Anyone who studies the philosophy of education will quickly discover that there are two central models of how knowledge comes to be acquired: on one hand, we have an ignorant and passive pupil who receives information from an active and… Read more ›
Can we, sometimes, make free choices? Obviously, a lot rides on what we mean by free choices. Mark Balaguer has recently formulated a helpful definition in his book Free Will (MIT, 2014): a choice is the product of my free… Read more ›
In part one of this series we saw how aesthetics can play a role in global education (see here). Let’s continue by looking at some other ways aesthetics can help us learn. In his book The Aesthetic Understanding, Roger Scruton points… Read more ›
Aristotle, in his Metaphysics (Book Lambda, 1075a), notes that “thinking and to be an object of thought are not the same.” This makes sense: if I am thinking about a tree the tree is not my thought of the tree. Indeed,… Read more ›
In his Meditations (1641), Rene Descartes argues for a version of metaphysical dualism that maintains the mind and body are two completely different types of entities. The mind is not physical and so is not extended, doesn’t take up space,… Read more ›
What is an idea? According to Peter A. Angeles’ Dictionary of Philosophy we have the following candidates: Idea: (Gk., idea, “concept,” “class,” “kind,” “idea,” “mode,” “sort,” “species,” “form,” “nature,” “from eidos, “visual appearance,” “form,” and idein, “to see,” “to grasp conceptually”). 1. Anything that is… Read more ›
One of the most amazing things about the world in which we live is the technology of communication. The written word is printed and distributed quicker than ever before. We have satellite radio and hundreds of TV channels. And now… Read more ›
The Danish proto-existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) put forth an intriguing account of the demonic in chapter 4 of his eccentric work The Concept of Anxiety (see the Princeton edition translated by the Hongs). Kierkegaard claims the demonic person has “anxiety about the… Read more ›
The surrealists (go here for a helpful overview) were very influenced by Freud’s naturalistic approach to the mind as well as occult phenomenon. But they tried to distance themselves from both influences by, on the one hand, trying to probe the… Read more ›
In the last post I defined the uncanny as follows: The uncanny is an unsettling, even terrifying, experience of the familiar suddenly becoming unfamiliar at the same time (or the unfamiliar suddenly becoming familiar at the same time). The experience… Read more ›
The aesthetic category of the uncanny became popular in late romanticism (late 1800s), Gothic fiction, and a variety of art movements including surrealism, dadaism, and symbolism. This category is just as illuminating as the beautiful and the sublime, but it is… Read more ›
What does it mean to ask someone for forgiveness? Jesus said: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). This request, by yoking together forgiveness and ignorance, seems to contradict a necessary condition for forgiveness, namely,… Read more ›
In Japanese aesthetics yūgen refers to those moments when we feel as if we have had a partial glimpse into a hidden reality. Such a glimpse is felt to be profoundly mysterious. It is also experienced as beautiful. According to… Read more ›
In his dialogue On Free Choice of the Will (Macmillan, 1964), St. Augustine (354-430 C.E.) argues that our minds can know truths that are eternal. For Augustine, something is eternal if it exists in a timeless, unchanging state. So eternal truths are unchanging… Read more ›
A note of caution: Plato wrote dialogues not treatises. These dialogues show the life of the philosophical mind at work: questioning, arguing, speculating, imagining, wondering, struggling, and understanding. They do not show finished results that we can confidently attribute to… Read more ›