Plato (detail from Raphael’s The School of Athens) When we engage in the philosophical activity of ethics we ask questions like: what are right and wrong actions? What does it mean for something to be good or bad? What is… Read more ›
Substance dualists believe that humans are comprised of two radically different types of substances that interact but can, in principle, exist independently from each other. One popular version of substance dualism maintains that the mind is a non-physical, simple (not… Read more ›
Memory can be defined as “the faculty of the brain by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed” (Wikipedia). Here you see the brain is included in the definition. Is this inclusion necessary? After all, one could say that “memory is… Read more ›
The great Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) was, among other things, an Italian renaissance scholar, Catholic priest, humanist philosopher, astrologer, doctor, musician, reviver of Platonism, and the first translator of Plato’s complete extant works into Latin. He was also the head of… Read more ›
St. Gregory of Nyssa (335-394), in his work On the Soul and Resurrection (St. Vladmir’s Seminary Press, 1993), presents a very stimulating dialogue between two characters: Gregory and his sister Macrina. Through Macrina he argues that the existence of virtue… Read more ›
The beautiful colors of Spring have emerged yet again from the seemingly endless days of white, gray, brown, and black. The once frozen ground and mutilated remnants were concealing hidden folds of life waiting to unfold. According to the enlightenment… Read more ›
How is it that we can experience incoming data from the five senses as coherent, rather than incoherent, perceptions of objects and people? This issue, often referred to as “the binding problem” in neuroscience, has been a concern of philosophers… Read more ›
In the last three posts I have considered Plato’s argument for the immortality of the soul in book X of his dialogue the Republic. I would like to finish this series with a look at one attempt to present a… Read more ›
In the last two posts I considered Plato’s argument for the immortality of the soul that appears in book X of his dialogue Republic. Now I would like to say a few words about how the theme of immortality can… Read more ›
In the last post I introduced Plato’s argument for the immortality of the soul in Book X of his dialogue Republic (all quotations will be from Cornford’s translation). I then discussed the argument’s central claim – the essential destructibility claim –… Read more ›
The intellectual and dramatic flow of Plato’s dialogue Republic is driven by Socrates’ attempt to show what justice is and why being just is superior to being unjust. A character, Glaucon, presents a challenge to Socrates in Book II: why… Read more ›
In his book On the Soul, Aristotle gave the following definition of soul: “The soul is the first actuality of a natural body that is potentially alive” (412a27). This first actuality of the body is the immaterial form of the… 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 ›
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 ›
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 ›