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Tallis in Wonderland

Notes Towards a Philosophy of Sleep

Raymond Tallis takes us from A to Zzzzz.

The column you’re reading is at least in part the result of an accident – a happy one, I hasten to add. A few weeks ago, I was sitting on a panel with the philosopher Christopher Hamilton, discussing the question of whether a world without pain is an appropriate goal for mankind or whether pain serves some additional positive purpose other than the obvious biological one of directing us away from things that might harm us (a topic, perhaps, for a future column). Meeting Christopher after a long interval reminded me of his excellent book Living Philosophy: Reflections on Life, Meaning and Morality (2001). The volume includes a fascinating essay entitled ‘The Need to Sleep’, where he notes that philosophers have not paid sufficient attention to this extraordinary phenomenon. Well, a decade on, this is the beginning of a response to Christopher’s wake-up call.

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