The German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975; see here for an overview of her work) offered two groundbreaking and closely connected theories of evil, the banality of evil and radical evil, that help us rethink many common conceptions of not only evil but… Read more ›
The German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975; see here for an overview of her work) offered two groundbreaking and closely connected theories of evil, the banality of evil in her Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963)… Read more ›
Many people make resolutions on New Year’s Day. It is a day of beginnings and endings and is often accompanied by faith and hope in the new. But can there ever really be a new beginning? Well, resolutions are often… Read more ›
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on his neck for nine minutes and twenty nine seconds while he was lying face down handcuffed on the street. His death, and many other… Read more ›
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on his neck for nine minutes and twenty nine seconds while he was lying face down handcuffed on the street. His death, and many other… Read more ›
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, knelt on his neck for nine minutes and twenty nine seconds while he was lying face down handcuffed on the street. His death, and many other… Read more ›
Fake news can be defined as “a form of news consisting of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional news media (print and broadcast) or online social media” (Wikipedia). Many people are understandably expressing their concern, even panic, over not knowing how to… Read more ›
I take the concept of evil very seriously and have written many posts on it over the years. But some think we should abandon the concept of evil altogether. In this post I want to briefly take a look at… Read more ›
In January of 1972 BBC Two broadcasted a four episode television series called Ways of Seeing written and presented by John Berger (1926-2017). The series was subsequently adapted into the book Ways of Seeing which was published in 1973. Both… Read more ›
Classic utilitarianism, whose classic proponents were Jeremy Bentham (1789), John Stuart Mill (1861), and Henry Sidgwick (1907), is a moral theory which doesn’t consider motives and acts as having any intrinsic moral value. Rather, motives and acts can only be… Read more ›
It is easy to lose our sense of wonder for things around us. Of course, we may wonder when confronted with things out of the ordinary. But shouldn’t it be more common to wonder about, well, everything? Perhaps not. After… Read more ›
Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849 It is March 21, 2020 and the coronavirus is a pandemic threatening everyone on Earth. In my relative isolation of social distancing, I have had more time to read and I was drawn to a tale… Read more ›
I was recently asked to give a talk on what makes relationships beneficial. Since Valentine’s Day was approaching, I decided to offer a set of insights based on three philosophical theories of love which I cover in my philosophy of love… Read more ›
In the previous two posts (go here) I considered various formulations of the privation theory of evil and considered various objections to it. Now let’s consider some reasons to embrace the theory. (1) The privation theory can offer a comprehensive… Read more ›
In part one of this three part series I gave a brief overview of some influential formulations of the privation theory of evil before suggesting that we accept Peter King’s concise and convincing one in Evil: A History (Oxford, 2019):… Read more ›