Should women learn to love pain?

Reflecting on the subject of pain in his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein concluded that the grammar of the concept had an essential relation to publicly recognisable forms of “pain-behaviour”: wincing, saying “ow”, yelping, crying, and so on. He thought that it …

The dismantling of the Chinese mind

When retired spy Peter Wright announced the existence of Spycatcher, his astoundingly indiscreet MI5 expose, in 1985, Margaret Thatcher’s government tried to block its publication in Australia. When that failed, it banned English newspapers from reporting on Wright’s allegations, including …