The sculptures of Thessaloniki: 2, Aristotle by Giorgos Georgiadis, Aristotelous Square – and a shiny toe

Aristotle by Giorgos Georgiadis on the east side of Aristotelous Square in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I was recalling last night how I have come across a collection of photographs of modern sculptures in the streets and parks of Thessaloniki but realised that I have written little about these sculptures over the years.

Rather than leave these photographs and memories in forgotten files on my laptop or in the cloud, I decided to start an occasional series of blog postings on some of those modern sculptures I have rediscovered in Thessaloniki. Over the next few weeks, I am inviting you to join me in a minor odyssey of recovery and discovery as my mind wanders through Thessaloniki, looking at these sculptures again.

I came across these photographs after reading an interview with the sculptor Giorgos Georgiadis in To Vima last month, so it seems appropriate that the first of these sculptures should be his statue of Aristotle on Aristotelous Square.

The cast bronze sculpture of the philosopher Aristotle on the east side of Aristotelous Square was completed in 1990 by the Greek sculptor Giorgos Georgiadis. The square in the heart of Thessaloniki with Aristotle’s name was designed by the French architect Ernest Hebrard following the devastating Great Fire in 1917.

The statue is framed by the Electra Palace Hotel and the Olympion Cinema and close to the waterfront. It shows Aristotle seated and deep in thought, wearing a traditional cloak and sandals, and holding a papyrus scroll in his hand. The statue is remarkable for its detail, including the impressive in the folds of his clothes, his facial expression and the soles of his feet. His name is carved on the marble base.

Aristotle (384-322 BCE) is a pioneer of Greek philosophy, alongside Plato and Socrates. He was Plato’s student and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He was born in Stagira in Halkidiki, in the region of Macedonia. At the age of 17, he went to Athens, where he studied for 20 years at the Academy of Plato.

When Alexander the Great was born, Aristotle was invited to deliver a speech in front of his cradle. The only thing he said was: ‘I wish, when one day you become a king, you will be as indifferent and apathetic about the language of flattery, as you are indifferent and apathetic about the speech that your father made me deliver now in front of you.’ King Philip of Macedonia later entrusted Aristotle with the education of his son.

When Aristotle returned to Athens, he founded his own school, the Lyceum of Aristotle. His writings range from politics and morality to science and technology.

A popular feature of the statue of Aristotle in Thessaloniki is the unusually bright, golden left big toe, a sharp contrast with the dark bronze patina of the rest of the sculpture. The distinct colouration is the result of decades of constant touching by students, passers-by and tourists, who are told that rubbing the big toe transfers a portion of Aristotle’s intellect, wisdom and intelligence.

Aristotle by Giorgos Georgiadis on the east side of Aristotelous Square in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

At 92, Giorgos Georgiadis remains Greece’s leading sculptor and when he was interviewed in To Vima last month, he was described as ‘the Last Anthropocentric Sculptor’. His career has spanned almost seven decades. His partner, the internationally renowned ceramist Maria (‘Maro’) Kerasioti, has been a constant presence in his life, throughout the most decisive shifts in his work.

He grew up in Marousi, north-east of Athens, after the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the family’s hasty and violent expulsion from Smyrna. He studied under the sculptor, painter and poet Giannis Pappas (1913-2005), whose sculptures in Thessaloniki include the marble statue of Eleftherios Venizelos on Plateia Dikastirion (Πλατεία Δικαστηρίου, Dikastirion Square or Courthouse Square).

‘The Epinikia’ is one of the most emblematic series by Georgiadis and was a milestone in his career. For several years his focus was on a seated female body and chose it for the entire ‘Epinikia’ series because it ‘symbolises motherhood and the perpetuation of humanity’.

The series came about during the years of the dictatorship. He produced it ‘during the abhorrent dictatorship the colonels imposed on Greece. Many of my colleagues, and not just sculptors, expressed themselves in a kind of silent protest through similar themes during that period.’ The title means ‘the victory celebrations that followed a victory, the triumphal chant, the paean’. In many of these works, ‘with its loose folds and pleats, the fabric signifies liberation, release, and serenity’.

Humour, sarcasm, and a pervasive irony coexist in his sculptures, alongside the tragic element. His work frequently shows a strong connection with ancient Greek literature and myth, seen in the series ‘Mythology Backwards’, with the entire series cast in bronze, his favourite material.

For almost 70 years, he has expressed himself through different materials, often working in one for a period of time before moving on to another. He has also have tackled a subject that is not human-centric with horses. He began sketching them at a stud farm in Marathon and the work soon captivated him and became a unique professional experience.

In a crowning moment for any artist, the Minister of Culture at the time, Melina Mercouri (1920-1994), decided in 1984 that he and his late friend the painter Christos Karas would represent Greece at the Venice Biennale in the spheres of painting and sculpture.

His interviewer Panos Kougias said in To Vima last month that Georgiadis ‘has a rare politeness and a generosity of spirit from a bygone era’, and described how his studio spreads out around us like a living archive of a life.

‘The great French sculptor Auguste Rodin … wrote, as a kind of wish, that it would be a great blessing for humanity if nations were governed and their fates decided by artists’ Georgiadis said. ‘Then, lasting peace and justice among people would prevail on the planet, without wars and weapons of mass destruction.’

Next: Alexander the Great by Evangelos Moustakas, near the White Tower

Giorgos Georgiadis in his atelier (Photograph: Panos Kougias/To Vima Intl Edition, 2026)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 121, Sunday 6 September 2026, Creation in Christ, Trinity XIV

‘All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being’ (John 1: 3) … Christ the Pantocrator in the dome of the parish church in Panormos in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and today is the Festival of Creation in Christ or the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIV, 6 September 2026).

This weekend includes the Festal Weekend in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, coming between the Feast of Saint Giles (1 September) and the Feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary (8 September). There were children’s activities in the church yesterday, a Festal Eucharist this morning at which I hope to sing with the choir, and Calverton Fete is at All Saints’ Church, Calverton, this afternoon.

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it’ (John 1: 5) … light pours into the darkness in the Church of the Transfiguration in Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 1: 1-14 (NRSVA):

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

The statue of Pythagoras (1989) by Nikolaos Ikaris (1920-1994) on the harbour front in Pythagóreio on the Greek island of Samos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

The Prologue to Saint John’s Gospel is the traditional Gospel reading on Christmas morning. Now we hear it again this morning (John 1: 1-14), when the Church Calendar in the Church of England marks Creation in Christ.

These opening verses in Saint John’s Gospel are like the opening verses of the Bible, in the Book of Genesis. They talk of a new creation, and a creation in which God is pleased, God is very pleased.

In this reading, we are introduced to key concepts in Saint John’s thinking: word or logos (λόγος, logos), life (ζωή, zoe), light (φῶς, phos), belief and being sent, testimony or witness, truth, and the cosmos (κόσμος, cosmos).

The word cosmos appears in this passage four times, and later, when Saint John goes on to tell us that ‘God so loved the world …’, he actually says ‘God so loved the cosmos that he sent his only Son …’ (John 3: 16).

The cosmos is the Universe, but the word specifically refers to a complex and orderly system or entity, the very opposite of chaos. The word cosmos gives us words in the English language like: cosmology, trying to understand the reasons for existence and its significance; or, more simply, cosmetics, an equal presence of order and beauty, an attempt to bring order or even beauty to the chaos of our skin, our facial appearance.

