Introduction The concept of love can be helpfully approached by understanding insights from three popular theories of it: eros, agape, and philia. In this post I offer a few central insights from each theory and show how these insights can… Read more ›
In 1978, when I was 8 years old, a friend did something amazing: he switched from the VHF dial on his TV to the UHF dial and, very slowly, made his way to channel 68. Through the crappy reception I… Read more ›
Go here for my essay on King’s use of natural law theory to fight the injustice of segregation. Go here for my post on King’s non-violence. And go here for my two-post series on reducing the polarization, demonization, and lack… Read more ›
The enlightenment philosopher and polymath G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716) was a master at articulating various general and fundamental principles and applying these principles to philosophical problems. Principles are statements of basic laws, truths, or rules from which other laws, truths, or… Read more ›
Robert C. Soloman (1942-2007) Chapter 9 of Robert C. Soloman’s book From Hegel to Existentialism (New York: Oxford, 1987) is “Freud’s Neurological Theory of Mind.” In this chapter, Soloman argues that Freud’s theory, first explored in his unpublished “Project for… Read more ›
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) offered the world plenty of fascinating and often shocking ideas. His seduction theory, infantile sexuality, parapraxes (Freudian slips), Oedipus complex, Electra complex, penis envy, castration anxiety, forms of fixation, and, in general, unconscious mind full of repressed… Read more ›
St. Augustine (354-430) famously put forth the privation theory of evil. Consider this passage: “For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence… Read more ›
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Introduction I recently reread Sigmund Freud’s brilliant essay “The Uncanny” (1919) and I came across a fascinating claim which I failed to adequately process in the past. It has to do with his psychoanalytic analysis of one… Read more ›
Juneteenth (officially Juneteenth National Independence Day since 2021) is celebrated on June 19 to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States. “The holiday’s name, first used in the 1890s, is a portmanteau of the words “June” and “nineteenth”, referring to June 19, 1865,… Read more ›
The great Sylvester Stewart, Sly Stone, passed away yesterday at 82 (March 15, 1943 – June 9, 2025). I have loved his music since I first saw Sly and Family Stone perform “Music Lover/Higher” and “I Want to Take You… Read more ›
Thomas Hobbes In chapter 15 of his book Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes wrote: “No man giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is voluntary; and of all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own… Read more ›
Introduction In part one of this three-post series (go here) I presented Agnes Heller’s account of the modern and postmodern worldviews and how she thinks postmodernism leaves us with “life on the railway station” or the state of being radically… Read more ›
Introduction In part one of this three-post series (go here) I presented Agnes Heller’s account of the modern and postmodern worldviews and how she thinks postmodernism leaves us with “life on the railway station” or the state of being radically… Read more ›
Introduction Agnes Heller (1929-2019) was a Hungarian philosopher who, among many other things (see a bio here), was Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research for 25 years. I took four incredible… Read more ›
Soren Kierkegaard In previous posts we have seen ways in which Eros (love) can imply, lead to, or be thwarted by Thanatos (death). Here is yet another example of a dynamic relation between the two that utilizes some ideas from… Read more ›