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Natural law theories maintain that there are certain goods and principles that are uniquely conducive to human flourishing. Historically, the content of natural law has often been depicted as timeless and unchanging. This makes natural law seem like (in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes) a ‘brooding omnipresence in the sky’—a set of austere and […]
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The Desert Fathers were the earliest Christian monks. They are the foundation stone of a movement that so developed over the centuries that it eventually wholly took over the Western Church and almost completely that of the East. Although monasticism has declined in recent centuries, various indications of its influence are still quite evident. Many […]
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Mathematics rivals theology when it comes to ontological difficulties Mathematics rivals theology when it comes to ontological difficulties; consequently there are today three very different philosophical positions that can be taken. Platonists assert that there is an intangible but intelligible world of mathematical objects, and that the business of the mathematician is to explore this […]
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Do you have a soul? In ancient Greece, answering ‘yes’ to this question would not necessarily imply that you had any strange metaphysical or religious beliefs. This is because, for an ancient Greek, to have a ‘soul’ – psychē – in many contexts, meant no more than having life, or being alive. However, at the […]
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Certain intellectual schemes make reality come off as thinned out and characterless on its own, prior to what thought or language projects upon it, or as a site of emptiness, arbitrariness, and ruin, prior to some drastic change that must have an out-of-nowhere or messianic quality. Often these schemes have their deep origins in late-medieval […]
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Should prostitution, or the buying and selling of sexual services, be legalized? Similarly for the monetary exchanges of many other controversial items like kidneys and other organs, blood, surrogate motherhood, line sitting/standing, etc. Should essential goods like water be priced at their full social costs of supply? Should more monetary fines be used in place […]
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The neuroscientist Kent Kiehl – popularly known as the “psychopath whisperer” – thinks that many psychopaths have brain dysfunctions that explain their violent behavior. Famously, he served as an expert witness on the defense of rapist and murderer Brian Dugan. He argued that Dugan’s brain abnormalities should make the difference between the death penalty and […]
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Reason and emotion are often supposed to be at odds with each other. From one perspective, our emotions are like unruly toddlers, demanding and whimsical, that need to be held in check by the adult intellect. From another perspective, the rational mind is cold and calculating and needs the warmth of the passions to grasp […]
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