A theodicy is an attempt to justify God’s attributes (usually all knowing, all good, and all powerful) in the face of evil. One way to justify God in the face of evil is to claim that evil is actually orchestrated… Read more ›
In the last post, I considered how Shakespeare’s Richard III can be used to illustrate five stages of tyranny in politics. Now let’s look at how the play, on the one hand, illustrates four forms of evil, namely, demonic, instrumental,… Read more ›
Shakespeare’s Richard III, although fairly simple in structure, is rich in philosophical insights. In this series of posts I will explore many of these insights. Let’s begin by looking at how the play illustrates stages of tyranny that can be… Read more ›
Friedrich Nietzsche One ideal many philosophers pursue is a belief system characterized by logical consistency. Such a belief system, far from being just an objective goal existing apart from the self, can even be integral, if not identical, to the… 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 ›
There is an interesting contrast between Aristotle and Friedrich Nietzsche when it comes to the notion of a good man and whether such a man should change and despise himself. Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, writes that the good man… Read more ›
The new version of the show Cosmos, like the old version, shows many cases of mistaken astrological thinking being replaced by empirically verified astronomical evidence. For many people these advances are welcome. Certainly those who think scientifically will not accept… Read more ›
In his book The Wanderer and His Shadow (aphorism #204), Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: “End and Goal: Not every end is a goal. The end of a melody is not its goal; but nonetheless, if the melody had not reached its… Read more ›
Even an empty cup contains something: nothing.
The enlightenment rationalist G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716) was a master at articulating certain general and fundamental principles and applying these principles to various philosophical problems. Principles are statements of basic laws, truths, or rules from which other laws, truths, or… Read more ›
In his book The Courage to Teach,[1] Parker J. Palmer claims that objectivism is false and that a new conception of truth needs to be put in its place. Without this new conception we will perpetuate “disconnections between teachers, their… Read more ›
A student recently declared that philosophy and science, while interesting, simply can’t get very far given the “fragility” of our minds which, after all, are beset by all kinds of things, such as emotions, neuroses, defense mechanisms, fallacious reasoning, limited… Read more ›