Ernest Becker, in his Pulitzer Prize winning book The Denial of Death (New York: Free Press, 1973), argues that “the problem of heroics is the central one of human life, that it goes deeper into human nature than anything else… Read more ›
To fall in love with God is the greatest of romances, to seek Him the greatest adventure, to find Him the greatest human achievement. – St. Augustine Assume, for the moment, that God exists. Can we fall in love with… Read more ›
Many people think love and duty are mutually exclusive. This exclusivity is a popular theme in romantic literature from the middle ages (for example, Tristan and Isolde as well as Heliose and Abelard) all the way up to Game of… Read more ›
Get on the Ground: A Reflection for Russell Ippolito’s Memorial Service at Westchester Community College Dwight Goodyear Over the last five years I had the good fortune of talking with Russ almost every week on Thursday evenings. We both had… Read more ›
René Descartes had three fundamental goals in his philosophy: (1) he wanted to find something certain—a goal which flows from his modern agenda to sweep away the mistakes of the past and find a new method to reach the truth… Read more ›
Sigmund Freud, in Civilization and Its Discontents, claims, like the pre-Socratic Empedocles before him, that there are two “Heavenly Powers” or mutually opposing instincts: Eros and Thanatos. Freud characterizes these two principles as follows: eros is the instinct to conserve… Read more ›
The Greek tragic playwright Sophocles presented a truly terrifying image of man: he is the species whose ability to master nature is paralleled only by his failure to master himself (cf. Antigone, 368ff). J. Peter Euben elaborates: “Humans are, at… Read more ›
J.R. Pierce gives an argument against originality in music, an argument that can be generalized to the other arts. He writes: “If a human being finds monotonous that which is mathematically most various and unpredictable, what does he find fresh… Read more ›
There is certainly something wonderful about people expressing themselves without any formal training. For example, the punk movement included many young people who just decided to form a band and THEN learned a little bit in order to be heard.… Read more ›
In this post I would like to present an argument against the death penalty based on the philosophical position known as fallibilism. What is fallibilism? Well, the word ‘fallible’ means capable of being mistaken. If we add an “ism” on… Read more ›
Tristan Tzara, in his Dadaist Manifesto of 1918, argued that Dadaists were out to “assassinate beauty”. But why would anyone want to assassinate beauty? In the previous post in this series (go here) I discussed, with reference to Plato’s Symposium,… Read more ›
For centuries it was understood that if something was art then it was beautiful. However, in the 19th and 20th centuries many artists turned their backs on beauty. Here we could think of various works created within the romantic movement… Read more ›
In his work Metaphysics, Aristotle makes an important distinction between two types of activities: those which do not have their end or goal (telos) within themselves and those which do (1048b20). Aristotle gives an example of one that does not:… 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, the making and… Read more ›
In his book Daybreak (Cambridge, translated by R.J. Hollingdale), Friedrich Nietzsche writes something remarkable about vanity: “Vanity is the fear of appearing original: it is thus a lack of pride, but not necessarily a lack of originality.” (aphorism # 365)… Read more ›