The term was first used by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (ca 570 BCE to ca 495 BCE), the philosopher we remember because everyone in school learned the theorem to which he gives his name: ‘The square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.’

Pythagoras lived on the Greek island of Samos, and he influenced every Greek philosopher who came after him, including Plato and Aristotle. He is said to have been the first to prove that the earth is a sphere; he shaped how we think of numbers and musical notation, the perfect consonances of music; he taught the immortality of the soul; … and he was the first philosopher to develop the concept of the cosmos, the harmony of the created universe.

His followers, the Pythagoreans, believed in a superior divinity, the One God, above all other gods. Because of this belief in one God, and their rejection of the pantheon of mythical Greek gods, Pythagoras and his followers were labelled as atheists.

He was the first philosopher to give the word cosmos to the universe on the basis of his concepts of order and harmony which he believed govern all things.

He said that humanity and the universe are made in the image and likeness of God, and that understanding God, the universe and humanity are inter-connected.

In Pythagorean thinking, the cosmos is not just the whole world, but the whole universe, the whole created order; it is the earth and all that encircles the earth like its skin.

For Pythagoras, all things are related, just as in an ecosystem. In this thinking, the universe is a living organism and not an inanimate machine.

His followers compared a just and well-ordered society to a well-tuned lyre. While each note retains its individuality, all are proportionally linked together in a larger whole to form a musical scale, and all are interdependent in terms of their reliance on one another (Plato, Republic 443 D-444). Justice is present in any well-functioning organism, society, and the soul.

The word cosmopolitan, an important concept in modern philosophy and political discourse, is, of course, derived from the κοσμοπολίτης (kosmopoliítes) found in classical and koine Greek, formed from the words κόσμος (kosmos), world, universe, cosmos or created order, and πολίτης (politês), citizen, one of a city.

Contemporary usage defines the term as ‘citizen of the world’. But the word cosmopolitan was coined by the Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic or Diogenes of Sinope in the fourth century BCE. When Diogenes was asked from what city he hailed, he replied that he was a citizen of the world, κόσμος πολίτης (kósmos polítēs), or κοσμοπολίτης (kosmopolites), a citizen of the world, rejecting narrow local loyalties.

The plural, κόσμου πολῖται (kosmou politai), means ‘citizens of the world’ or even ‘citizens of the universe’, of the whole created order. The phrase originates from Cynic and Stoic philosophy, describing the idea that human beings belong to a single, universal community rather than being defined solely by their local city-state or nation. At the time, the broadest basis of social identity among Greeks was either the individual city-state or the culturally and linguistically homogeneous Hellenic group.

Diogenes lived from ca 413/403 to ca 324/321 BCE, and he was one of the founders of Cynicism. He was renowned for his ascetic lifestyle and radical critiques of social conventions, and he became a legendary figure whose life and teachings have been recounted, often through anecdote, in both antiquity and modernity. He Diogenes advocated a return to nature, the renunciation of wealth, and introduced early ideas of cosmopolitanism by proclaiming himself a citizen of the world. Rather than declaring his lineage, city, social class, or gender, he defined himself as a human being, implicitly asserting the equal worth of all human beings.

When Saint John the Divine wrote the Book of Revelation, he was in exile on Patmos, the neighbouring island of Samos, where Pythagoras was born, and like Pythagoras, he too was in exile in a cave.

So, is it any wonder that the idea of the cosmos, the harmony of the created universe, is a key concept in the writings of Saint John?

The word cosmos occurs 188 times in the New Testament, and the vast majority of these occurrences (104) are in Saint John’s Gospel and his three letters.

The first use of the word cosmos in the New Testament is in the Gospel reading this morning. When Saint John uses the word here – ‘He was in the cosmos, and the cosmos came into being because of him’ (John 1: 10) – he is referring not to humanity, not to the world as our planet Earth, but to the created universe, the sum total of everything, not here and now but past, present and future, the orderly universe created by God to be in harmony.

When we care for the cosmos, the created order, we reflect the life of Christ. It is not a marginal, side issue for the Church, but it is at the heart of the mission of the Church, because it is at the heart of why the Word has become flesh and dwells among us (John 1: 14).

The fifth of the five marks of mission agreed in the Anglican Communion is: ‘To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and re-new the life of the earth.’

As we celebrate Creation in Christ and continue to mark Creation Time, it is good to be reminded that the care of creation, the cosmos, is not an added-on extra to our priorities in mission; rather, it underpins and explains all we do in mission. When we care for the cosmos, the integrity of creation, we are being like Christ.

The Tower of Lysicrates in the Plaka in Athens was once known as the Lantern of Diogenes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 6 September 2026, Creation in Christ):

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, from 6 to 12 September 2026 (pp 36-37), is ‘Turning Pain into Glory’. This theme is introduced today with a Reflection by Nolene Sheppard, Leader of a Women’s Empowerment Group, Magnificat, and Ukraine Aid Project Support Lead at Saint Thomas à Becket, Hamburg, Germany:

It was a deep pain that hurt so bad it made me feel sick. I looked into the mirror and saw black and brown lines. The image couldn’t possibly be me - an unrecognisable, swollen face. My head continued to spin out of control. All I felt was helplessness, anger and frustration.

Traumatic experiences like these are not an unusual experience – a first for me, but nothing that other women haven’t experienced. Could I find my way back from the depths of such overwhelming despair? How can I do this when I am in a country where I am a foreigner, and at a disadvantage in every aspect of the word.

“Are other women going through this same emotional and psychological torture due to similar experiences?”, I asked myself. The findings were overwhelming. With the power of prayer, I knew I was not walking the journey back to the top on my own. God was at my side every step of the way. He showed me the path, gave me wisdom, strength and vision.

Now on a road better than I could have ever imagined, in the same country, I created a group within the English Anglican Church in Hamburg called “Magnificat”. This group is all about empowering women. We give financial support to Ukrainian refugees, made up of women and children, in Romania and put on activities for women in Hamburg too. I listen to each of their stories. It’s been a year now and the bond is still there. Magnificat continues to uplift them, as it does me.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 6 September 2026, Creation in Christ) invites us to pray as we read and meditate on Matthew 18: 15-20.

‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it’ (John 1: 4) … by Minster Pool in Lichfield at night (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect of the Day:

Holy and eternal God,
you are the Maker of heaven and earth,
you are the Word through whom all things were made,
and you are the Spirit, the giver of life:
draw us into the mystery of your love,
that with all creation we may proclaim your praise,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

or

O God and Father of all that was, is and ever shall be,
help us to be thankful for all that is made
at the hands of your Son
and through the wisdom of your Spirit,
that we may care in heart and in deed for the life of our world,
to the praise and glory of your holy name.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God our Creator,
by your gift the tree of life was set
at the heart of the earthly paradise,
and the bread of life at the heart of your Church:
may we who have been nourished at your table on earth
be transformed by the glory of the Saviour’s cross
and enjoy the delights of eternity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it’ (John 1: 4) … My Village Barok by the Sarawak River in Kuching at night (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 119, Friday 4 September 2026

The banquet with Levi included the questions and answers – and the drinking – associated with a Greek symposium … pottery in a shop in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and the week began with the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIII, 30 August 2026). The Season of Creation began on Tuesday (1 September 2026), and it continues until 4 October.

