alvarez	The Wheatsheaf
What Does It Mean To Give A Reason? Can we ever give adequate reasons for our actions? If so, how? If not, what would be the implications?

10th Oct 2011	Jonathan White	The Wheatsheaf
Different Class: How do rulers win the consent of the ruled? We're excited to announce the first session of Different Class, our series of free seminars programmed and chaired by Dr Jonathan White of the London School of Economics.

27th Sep 2011	Robert Skidelsky	The Wheatsheaf
How Much Money Do We Need To Lead A Good Life? Is enough ever, really, enough? Is there such a thing as too much?

30th Aug 2011	Mark Rowe	The Wheatsheaf
How Much Does Style Matter? Why do some philosophers write clearly while others are obscure? Is the style an important part of the ideas, or does it just help or hinder us to understand them?

26th Jul 2011	Roger Cotterrell	The Wheatsheaf
Do Communities Make Laws Or Do Laws Make Communities? Do we need to have laws before we can speak of a "community"? Do they emerge naturally from communities of people who associate initially without them? Do we need laws at all, or is an "anarchist community" a contradiction in terms?

28th Jun 2011	Caroline Pelletier	The Wheatsheaf
Do Organisations Have Minds? Can a school or workplace be said to have an unconscious? Can you psychoanalyse an institution?

31st May 2011	Andrew McGettigan	The Wheatsheaf
What Is Criticism In The Arts? Do the arts benefit from academic critic and theorists? Or do they merely obfuscate the work and confuse the audience?

26th Apr 2011	Richard Sennett	The Wheatsheaf
Cooperation Is it time we thought again about the old dichotomy between co-operation and competition? Sociologist Richard Sennett encourages us to think again about these important concepts.

29th Mar 2011	Tim Stanley	The Wheatsheaf
What Is The Role Of Religion in US Political Life? How does religion interact with politics in the US? Tim Stanley, an expert observer of the political scene across the pond, invites us to look at a bigger picture than we usually see.

22nd Feb 2011	Nina Power	The Wheatsheaf
Is Work Central To Being Human? Is working part of the human condition? Nina Power examines what it means to work in the shadow of mass unemployment.

25th Jan 2011	Miranda Fricker	The Wheatsheaf
Why Should I Believe You? What matters most: whether I'm telling the truth or whether you believe me? Miranda Fricker discusses the ethics and politics of credibility.

7th Dec 2010	The Big Ideas Team	The Wheatsheaf (Downstairs)
Christmas Social Join us in raising a toast to another year spent asking hard questions about philosophy, politics, ethics, science and journalism over a beer or two.

26th Oct 2010	Quentin Skinner	The Wheatsheaf
What Is Political Liberty? Political thinkers have long pondered the nature of political freedom. What does it mean to have political liberty?

11th Oct 2010	Big Picture	The Paradise
Pressure Horace Ove's film tangles with the politics of racism and black liberation, seen through the eyes of a young black teenager, Anthony, who discovers that Britain might not have all to offer him that he thought.

28th Sep 2010	Andrew Gardner	The Wheatsheaf
What Is Time For Us? Archaeologist Andrew Gardner asks how we engage with time, both at an ordinary level and when dealing with the long periods on historic, prehistoric, geological and cosmological scales. Andrew Gardner

13th Sep 2010	Big Picture	The Paradise
Britannia Hospital Made in 1982, just as 'Thatcher's Britain' was beginning to take shape, Britannia Hospital is an unlikely comedy with a biting sense of social justice.

31st Aug 2010	Nathan Charlton with Robert Kingham	The Wheatsheaf
City Break What place does a citizen have in popular urbanism, this city of the city break? Paradoxically, though we revel in them, we no longer identify as closely with our own cities but are rather spectators and consumers of them - we are all tourists now.

9th Aug 2010	Big Picture	The Paradise
Ghost Dance Is Jacques Derrida a ghost?

27th Jul 2010	Katerina Deligiorgi	The Wheatsheaf
Cosmetic Neuroscience If a pill could make you a better person, should you take it? Such questions are rapidly moving out of science fiction and into consulting rooms as psychiatric drugs become ever more powerful. Katerina Deligiorgi guides us through a particularly hazardous scientific, ethical and political minefield.

12th Jul 2010	Big Picture	The Paradise
Network When network news anchor Howard Beale faces the sack for his falling ratings he announces his planned suicide live on air.

