Professor Raymond Tallis

Explicitness is one of the fundamental mysteries in which our lives are wrapped. Our capacity, as conscious subjects, to make things explicit, so that what-is presents itself as “that-it-is” or “that-it-is-the-case” is at the heart of the mystery of human being. Circling Round Explicitness is an endeavour to make explicitness explicit or, at least, more explicit. Its ambition is rooted in the belief that the failure to acknowledge the centrality to our nature as human beings of our capacity to make things explicit explains many false directions in contemporary philosophy, most importantly the embrace of scientism. With characteristic erudition and acuity across a breathtaking range of subjects, Ray Tallis explores how explicitness connects with fundamental ontological, metaphysical and epistemological questions, including the gap between matter and persons, and between mind and brain, the nature of ourselves as embodied subjects and as agents, the phenomenology of thought, the realm of possibility (and probability) and the ideas of reality and truth. Although the attempt to grasp explicitness is fraught with challenges – to reach out to that which comprises one’s act of reaching – the task is a fascinating endeavour that takes us closer to understanding what it is to be, to be human, and our connection with the material world. In circling round explicitness, we are circling round Man, the Explicit Animal, around ourselves.

Prague 22: A Philosopher Takes a Tram through a City is a work of joyful wonder inspired by the encounter between the philosopher of the title and one of the world’s most beautiful cities. The memoir is anchored in the enchanting 22 tram journey linking the author’s flat in Prague with the Castle. The city is unpacked in a torrent of sharp-eyed observations, reflections, and speculations, seasoned with mischievous humour. An attempt to encompass the magic, history, culture, and tragedy of Prague is interwoven with reflections on the enigmas of the human mind, of memory and forgetfulness, of knowledge and ignorance, and our strange nature as embodied subjects. The story of the meeting of a mind and a city widens and deepens into a celebration of the mystery of the world and of the human creatures who have constructed it.