Today, the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers Saint Birinus (650), Bishop of Dorchester (Oxon) and Apostle of Wessex. Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

After the symposium … an end-of-term dinner with the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 5: 33-39 (NRSVA):

33 Then they said to him [Jesus], ‘John’s disciples, like the disciples of the Pharisees, frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink.’ 34 Jesus said to them, ‘You cannot make wedding-guests fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? 35 The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.’ 36 He also told them a parable: ‘No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. 38 But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, “The old is good”.’

‘You cannot make wedding-guests fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you?’ (Luke 5: 34) … preparing for a wedding in Southwark (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

Jesus has called the tax-collector Levi, and then dines with him in his house that evening (Luke 5: 27-31). Levi celebrates not just with dinner, or even a lavish dinner, but a ‘great banquet’ in his house that is attended by a large crowd.

Banquets were not merely lavish meals but also a setting for teaching and instruction, and the word for banquet here δοχή (dochē) suggests a formal Greek banquet known as a symposium (συμπόσιον, sympósion, from συμπίνειν, sympínein, ‘to drink together’).

In classical Greece, the symposium was the part of a banquet that took place after the meal, when drinking for pleasure was accompanied by music, dancing, recitals, or conversation. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato’s Symposium and Xenophon’s Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems.

If we read Levi’s banquet as a symposium, then, of course, it is going to be associated, culturally, in those days with drinking, and with questions and answers.

Some people ask why Jesus eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners. Now, in this morning’s Gospel reading (Luke 5: 33-39), the same people ask why, unlike John’s disciples or the disciples of the Pharisees, who frequently fast and pray, the disciples of Jesus eat and drink.

Similar complaints were made about Socrates. In Plato’s Symposium, Alcibiades claims that Socrates, despite allegedly drinking heavily just like the others, never got drunk and that alcohol never has any effect on Socrates: ‘Observe, my friends, said Alcibiades, that this ingenious trick of mine will have no effect on Socrates, for he can drink any quantity of wine and not be at all nearer being drunk.’

Christ responds to his detractors by comparing the invitation into the Kingdom with an invitation to a wedding, and speaks of his followers as guests at a wedding banquet. The feast is in progress, so this is a time for joy, while after his death it will be a time for fasting.

He insists that the old way of being and the new way he brings are separate, even if both are to be valued. New material stretches more than old. When wine ferments, it expands. Soft new wineskins expand with the wine, but old ones do not.

And so, in a way, I find myself thinking this morning of two other banquets where the wine must have been flowing freely.

The first of these is the Wedding at Cana, the banquet before Christ’s ministry begins. There the wine runs out, and then the wine runs freely.

The second banquet is at the end of Christ’s ministry, the meal at the Last Supper. Not only must the wine have been flowing freely at that meal, it is the meal of the New Covenant, in which bread and wine are freely given, just as Christ gives himself freely, body and blood.

In this in-between time, this Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, ordinary meals offer a promise of what the heavenly banquet is like. And constantly, as in this morning’s Gospel reading, Jesus uses the image of the wedding banquet to convey how sacred, how loving, how caring, how beautiful, how full of promise, is the heavenly banquet.

Just as the wedding banquet is not the wedding itself, but a celebration of the wedding and the promise of the wedding, the meals in the Gospel in the in-between times are foretastes of, promises of, the great heavenly banquet.

And, at those banquets, Christ dines with tax-collectors like tax-collectors like Levi, Pharisees like Simon, those who are rejected by polite society like Zacchaeus, just as he is going to dine at the Last Supper with those who are going to betray him like Judas, those who are going to deny him like Peter, just as he is going to insist on dining with those who fail to recognise him after the Resurrection, like the disciples at Emmaus.

No matter how wayward others may think we are, no matter how wayward we may think we have been, Christ calls us back to dine with him, to have a new and intimate relationship with, wants to dine with us, so that, as we say in the Prayer of Humble Access, so that ‘that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us.’

Levi’s banquet has parallels with the symposia associated with Socrates, including the drinking and the questions … Socrates bar in Piskopianó in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 4 September 2026):

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, from 30 August to 5 September 2026 (pp 34-35), is ‘Anglican Youth Tackle Waste in Madagascar’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by Ialy Tongasoa, Community Development Lead, Diocese of Toliara, Madagascar.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 4 September 2026) invites us to pray:

Gracious God, thank you for the skills young people are gaining and for how even small acts of recycling and composting are big signs of caring for your creation.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
who called your Church to bear witness
that you were in Christ reconciling the world to yourself:
help us to proclaim the good news of your love,
that all who hear it may be drawn to you;
through him who was lifted up on the cross,
and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

God our creator,
you feed your children with the true manna,
the living bread from heaven:
let this holy food sustain us through our earthly pilgrimage
until we come to that place
where hunger and thirst are no more;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Almighty God,
you search us and know us:
may we rely on you in strength
and rest on you in weakness,
now and in all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

‘No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment’ (Luke 5: 36) … colourful new fabrics in a shop in Seville (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Socrates is regarded as the founder of western philosophy … a street name in Koutouloufári in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A reminder in Bloomsbury of the ‘Russell Paradox’ and a reminder to visit the barber for a haircut

Russell Chambers on Bury Street in Bloomsbury … Bertrand Russell lived in flat No 34 from 1911 to 1916 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I think I need a haircut, and there is no shortage of barbers in Stony Stratford to pick and choose from. But when I was thinking about the Hotel Russell and Russell Square in a blog posting yesterday (18 August 2026), I was reminded of the ‘Barber’s Paradox’.

I ask you to imagine a village that has only one barber who shaves all men, and only those men, who do not shave themselves.

At first glance, this seems like a perfectly reasonable way to run a business in a small town. The men who want to save money shave themselves at home, and the rest go to the barber. But the scenario begins to fall apart when you ask: ‘Who shaves the barber?’

If the barber shaves himself, he violates the communal understanding that he only shaves people who do not shave themselves. Therefore, he cannot shave himself. But if he does not shave himself, he falls into the category of the men in the village who do not shave themselves.

According to the principle, the barber must shave everyone in this category. Therefore, he must shave himself. He needs to shave himself if – and only if – he does not shave himself. This creates a conundrum and an infinite, unbreakable loop of contradiction.

The reason a village with these rules cannot exist in real life has nothing to do with physics, geography, or human behaviour. It cannot exist because the rule itself is a logical contradiction.

Asking me to find such a village is like asking me to draw a four-sided triangle, to square the circle, to find a married bachelor, or to calculate the square root of -1. The words in the definition cancel each other out. The barber who is defined by such an exact, unbending parameter is a mathematical impossibility masquerading as a physical person. As soon as I define the parameters of the village, I have defined a place that cannot logically exist in the universe.

Epimenidou Street in Rethymnon … a reminder of the ‘Epimenides Paradox’ and a philosopher from Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The ‘barber’s paradox’ reminds me of Epimenides (Ἐπιμενίδης) of Knossos, the semi-mythical philosopher and poet from Crete who is said to have lived in the 7th or 6th century BCE, who gives his name to the ‘Epimenides Paradox’, a variation of the ‘Liar Paradox’.

It is said that while Epimenides was tending his father’s sheep, he fell asleep for 57 years in a cave in Crete that was sacred to Zeus. When he awoke after 57 years, Epimenides is said to have found he was endowed the gift of prophecy.