30th Jun 2010	Julian Baggini	The Wheatsheaf
Do Thought Experiments Tell Us Anything? Freelance philosopher Julian Baggini invites us to consider the thought experiment. Is it the only way to think reasonably about things that can't be tested by experiment or mathematics? Or do thought experiments just typify the philosopher's problem -- head in the clouds and completely detatched from reality? Can a thought experiment ever tell us anything we didn't already know?

1st Jun 2010	Big Picture	The Paradise
The Fountainhead Scripted by Ayn Rand from her own novel, King Vidor’s story of a visionary architect brought low by the cowards around him brings Rand’s Objectivist philosophy to the big screen.

25th May 2010	Jonathan White	The Wheatsheaf
Partisanship An evening of exploration of the relevance of political parties with Jonathan White.

10th May 2010	Big Picture	The Paradise
a showing of ‘Wittgenstein’ (1993) Derek Jarman's unorthodox biopic, Wittgenstein, with comment and discussion afterwards.

5th May 2010	Big Ideas and The Forum for European Philosophy	The Counting House
Crisis in the Body and the Body Politic Big Ideas and the Forum for European Philosophy at the LSE come together to present an interactive panel discussion on the idea of "crisis".

27th Apr 2010	John Worrall	The Wheatsheaf
Just A Theory – Can There Be Certainty In Science? Improvements in procedure have been made to scientific method, but observation, hypothetisation and experimentation have remained at the heart of modern, rational scientific endevour. However, once we have have proofs for hypotheses, to what extent can we claim they are true?

19th Apr 2010	Big Picture	The Paradise
a showing of ‘Gattaca’ (1997) Gattaca presents a frightening picture of a genetically determined dystopia in America's 'near future' in which two brothers, one born with the help of genetic screening and one without, live in a society that discriminates between the genetically 'valid' and the 'in-valid', fixing identity and destiny at birth.

30th Mar 2010	Prof Paul Standish	The Wheatsheaf
Does Education Need Theories? Paul Standish invites us to consider philosophical perspectives on the theories that drive much education policy.

29th Mar 2010	Big Picture	The Paradise
a showing of ‘Waking Life’ (2001) Richard Linklater’s animated adventure in the meaning of consciousness picks up where Slacker left off.

23rd Feb 2010	Mark Vernon	The Wheatsheaf
Is there an art to living? Can we practice philosophy as an art of living, who should our inspiration be, and why does it matter?

26th Jan 2010	Tim Luckhurst	The Wheatsheaf
The Future of News Tim Luckhurst will introduce a talk and discussion about the role of traditional journalism in the age of blogs, twitter and 'have your say'. Has the newspaper been made obsolete by the web site? And how much do we know about who produces the media we now consume?

15th Dec 2009	The Big Ideas Team	The Wheatsheaf
Christmas Social It's time to celebrate another year of Big Ideas talks. We’ll be getting together at The Wheatsheaf on the 15th of December for the Big Ideas Christmas Social. There’s no speaker and no agenda, just come along for a few drinks and general sociability.

24th Nov 2009	Susan James	The Wheatsheaf
What Use is an Imaginary Social Contract? To celebrate Spinoza's birthday, Susan James will introduce his unique account of the social contract and its relevance to contemporary political debate.

27th Oct 2009	John Pugh	The Wheatsheaf
Should All Politicians Be Utilitarians? A philosophy which first became popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Utilitarianism in its various guises purports to provide a rational basis for moral action, both at an individual and a societal level. Perhaps Government ministers need only remember Bentham's maxim, "the greatest good for the greatest number of people." But how can we decide what is good? Or what makes us happy? And is there a rational way for policy to achieve good and happy outcomes?

29th Sep 2009	Jonathan Wolff	The Wheatsheaf
Are there risks we can’t afford to take? When we expose others to risk we make a moral choice. When we choose, is there a line to draw between acceptable and unacceptable risk? Where would, for example, the risk from passive smoking come in decisions about smoking in public? Or the risk of inaction against climate change?

25th Aug 2009	Paul Simpson	The Wheatsheaf
Is Rhetoric A Dirty Word? Paul Simpson will argue that, rather sticking to the facts, we should all be telling more tales. Without greater use of rhetoric, and the art of storytelling, ideas will increasingly cease to matter.

28th Jul 2009	Christian Michel	The Wheatsheaf
Why Punish? Christian Michel will outline issues and concepts of punishment

30th Jun 2009	Annabelle Lever	The Wheatsheaf
How Much Privacy Should We Have? A talk and discussion about privacy and whether it really is valuable in a democratic society

3rd Jun 2009	Rich Cochrane	The Dartmouth Castle
Is Music A Universal Language? In what ways is music like a language? Can it communicate emotions, atmospheres or ideas? And how much of what we think of as “universal” is actually very specific to our culture?

