“Hell Is Other People”: Sartre on Personal Relationships
What exactly is freedom of speech? And what does it permit us to say?
12
03, 2021
24
02, 2021
Is Abortion “Health Care”?
By: Hendrik van der Breggen Next week the U.S. House of Representatives will vote on the so-called Equality Act. Ostensibly
18
02, 2021
Free Speech
What exactly is freedom of speech? And what does it permit us to say?
2
02, 2021
The Ethics of Belief: It’s not just Trump supporters who believe wrongly—it’s all of us
Many of people’s most cherished beliefs—on important matters such as religion, health, science, ethics, justice, and more—are not based on strong evidence.
21
01, 2021
Conspiracy Theories
What are conspiracy theories? Should we ever accept one? If so, when?
13
11, 2020
The Ecstatic Agony of Jeffrey Toobin
Mr. Toobin is a celebrity. Therefore, he has no right (as it were) to lower himself to our level or at least not in such a way that we are made aware of it. Discretion is the better part of ardor, especially for those in the public eye. Since those who wield power (control over other people’s destinies) belong to the priestly caste of society, they must relinquish the life of the peasant in exchange for their rank as sanctified members of the hierarchy. The peasant is no better than an animal; the priest must not descend to the level of the peasant, or be witnessed doing so, lest the peasantry become disillusioned, and begin to question their lack of status, let alone, rebel against priestly authority. That violates the tacit social contract (or unstated Freudian bargain) that we make with our living symbols of supernal grace.
17
07, 2020
Two-wrongs-make-a-right fallacy
The two-wrongs-make-a-right fallacy is a misplaced appeal to consistency: accept, or condone, one thing that is wrong because another similar thing, also wrong, has occurred, or has been accepted and condoned. It's clearly flawed reasoning, which has led to many escalating feuds. Yet, it continues today.
12
06, 2020
A Case for Immortality
Our transient lives are governed by what I would call “mortal time”, an idea stretching its way through Western philosophy from Heraclitus through Socrates to at least Heidegger. It is a time curved to a specific end in death. All our society, culture, and even science is bent by our mortal temporal curvature. Our lives are sorted out and planned according to our inevitable decline and eventual total physical disappearance. The lens through which we view our entire existence is death, our consciousness is therefore a thoroughly mortal one.
3
04, 2020
The Übermensch and Transhumanism
By: Dan Corjescu Does Nietzsche have anything important to say to us, the current inhabitants of a hyperglobal age? Nietzsche
23
08, 2019
Arguing Dialectically about Abortion
How do we talk about abortion? How do we make arguments about a topic that evokes such strong reactions? In opposing articles, Nathan Nobis and Kristina Grob and Hendrick van der Breggen, approach the issue dialectically. One approach is to think dialectically--to critically examine arguments pro or con, in order to uncover the assumptions and grounds they rest on, and develop new arguments that respond to the faults we find in our prior positions.