Epimenides is quoted twice in the New Testament. While speaking to a group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in front of the Areopagus in Athens (see Acts 17: 22-34), Saint Paul quotes from Epimenides’ Cretica: ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ (verse 28). Saint Paul is citing the fourth line in the Hymn to Zeus of Callimachus, with its reference to one of ‘your own poets’ (Acts 17: 28). In the same address, Saint Paul also quotes from Aratus’ Phaenomena: ‘For we too are his offspring’ (verse 28).

When Saint Paul spoke to Saint Titus about his mission in Crete, he committed a logical fallacy by quoting Epimenides: ‘It was one of them, their very own prophet, who said, ‘Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.’ That testimony is true’ (Titus 1: 12-13a).

The ‘lie’ of the Cretans is that Zeus was mortal, for Epimenides believed that Zeus is dead. The logical inconsistency of a Cretan asserting all Cretans are always liars may not have occurred to Epimenides, nor to Callimachus, who both used the phrase to emphasise their point, without irony.

However, Saint Paul must have thought long about the idea of a dead god and whether the god’s tomb was dead as he sought to preach the Resurrection in Crete.

Epimenides is first identified as the ‘prophet’ in Titus 1: 12 by Clement of Alexandria (Stromata 1, 14). Clement mentions that ‘some say’ Epimenides should be counted among the seven wisest philosophers.

However, it is not clear when Epimenides became associated with the Epimenides paradox, a variation of the liar paradox. Saint Augustine restates the closely related liar paradox in Against the Academicians (III.13.29), but he does so without mentioning Epimenides. In the Middle Ages, many forms of the liar paradox were studied under the heading of insolubilia, but they were not associated with Epimenides.

Epimenides Street is a street I know well in the old town of Rethymnon in Crete. Is it paradoxical that I I have found the restaurateurs and tavern owners of Epimenidou Street, like all their fellow Cretans, to be truthful and honest? Many years ago, back in the 1980s, as I entrusted someone in Rethymnon with my wallet and valuables as I went for a swim, I was advised that it was tourists and foreigners I needed to watch out for.

The British Museum on Great Russell Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The ‘barber’s paradox’, which retells the ‘liar’s paradox’ or the Epimenides paradox, is also a retelling of ‘Russell’s Paradox’, which was formulated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) in 1901. Russell articulated a massive flaw he had just discovered in logic, now known as ‘Russell’s Paradox’ and, at the time, it must have seemed to many that he had broken the foundations of mathematics.

Mathematicians in those days believed that a ‘set’ could be defined by any condition you could describe. Russell used the paradox to prove that naive set theory was fundamentally broken. If you can define a set as ‘the set of all sets that do not contain themselves’, you create the exact same mathematical paradox as the barber.

Russell’s thought experiment forced the entire field of mathematics to rewrite its foundational axioms to prevent self-contradicting sets from being formed.

At times I am reminded of ‘Russell’s Paradox’ when I walk along Bury Place, close to the British Museum on Great Russell Street, and see a Blue Plaque that reads: ‘Bertrand Russell 1872-1970 Philosopher and Campaigner for Peace lived here in flat No 34 1911-1916’. The building was originally ‘No 3 Russell Chambers’ and is now labelled ‘Russell Chambers, Flats 25-36’.

Russell moved into an unfurnished flat No 34 at Russell Chambers in November 1911 to be close to Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938), the literary society hostess who lived nearby at 44 Bedford Square in Bloomsbury. Ottoline met Russell for the first time since childhood at his home in Bagley Wood in September 1908, but their affair did not begin until 1911.

Much of the Bloomsbury area of London has been owned by Russell’s cousins, the Dukes of Bedford, for centuries. Russell’s grandfather, Lord John Russell, was a younger son of the sixth duke. The Bedford Estates still own large sections of Bloomsbury, and many of the names of the streets, squares, hotels, apartment buildings and a tube station reflect the family’s names and titles, including Russell, Bedford, Tavistock and Woburn.

Bertrand Russell had lived mainly at Trinity College Cambridge, where he was a fellow. But he took lodgings in Ipsden to be near Ottoline in the Chilterns in July 1911. She helped him to furnish the flat he rented in Bury Street, near the British Museum.

Russell chose the flat himself after looking at flats on Wells Street, off Oxford Street. The fourth floor flat in the red brick building measured 754 sq feet, and had a reception room, a main bedroom, a bathroom, kitchen, and a small room off the kitchen that was used as a study, a sitting room and a bedroom.

Among the guests there was the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who stayed there on 3 October 1913. Russell wrote to Ottoline: ‘Wittgenstein stayed last night and read me bits of work he has done.’

Russell let TS Eliot and his wife Vivien use the room off the kitchen in 1915 because they were ‘desperately poor’. Vivien’s brother Maurice Haigh-Wood (1896-1980) described it as ‘a tiny cupboard room behind the kitchen’ and since Vivien had brought ‘a single cot-bed’ to furnish it, Eliot ‘slept in the hallway in a deck-chair’.

Russell was dismissed from Trinity College Cambridge in 1916 because of his opposition to World War I and so he lost his main source of income. His affair with Ottoline was also ending, and his affair with Constance (Colette) Malleson was beginning. He moved from Russell Chambers in April to rooms in 46 Gordon Square and then in August to 57 Gordon Square. He sub-let his Russell Chambers flat, and eventually went to prison that year as a pacifist.

After World War I, Russell considered keeping on the flat for his own use but concluded he could not afford it. Frank Swinnerton, an author and editor at Chatto and Windus, was a tenant at Russell Chambers until 1923, paying Russell 3 guineas a week for the furnished flat until Russell’s involvement with the first and the last home that was his alone formally came to an end.

Meanwhile, Russell was reinstated by Trinity College Cambridge in 1919, resigned in 1920, was Tarner Lecturer in 1926 and became a Fellow again in 1944-1949. He had succeeded as 3rd Earl Russell in 1931 and many of my age and generation rememember him not only as a philosopher but as active pacifist and a leading figure in CND, the Committee of 100 and the Aldermaston marches. He died on 2 February 1970.

Russell Chambers was selected by English Heritage for a blue plaque commemorating Bertrand Russell. The plaque was unveiled by his son Conrad Russell (1937-2004), 5th Earl Russell, on 6 June 2002.

As for the Barber’s Paradox, the popular retelling of Russell’s Paradox, it collapses with all its presupposition if the only barber in the village is a woman. She can shave as many men – and women – she wants to without any concerns about philosophical parameters.

I never had that haircut today. I must choose one of the barber shops in Stony Stratford to visit tomorrow.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), 3rd Earl Russell, philosopher, mathematician and peace campaigner, remembered in the chapel in Trinity College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Greeks have a word for it: 66, Cosmopolitan, Κοσμοπολίτης

‘The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal’ by Martha Nussbaum was published in 2009

Patrick Comerford

I was discussing the thinking of the American philosopher, Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago, in a blog posting last night (1 August 2026), and her interest in the Greek classical world and the world of Greek philosophy as well as her commitment to principles of Reformed Judaism.

She has described cosmopolitanism – rooted in the Stoic tradition of radical equality of dignity for all – as a ‘noble but flawed ideal’, which became the subtitle of her book The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal (2009).

