The word ‘philosophy’ literally means ‘love of wisdom’ (philia=love and sophia=wisdom). Thus a philosopher can be understood as someone who loves wisdom and who seeks it via the activity of philosophy which asks general and fundamental questions and seeks to… Read more ›
The American philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952) offered a groundbreaking account of art in his Art as Experience (1934). This account, which reorients our understanding of art towards aesthetic experience, forges profound connections with education, democracy, and evolution. In what follows,… Read more ›
The American philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952) was often accused of being too optimistic about the potentials of science and democracy. Some claimed he lacked a tragic sense of life which is necessary to truly understand the world in which we… Read more ›
When we try to diagnose the many social ills we have in our country it is easy to get bogged down with specifics that lead us to treat symptoms rather than causes. One way to gain some vision is to… Read more ›
In his writings the American philosopher John Dewey (1859-1952) presents some very interesting thoughts on the imagination that connect it to creativity, art, consciousness, perception, mind, and the projections of wholes that offer context for everything from navigating our local… Read more ›
John Locke (1632-1704), in Book II of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) writes: “Our observation employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds perceived and reflected upon by ourselves, is that which supplies our… Read more ›
Introduction Plato (427-347 BC), in his dialogue Timaeus, has his character Timaeus offer Socrates, Hemocrates, and Critias a “likely story” about how our cosmos, our orderly universe, came to be from a preexisting state of chaos. Near the beginning of… Read more ›
We often bemoan just how incredibly, well, unwise people in politics are. And we often bemoan how this lack of political wisdom leads to a variety of vices, such as ignorance, cowardice, injustice, and immoderation, which cause so much suffering,… Read more ›
J.S. Mill (1806-1873) John Stuart Mill, in his classic book On Liberty (1859), offers one of the most enduring principles in political philosophy. This principle has come to be known as the harm principle and it is a widely embraced principle in… Read more ›
In two recent posts (see here) I explored how we might, in these times where many people find it difficult to talk to one another given various political, moral, and cultural differences, help communities better embody the conditions for genuine… Read more ›
The instrumental approach to art emphasizes art’s functionality. Art can certainly have many functions. But many argue its ability to help us understand things is among its most important (perhaps the most important). Such people usually embrace aesthetic cognitivism or… Read more ›
I favor approaches to morality that make reference to human nature like natural law theory (for an overview natural law theory in relation to social justice go here) and natural virtue ethics (for some virtue ethics insights in relation to… Read more ›
In his essay “What Pragmatism Means” the great American philosopher and psychologist William James (1842-1910) asserts that pragmatism represents the empiricist attitude in both “a more radical and in a less objectionable form than it has ever yet assumed” (see… Read more ›
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), in his book Daybreak (1881), wrote: “On Education. – I have gradually seen the light as to the most universal deficiency in our kind of cultivation and education: no one learns, no one strives after, no one… Read more ›
Robert Fludd, The Spritual Mind (1617) It seems plausible to many people that we are more than physical bodies: we are also non-physical minds or souls. Our souls are currently embodied and yet have things bodies can’t have such as… Read more ›