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 ›
When he was young the Danish philosopher and father of existentialism Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) wrote a journal entry which gives us direct insight into his fundamental problem: “I have just returned from a party of which I was the life… Read more ›
In this post I want to shed some light on the ultimate principle of explanation in Aristotle’s (384-322 BC) systematic worldview, the thing without which nothing can move and develop: God. To approach his theology we need to take a… Read more ›
One of my students was asked by one of his professors to interview another professor about social norms. So he reached out to me with four questions and I responded. I am no expert in social norms which is quite… Read more ›
“Nothing is true, everything is permitted” is the famous maxim of the novel Alamut (1938) by Vladmir Bartol which tells the story of the assassin Hassan-i Sabbah and the Order of Assassins he founded (the Hashshashin that existed in Nizari… Read more ›
One of the ongoing puzzles for humanity is, paradoxically, something that accompanies us all our waking lives: consciousness. Consciousness seems to be so obvious and yet so perplexing. Here are a few very basic ideas and strategies that might be… Read more ›
When I teach the abortion issue in ethics class I usually establish a threefold theoretical structure that is well-received by philosophers and presented clearly in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s (IEP) entry “Abortion“. It goes like this: (1) There is… Read more ›
One of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle’s (384-322 BC) most enduring contributions is his analysis of eudaimonia, a word that can be variously translated as happiness, fulfillment, flourishing, or well-being. His analysis appears to have lost none of its power… Read more ›
Nietzsche In section 117 of his book Daybreak Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) wrote: “In prison. My eyes, however strong or weak they may be, can see only a certain distance, and it is within the space encompassed by this distance that… Read more ›
“The unexamined life is not worth living for humans” – Socrates in Plato’s Apology What role should ChatGPT (for an overview of Chat go here) play in education? Many people are currently debating answers to this question. I very often… Read more ›
I found this interview with Martin Luther King, Jr. very helpful in critically exploring his pacifism or commitment to non-violence. There are two distinctions King makes which I found particularly illuminating and thought-provoking. The first is between non-violence and organized… Read more ›
Kant Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), offered the most influential and interesting theory of delightful terror or the sublime. He discusses two forms of the sublime in sections 25-28 of his book, namely, the mathematical and… Read more ›
Kant According to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the moral evaluation of our actions has nothing to do with our feelings, inclinations, and selfish preferences. It also has nothing to do with the actual consequences of our acts. Rather, it is a… Read more ›