The word cosmopolitan, an important concept in modern philosophy and political discourse, is, of course, derived from the κοσμοπολίτης (kosmopoliítes) found in classical and koine Greek, formed from the words κόσμος (kosmos), world, universe, cosmos or created order, and πολίτης (politês), citizen, one of a city.

Contemporary usage defines the term as ‘citizen of the world’. But the word cosmopolitan was coined by the Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic or Diogenes of Sinope in the fourth century BCE. When Diogenes was asked from what city he hailed, he replied that he was a citizen of the world, κόσμος πολίτης (kósmos polítēs), or κοσμοπολίτης (kosmopolites), a citizen of the world, rejecting narrow local loyalties.

The plural, κόσμου πολῖται (kosmou politai), means ‘citizens of the world’ or even ‘citizens of the universe’, of the whole created order. The phrase originates from Cynic and Stoic philosophy, describing the idea that human beings belong to a single, universal community rather than being defined solely by their local city-state or nation. At the time, the broadest basis of social identity among Greeks was either the individual city-state or the culturally and linguistically homogeneous Hellenic group.

Diogenes lived from ca 413/403 to ca 324/321 BCE, and he was one of the founders of Cynicism. He was renowned for his ascetic lifestyle and radical critiques of social conventions, and he became a legendary figure whose life and teachings have been recounted, often through anecdote, in both antiquity and modernity.

Diogenes advocated a return to nature, the renunciation of wealth, and introduced early ideas of cosmopolitanism by proclaiming himself a citizen of the world. Rather than declaring his lineage, city, social class, or gender, he defined himself as a human being, implicitly asserting the equal worth of all human beings.

He spent the mild winters in Athens, surviving by begging and taking shelter in a large ceramic jar or πίθος (pithos), originally meant for food storage, and he spent the summers outdoors in Corinth, cooled by breezes from the isthmus.

Some sources say Diogenes died on the same night as Alexander the Great, 10-11 June 323 BCE, but this is likely legend.

Later thinkers like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius expanded this idea of cosmopolitanism from Diogenes, teaching that all people share a spark of universal reason and mutual brotherhood.

Stoicism, another Greek school of thought that was founded roughly a century later, built on Diogenes’ ideas, with many of its thinkers and adherents stressing that each human being ‘dwells ... in two communities – the local community of our birth, and the community of human argument and aspiration’.

In his circle model of identity, the Stoic Hierocles states that individuals should regard themselves as concentric circles: the first one around the self, followed by immediate family, extended family, local group, citizens, countrymen, humanity. Within these circles human beings feel a sense of affinity or endearment towards others, which the Stoics termed οἰκείωσις (oikeiôsis).

The task of world citizens becomes then to draw the circles somehow towards the centre, making all human beings more like our fellow city dwellers, and so forth.

The concept evolved into modern political and ethical cosmopolitanism, which argues that all human beings share equal moral worth and obligations, regardless of nationality. Today, people use the term to describe feeling connected to global culture, issues, and humanity as a whole rather than just one country.

Pithoi on Dimakopoulou street in Rethymnon … Diogene is said to have lived in Athens in a large ceramic jar or πίθος, pithos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all human beings are members of a single community. Its adherents are known as cosmopolitan or cosmopolite. Cosmopolitanism is both prescriptive and aspirational, believing humans can and should be world citizens in a universal community. The idea encompasses different dimensions and avenues of community, such as promoting universal moral standards, establishing global political structures, or developing a platform for mutual cultural expression and tolerance.

In his essay ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’ (1795), Immanuel Kant stages a ius cosmopoliticum (cosmopolitan law or right) as a guiding principle to help global society achieve permanent, enduring peace. Kant’s cosmopolitan right (Weltbürgerrecht, ‘world-citizen right’) stems from an understanding of all human beings as equal members of a universal community. Cosmopolitan rights thus work in tandem with international political rights, and the shared, universal right of humanity.

After World War II, as a reaction to the Holocaust and other atrocities, the concept of crimes against humanity became a generally accepted category in international law. This clearly shows the appearance and acceptance of a notion of individual responsibility that is considered to exist toward all of humanity. We know that many problems can only be addressed at the global level, such as global warming.

In her book The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal (2019), Martha Nussbaum engages critically with important examples of the cosmopolitan ideal from ancient Greece and Rome to the present. She pursues this ‘noble but flawed‘ vision of world citizenship as it finds expression in figures of Greco-Roman antiquity, Hugo Grotius in the 17th century, Adam Smith during the 18th century, and various contemporary thinkers.

In an interview, she linked cosmopolitanism with the pursuit of political justice. ‘Cosmopolitanism is certainly highly compatible with a personal attachment to a group that pursues justice. The difficulty comes with whether it is compatible with attachment to a particular nation, or state, or city, since those are political units and cosmopolitanism holds that one’s first loyalty should be to the entire world. I think it is flawed for several reasons.’

She summarised cosmopolitanism as a comprehensive doctrine of how to arrange one’s values, ‘and as such it is not a view that can become the object of what John Rawls calls an “overlapping consensus” among all the reasonable comprehensive doctrines of value, both secular and religious.’

She pointed to the 17th century Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius who said the nation has a moral importance. ‘It is the largest unit we know that is accountable to people’s voices and that can be a vehicle for their autonomy, their wish to give themselves laws of their own choosing. We should have special attachments to our own nation and channel global duties through those, I argue.’

She added that cosmopolitanism ‘is a form of humanism, and has nothing to say about duties to non-human animals and nature.’

Despite those nuances and reservations, the Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri had already stirred up controversy in a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in 2019, claiming the American middle class had been betrayed by an out-of-touch ‘cosmopolitan elite’ that catered to the needs of multinational companies while forgetting ‘the heartland’.

Given Brexit, Donald Trump’s election, and a global turn to nationalism, Hawley’s comments were anything but exceptional. What made them unique was that he directed his ire at particular academics for promulgating the beliefs of what he called the ‘cosmopolitan consensus’.

Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago was the best-known among the philosophers he attacked. Hawley misrepresented her when he accused her of teaching her students that ‘world citizenship’ trumps being the citizen of a nation-state.

Those wondering how Nussbaum might respond to Hawley’s criticism did not have long to wait. By coincidence, a little over a month later, Harvard University Press published The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal, in which she spends most of her time discussing the limits of cosmopolitanism while developing her own positive account of the nation-state and its responsibilities.

Cosmopolitanism – the idea that we are, first and foremost, citizens of the world rather than of a particular nation or region – is predicated on a universal respect for human dignity and a demand for justice regardless of race, sex, or creed. Nussbaum argues, however, that to arrive at this conception of human dignity, the cosmopolitans of earlier ages came to exclude worldly success or material wealth from their notions of the dignified life.

‘In order to treat people as having a dignity that life’s accidents cannot erode,’ she says, the founders of cosmopolitanism scoffed ‘at money, rank, and power, saying that they are unnecessary for human flourishing. The dignity of moral capacity is complete in itself.’

But cosmopolitanism continues to be misused as a term by figures on the political far right and used as a catch-all phrase to put down and dismissed those who question the politics of Trump and his MAGA circles. Recently, Stephen Miller, a Trump administration senior policy adviser and far-right thinker, publicly accused Jim Acosta of CNN of exhibiting ‘cosmopolitan bias’ during a discussion of a new Trump regime immigration plan.