26th May 2009	Rebecca Cassidy	The Wheatsheaf
Why Do We Gamble? Dr Rebecca Cassidy will introduce some of the myriad explanations for our appetite for risk and show how finding answers requires an understanding of the context in which gambling takes place.

13th May 2009	Nathan Charlton	The Dartmouth Castle
Has New Media Won? Nathan Charlton leads a talk and discussion about "new media" at our firstevent in Hammersmith

28th Apr 2009	Miran Epstein	The Wheatsheaf
The Truth About Medical Ethics Miran Epstein offers to take us behind the scenes of moral philosophy

31st Mar 2009	Robert Kingham	The Wheatsheaf
What’s The Point Of Regeneration? A talk and discussion about urban regeneration

24th Feb 2009	Andrew Edgar	The Wheatsheaf
Who Am I When I’m Online? Dr Andrew Edgar from Cardiff University will lead a discussion on the subject of online identity

27th Jan 2009	Andrew Medworth	The Wheatsheaf
Why Should We Do What We Should Do? Andrew Medworth will kick off the new year with a discussion of one of the thorniest questions in ethical philosophy

16th Dec 2008	The Big Ideas Team	The Wheatsheaf
Christmas Social Come and join us for a pre-Christmas celebration

25th Nov 2008	Dave Boyle	The Wheatsheaf
Football, Loyalty and Identity A talk and discussion about the history of football and its relationship with its fans

28th Oct 2008	Simon Glendinning	The Wheatsheaf
Is Europe A Place Or An Idea? Is Europe a location, or something deeper that draws on ideas and tradition spanning millennia?

30th Sep 2008	Wilfrid Hodges	The Wheatsheaf
Is Being Rational The Same As Being Logical? Can one be rational without being logical? Can one be perfectly logical but irrational? Do we miss something of profound importance if we always insist on logic, or rationality, or both?

26th Aug 2008	Alasdair Mackenzie	The Wheatsheaf
How Much Democracy Is Too Much? Hansard reporter and Westminster village resident Alasdair Mackenzie will introduce a discussion about democracy

29th Jul 2008	Nathan Charlton	The Wheatsheaf
What Does It Mean To Be Modern? A talk and discussion about modernism

16th Jun 2008	Rich Cochrane	The Wheatsheaf
What Can We Do About Vagueness? An introduction to the problem of vagueness

27th May 2008	The Big Ideas Team	The Wheatsheaf
May ’68 Special May’s Big Ideas event will be an anarchic May ‘68 special

29th Apr 2008	Danny Rye	The Wheatsheaf
How To Grasp Power (A Brief Guide) What is power really and how does it work? Can it be identified and described or is it something altogether more hidden and nebulous?

25th Mar 2008	Rich Cochrane	The Wheatsheaf
What Happened to Classical Music? A talk and discussion about music. What is it? What’s it for? How can you tell whether it’s any good? What is a “classical” tradition anyway?

26th Feb 2008	Clare Churly	The Wheatsheaf
Who Needs Copyright? A discussion about the legal and philosophical ideas surrounding copyright and some of the debates that arise from them

22nd Jan 2008	Nathan Charlton	The Wheatsheaf
Is Heritage History? An exploration of the differences between ideas of history and history

17th Dec 2007	The Big Ideas Team	The Wheatsheaf
Christmas Social Join us for a pre-Christmas celebration

4th Sep 2007	Danny Birchall	The Wheatsheaf
What’s the Point of Film Studies? Sight & Sound columnist Danny Birchall puts the case of the tabloids' favourite Mickey Mouse degree.

11th Aug 2007	Robert Kingham	The Crosse Keys
Are Ley Lines There by Chance? We examine whether there's any mathematical significance to some claimed ley lines.

26th Jun 2007	Phil O'Donnell	The Wheatsheaf
Can Consciousness Be Evoked Computationally? Phil introduces Roger Penrose's controversial arguments about artificial consciousness.

27th Mar 2007	Steve Morris	The Wheatsheaf
Evidence-Based Policy Policy expert Steve Morris introduces the idea that public policy can (and should be) evidence-based.

23rd Feb 2007	Phil O'Donnell	The Champion
Newcomb’s Paradox We investigate the notorious Newcomb's Paradox, a curious thought-experiment that unites determinism and game theory.

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