Pithoi in Knossos … Diogene is said to have lived in Athens in a large ceramic jar or πίθος, pithos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Previous words in this series:

1, Neologism, Νεολογισμός.

2, Welcoming the stranger, Φιλοξενία.

3, Bread, Ψωμί.

4, Wine, Οίνος and Κρασί.

5, Yogurt, Γιαούρτι.

6, Orthodoxy, Ορθοδοξία.

7, Sea, Θᾰ́λᾰσσᾰ.

8,Theology, Θεολογία.

9, Icon, Εἰκών.

10, Philosophy, Φιλοσοφία.

11, Chaos, Χάος.

12, Liturgy, Λειτουργία.

13, Greeks, Ἕλληνες or Ρωμαίοι.

14, Mañana, Αύριο.

15, Europe, Εὐρώπη.

16, Architecture, Αρχιτεκτονική.

17, The missing words.

18, Theatre, θέατρον, and Drama, Δρᾶμα.

19, Pharmacy, Φᾰρμᾰκείᾱ.

20, Rhapsody, Ραψῳδός.

21, Holocaust, Ολοκαύτωμα.

22, Hygiene, Υγιεινή.

23, Laconic, Λακωνικός.

24, Telephone, Τηλέφωνο.

25, Asthma, Ασθμα.

26, Synagogue, Συναγωγή.

27, Diaspora, Διασπορά.

28, School, Σχολείο.

29, Muse, Μούσα.

30, Monastery, Μοναστήρι.

31, Olympian, Ολύμπιος.

32, Hypocrite, Υποκριτής.

33, Genocide, Γενοκτονία.

34, Cinema, Κινημα.

35, autopsy and biopsy

36, Exodus, ἔξοδος

37, Bishop, ἐπίσκοπος

38, Socratic, Σωκρατικὸς

39, Odyssey, Ὀδύσσεια

40, Practice, πρᾶξις

41, Idiotic, Ιδιωτικός

42, Pentecost, Πεντηκοστή

43, Apostrophe, ἀποστροφή

44, catastrophe, καταστροφή

45, democracy, δημοκρατία

46, ‘Αρχή, beginning, Τέλος, end

47, ‘Αποκάλυψις, Apocalypse

48, ‘Απόκρυφα, Apocrypha

49, Ἠλεκτρον (Elektron), electric

50, Metamorphosis, Μεταμόρφωσις

51, Bimah, βῆμα

52, ἰχθύς (ichthýs) and ψάρι (psari), fish.

53, Τὰ Βιβλία (Ta Biblia), The Bible

54, Φῐλοξενῐ́ᾱ (Philoxenia), true hospitality

55, εκκλησία (ekklesia), the Church

56, ναός (naos) and ἱερός (ieros), a church

57, Χριστούγεννα (Christougenna), Christmas

58, ἐπιφάνεια (epipháneia), θεοφάνεια, (theopháneia), Epiphany and Theophany

59, Ζέφυρος (Zéphuros), the West Wind

60, Αύριο (Avrio), Tomorrow

61, καλημέρα (κaliméra), ‘Good Morning’, and καλαμάρι, κalamári, ‘squid’

62, Ελευθερία ή θάνατος, ‘Freedom or Death’

63, Ποδόσφαιρο, ‘Football’

64, καφές (coffee), Φραπές (frappé)

65, Odyssey (η Οδύσσεια) and Odysseus (Ὀδυσσεύς)

66, Cosmopolitan, Κοσμοπολίτης

67, Εἰρήνη (Eirene), Peace

Series to be continued

Loumidis Papagalos Ekastos Kosmopolitis (Cosmopolitan) … a well-known brand of finely ground traditional Greek coffee

Martha Nussbaum: a philosopher’s odyssey from an Episcopalian childhood to Reform Judaism’s pursuit of political justice

Looking out from Preveli Monastery in Crete towards the island of Gavdos, said to be the Ogygia of Calypso where Odysseus stayed for seven years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

While Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey was the topic of conversation, I was writing in recent weeks how the Revd Dr Giles Fraser, in ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4 last month (24 July 2026), talked about an essay on why Odysseus is right to refuse the temptation to eternal life while he stranded with the nymph Calypso on the island of Ogygia.

He referred to the American philosopher Professor Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago, who he interviewed for The Guardian many years ago (29 June 2012). In his Thought for the Day’, he referred to how she argues that there are some things that the immortal gods are not able to do that mortal human beings are: not least amongst them is to show courage. If I cannot risk everything because I cannot die, he asked, then how could I possibly be courageous?

Martha Nussbaum, who is Jewish, suggests that there is something about this refusal of invulnerability that explains one of the key features of Christian theology: of God becoming human, of God who is prepared to suffer and die in the name of love. ‘What is attractive about both Odysseus and Jesus is that they are prepared to have skin in the game, which is pretty much the very definition of incarnation’, Giles Fraser says.

Since then, I have found myself reading some of the work of Martha Nussbaum, who is one of the world’s foremost public philosophers. She is Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is part of both the law school and the philosophy department and and an associate member of the Divinity School faculty. She has also taught at Harvard and Brown.

In her work, Martha Nussbaum has engaged with ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy, existentialism, feminism, and ethics, such as animal rights. She has written more than two dozen books, including The Fragility of Goodness (1986), she has received a number of prestigious international prizes, and some years ago she was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Martha Nussbaum was born Martha Craven in New York on 6 May 1947, the daughter of George Craven, a Philadelphia lawyer, and Betty Warren, an interior designer, and grew up in an affluent Episcopalian home in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Her mother was an alcoholic whose forbears arrived on the Mayflower; her father was a successful southern-born lawyer from Georgia and she has described him as ‘bigoted against African Americans and Jews.’

She has spoken of her upbringing as ‘East Coast WASP elite … very sterile, very preoccupied with money and status’. She later explained her impatience with ‘mandarin philosophers’ and her dedication to public service as a repudiation of her own upbringing: ‘I don’t like anything that sets itself up as an in-group or an elite, whether it is the Bloomsbury group or Derrida’.

She studied theatre and classics at New York University (BA 1969) and philosophy at Harvard (MA 1972, PhD 1975), and went on to teach philosophy and classics at Harvard, Brown University, and the University of Chicago Law School.

Her book The Fragility of Goodness, Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (1986) made her a well-known figure throughout the humanities. In that book, she confronts the ethical dilemma that individuals strongly committed to justice are nevertheless vulnerable to external factors that may deeply compromise or even negate their human flourishing, and she defends the practical ethics of Aristotle over the metaphysical supernaturalism of Plato.

She rejects the Platonic notion that human goodness can fully protect against peril, siding with the tragic playwrights and Aristotle in treating the acknowledgment of vulnerability as a key to realising the human good. Her interpretation of Plato’s Symposium in particular drew considerable attention.

Further books, including The Closing of the American Mind (1987) and Frontiers of Justice (2006), established her as a theorist of global justice. She has also written about the unequal freedoms and opportunities of women, and has developed a distinctive type of feminism, drawing inspiration from the liberal tradition but emphasising that liberalism, at its best, entails radical rethinking of gender relations and relations within the family.

In her philosophical work, she has also written widely about emotions and about grief, compassion, and love, and about disgust and shame. Following a court trial in Colorado in which she gave evidence, Nussbaum wrote a lengthy article on ‘Platonic Love and Colorado Law’, drawing on Plato’s Symposium and his interactions with Socrates as evidence for her argument.

In Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (1997), she appeals to classical Greek texts as a basis for the defence and reform of the liberal education. She notes how Greek cynic philosopher Diogenes aspired to transcend ‘local origins and group memberships’ in favour of becoming ‘a citizen of the world’.

In Sex and Social Justice (1999), she argues that sex and sexuality are morally irrelevant distinctions that have been artificially enforced as sources of social hierarchy, and that feminism and social justice have common concerns. She shows how sex is used to deny some people, including women and gay men, social justice.

In Hiding from Humanity (2004), Nussbaum examines the arguments for including two emotions – shame and disgust – as legitimate bases for legal judgments, and notes how projective disgust has wrongly justified group subordination, mainly of women, Jews, and homosexuals. She dismisses disgust as a reliable basis of judgment.

In From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law (2010), Nussbaum analyses the role that disgust plays in law and public debate in the US, including the constitutional legal issues facing gay and lesbian people. She argues that the fundamental motivation of those advocating legal restrictions against gay and lesbian people is a ‘politics of disgust’.

She explicitly opposes the concept of a disgust-based morality as an appropriate guide for legislating. Nussbaum notes that popular disgust has been used throughout history as a justification for persecution, and recalls how at various times, racism, antisemitism and sexism, have all been driven by popular revulsion.

In Creating Capabilities (2011), she outlines a unique theory on the Capability approach or the Human development approach. She criticises existing economic indicators, such as GDP, for failing to fully account for quality of life and assurance of basic needs, instead rewarding countries with large growth distributed highly unequally across the population, and she argues the Capability approach should be prioritised by development economics policymakers.

In The New Religious Intolerance, Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age (2012), she writes a vigorous defence of the religious freedom of minorities in the face of post-9/11 Islamophobia. And, as Giles Fraser said in The Guardian at the time, by minorities she mostly means Muslims.

Her book The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal (2019), engages critically with important examples of the cosmopolitan ideal from ancient Greece and Rome to the present. The cosmopolitan political tradition in Western thought begins with the Greek Cynic Diogenes, who, when asked where he came from, responded that he was a citizen of the world. Rather than declaring his lineage, city, social class, or gender, he defined himself as a human being, implicitly asserting the equal worth of all human beings. Nussbaum pursues this ‘noble but flawed‘ vision of world citizenship as it finds expression in figures of Greco-Roman antiquity, Hugo Grotius in the 17th century, Adam Smith during the 18th century, and various contemporary thinkers.

Earlier that year, the Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in 2019, claimed the American middle class had been betrayed by an out-of-touch ‘cosmopolitan elite’ that catered to the needs of multinational companies while forgetting ‘the heartland’. Given Brexit, Donald Trump’s election, and a global turn to nationalism more generally, Hawley’s comments were anything but exceptional. What made them unique was that he directed his ire at particular academics for promulgating the beliefs of what he called the ‘cosmopolitan consensus’. Perhaps the best-known of these was Martha Nussbaum, wh o was accused by Hawley of teaching her students that ‘world citizenship’ trumps being the citizen of a nation-state.

Her latest book is The Republic of Love: Opera and Political Freedom, published earlier this year by Oxford University Press.

Nussbaum has criticised Noam Chomsky as one of the left-wing intellectuals who hold the belief that ‘one should not criticise one’s friends, that solidarity is more important than ethical correctness’.

She is known for her contributions in developing the capabilities approach to well-being, in which she asks, ‘What is each person able to do and to be?’ She asserts that all humans – and non-human animals – have a basic right to dignity. To provide human dignity, she insists governments must provide ‘at least a threshold level’ of a number of capabilities: life; bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination, and thought, emotions; practical reason; affiliation; other species; play; and control over one's environment, including political and material environments.

‘Knowledge is no guarantee of good behaviour, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behaviour’ … Martha C Nussbaum (Photograph: University of Chicago Divinity School

From 1969 to 1987, Martha Nussbaum was married to Professor Alan Nussbaum of Yale and Cornell, a linguist and classical philologist known for his work on the language of the Homeric epics. During their marriage, she converted to Judaism and her commitment to Judaism has continued. She became a bat mitzvah at Temple KAM Isaiah Israel in Chicago in 2008, delivering a D’var Torah on the connection between genuine, non-narcissistic consolation and the pursuit of global justice.

For Nussbaum, coming to Judaism was both comfort and reprieve. She has described ‘the combination of joy and relief I found in entering a community in which outrage at injustice was normal.’

She soon came to appreciate the Jewish tradition of spirited debate. ‘In great contrast to my Christian education, focused on catechism and professions of faith,’ she wrote, ‘I discovered that in a Jewish conversion process it was possible to dispute about everything.’

Whether treating literary, legal, or political issues, she has consistently argued that any comprehensive ideology that claims to understand the good life fails unless it is accompanied by a love for that which is imperfect and vulnerable. ‘Philosophy does not compel, or threaten, or mock,’ she has said. ‘It doesn’t make bare assertions, but, instead, sets up a structure of thought in which a conclusion follows from premises the listener is free to dispute. In that way it invites dialogue and respects the listener.’

In her essay ‘Judaism and the Love of Reason,’ she describes her love for the ideas of the leaders of 19th century Reform Judaism, a movement she praises for its rationalism, its moral mission and commitment to justice, and for ‘returning the religion to its original Biblical core.’

In Women and Human Development (2000), she criticises secular feminists for ascribing patriarchy to religious traditions. In ‘Judaism and the Love of Reason’, she cites feminism and cosmopolitanism as ‘issues that have been at the heart of the Reform movement since its inception and to which Reform Judaism gives … more satisfactory answers than do other varieties of Judaism.’

In an interview with Benjamin Balint in Sources in Spring 2022, Martha Nussbaum said she does not ‘even really think that Biblical Judaism is inherently patriarchal. I once wrote a paper on the Creation stories in Genesis and learned a lot about how great interpreters have read Genesis 1 as holding that the first human was a hermaphrodite. And there are many other ways in which the apparently misogynistic aspects of the text have been differently interpreted by great textual scholars.’

Asked why religious ritual is important for people who seek to live a moral life, she cited Immanuel Kant, who ‘said that people have a duty to join a religious group of the right sort (the rational sort, and Reform Judaism is pretty much the rational religion he had in mind), because we are all weak and inclined to deviate from the moral law, but in a group with others our resolve is strengthened.’

In her speech when she received an honorary degree from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she painted a portrait of the Judaism that inspires her, including the commitment to correct injustices in the community and to welcome all strangers.

The Israeli novelist David Grossman, who received an honorary degree the same day, said to her that that is the sort of Judaism Israel needs. In his speech, he talked about the capacity of the literary imagination to see the infinite in each person, and to cross the boundaries that divide us in life. He then asked whether that capacity is being lost in the Israel of today.

She told Benjamin Balint, ‘So that is what Reform strengthens, I believe: that imaginative capacity to see the infinite in each person and to welcome the stranger.’ And, she added, ‘the Judaism I belong to requires the pursuit of political justice.’

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 89, Tuesday 4 August 2026

Looking out from Preveli Monastery in Crete towards the island of Gavdos, said to be the Ogygia of Calypso where Odysseus stayed for seven years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and the week began with the Ninth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity IX, 2 August 2026). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today recalls Jean-Baptiste Vianney (1786-1859), Curé d’Ars and Spiritual Guide.

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit’ (Matthew 15: 14) … looking into the crater at the top of Mount Vesuvius (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 15: 1-2,10-14 (NRSVA):

1 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2 ‘Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.’

10 Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, ‘Listen and understand: 11 it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.’ 12 Then the disciples approached and said to him, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees took offence when they heard what you said?’ 13 He answered, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. 14 Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.’

Homer, who is traditionally said to have been blind, tells of the 10-year return journey of Odysseus to his home in Ithaka (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

‘Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit’ (Matthew 15: 14).

There were two choices in the lectionary for Gospel readings at the Eucharist yesterday (Monday 3 August): Matthew 14: 13-21, or Matthew 14: 22-36. The first choice was also the Gospel reading on Sunday, and so in my reflections yesterday I looked at the second choice (Matthew 14: 22-36).

Once again, the lectionary offers two choices in the Gospel readings at the Eucharist today (Tuesday 4 August): Matthew 14: 22-36, which I read and reflected on yesterday, or Matthew 15: 1-2, 10-14, which I am reading and reflecting on this morning.

At a surface level, today’s Gospel passage is about religious rituals, purification rites and liturgical niceties. However, the challenge in this reading is a question of pure religious rather than ritual purification: What defiles a person? Is this a liturgical nicety or a moral problem?

It is far too easy for me to want to be seen to do the right thing, rather than doing the right thing, whether or not anyone sees what I am doing, or even when those nearby are blind to what I am doing … or even to what I am not doing.

What leads me to do the right thing? Am I too easily led by others? Do I blindly follow the demands of others and allow their expectations to lead me into a pit, into a moral abyss, dragging others down with me in the process? And once I am there, how can I get out of that dark cave?

Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’ (The Republic, Book VII) imagines a deep, dark cave in which some chained prisoners are forced to look at a wall. Behind them flickers the pale light of a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners, various objects cast a shadow onto the wall.

The prisoners, born into this condition, know only the shadows and think that they are all there is to the world. And so, they become shadow experts, and spend all of their days classifying, studying and examining them closely.

One day, a prisoner breaks free. He rushes from the cave and finds himself out in the dazzling sun. After savouring all of the marvels of the world, she is overcome with pity, and drags herself back into the cave to save her friends. But since her eyes are still dazzled from the bright sun, she cannot see so well in the dark cave. When she tells the prisoners of the wonders to be seen outside, they mock her inability to see shadows, tell her she is a fool, and threaten to kill her.

Plato’s story is a metaphor, telling us how we need to look behind the first impressions and what appears to be the case to see the truth of the matter. We need to exercise introspection and to examine our thoughts with reasoning and the bright glare of truth. We cannot let the blind lead the blind.

Those particular Pharisees and scribes seem to be more worried about what they have not seen the disciples doing on occasion rather than commending the good they may actually be doing, noticed or unnoticed, day-by-day.

Moral leadership often comes not in the form of great tomes or well-argued books on ethics and philosophy, but in the form of the expectations that are laid on us or projected onto us from within our own peer group, from our contemporaries, from those we do not want to let down, from those we seldom question yet often follow blindly.

It is easier to follow those pressures blindly than risk finding ourselves in the dark and alone simply for doing the right thing for no other reason than it is the right thing to do.

I was talking recently with someone about Chrisopher Nolan’s new film Odyssey, which is continuing to take cinemas everywhere by storm. In a witty response, that person joked: ‘It’s no wonder it took him 10 years to get home. Homer was blind. If I was following his directions I’d be straying take 10 years to get home too.’

In his reflections on ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4 about two weeks ago (24 July 2026), the Revd Dr Giles Fraser talked about some of those blind alleys and diversions that delay Odysseus and frustrate his epic journey home.

On the island of Ogygia, the beautiful nymph Calypso tries to entice him to stay with her, promising he would never age, never die. She offers eternal life, youth and freedom from pain, danger and death if he stays with her on Ogygia. And yet, after seven years, Odysseus eventually refuses the temptation to achieve immortality, preferring risk and death over immortality and agelessness, refuses the goddess and chooses to leave, fully aware that his mortal home of Ithaca is exposed to risk, decay, and death.

Giles Fraser refers to an essay on why Odysseus is right to refuse this, in which the American philosopher Professor Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago argues that there are some things that the immortal gods are not able to do that mortal human beings are: not least amongst them is to show courage. If I cannot risk everything because I cannot die, then how could I possibly be courageous?

What sort of life would Odysseus have if he stays with Calypso on her perfect deathless island, and gave up any need for all his craft and resourcefulness?

‘And what would love mean’, he asks ‘if you could never put anything on the line for others? That’s why we cheer Odysseus on as he decides to refuse Calypso her seemingly unrefusable offer.’

Martha Nussbaum, who is Jewish, suggests that there is something about this refusal of invulnerability that explains one of the key features of Christian theology: of God becoming human, of God who is prepared to suffer and die in the name of love.

‘What is attractive about both Odysseus and Jesus is that they are prepared to have skin in the game, which is pretty much the very definition of incarnation’, Giles Fraser says.

He suggests that to live beyond the realm of suffering and death would be to live in a way that is no longer human – without the possibility of heroism, without the possibility of risking all for love. ‘Why is it, for instance, that so often in Greek mythology, perfect gods fall in love with imperfect human beings rather than their own kind? Because fragile humanity can exhibit exciting virtues, risky love-soaked heroism in the way that the gods just cannot.’

Of course, he agrees, none of us wants those we love to be taken from us. Yet also, death is what makes life valuable and precious. As the late Queen Elizabeth put it: ‘Grief is the price we pay for love’.

What Odysseus discovers on Calypso’s Island – often identified by Greeks with the small island of Gavdos, off Preveli and the south coast of Crete – is that without death, life will be drained of its meaning.

Allowing those who are morally blind to lead us because it seems to be the safe thing to do, allowing our priorities in life to be dictated by appearances and being seen to do what is acceptable so that we live risk-free lives, our lives will be drained of meaning and of love too.

‘It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles’(Matthew 15: 11) … street art in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 4 August 2026):

In my prayers this morning, I am praying for the people of Preveli, Aghia Galini, and other areas south of Rethymnon, who hve seen their natural surroundings destroyed in the recent wildfires that have swept acorss their parts of Crete over the past week or so. In difficult circumstances, may they find wisdom, resilience and hope. And I give thanks too for the two firefighters who died risking their lives so that other people might live.

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week (2-8 August 2026, pp 24-25), is ‘Faith Under Pressure in Nicaragua’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Reflection by the Most Revd Juan David Alvarado, Bishop of El Salvador and Primate of the Province of the Anglican Church in Central America.

The USPG prayer diary today (Tuesday 4 August 2026) invites us to pray:

Gracious God, uphold Bishop Harold Dixon and all clergy serving in difficult circumstances. Give them wisdom, resilience, and hope in their ministry.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty God,
who sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church:
open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love and joy and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Holy Father,
who gathered us here around the table of your Son
to share this meal with the whole household of God:
in that new world where you reveal the fullness of your peace,
gather people of every race and language
to share in the eternal banquet of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Gracious Father,
revive your Church in our day,
and make her holy, strong and faithful,
for your glory’s sake
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’ tells of the difficulty of the blind agreeing to be led by the once-blind (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org