philosophy
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SOURCE: The Economist
12/11/2020
An Inspiring History of the Enlightenment
A new book focuses on the generation of the body of Enlightenment thought through debate and dispute which foreshadows many of today's debates about the merits of universal humanism and liberal democracy.
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SOURCE: ArcDigital
10/31/2020
Is History Now Our Judge?
by L.D. Burnett
"Warning someone that they will face the judgment of history and the shame of opprobrium seems much more rational than warning them that they will face the judgment of God and the fires of hell."
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SOURCE: The Baffler
10/28/2020
Grin and Bear It: On the Rise and Rise of Neo-Stoicism
by Hettie O'Brien
"Stoic practices may allow us to live more easily in the world as it is. But politics is as much about conflict as consensus, and depends, at least in part, upon people getting angry."
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SOURCE: BBC
9/23/2020
Are We Living at the "Hinge of History"?
Journalist Richard Fisher examines the argument that the present--this moment--is the most important juncture in human history because human capacity to affect the planet outstrips human wisdom to direct that capacity.
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SOURCE: Times of London
9/14/2020
Edinburgh University Ditches David Hume over Slavery Link
The University of Edinburgh will rename a tower in response to charges that philosopher David Hume endorsed racism.
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8/2/2020
Free Speech and Civic Virtue between "Fake News" and "Wokeness"
by Campbell F. Scribner
Left critics of the recent "Harper's Magazine" open letter on free speech and open debate make some claims that are narrowly meritorious. But they don't address the value of speech as a way of building the collective citizenship necessary for democracy. In this respect, the signers are correct.
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4/19/2020
Social Crisis and the Public Use of Reason
by Sam Ben-Meir
We cannot afford to overlook the public use of reason: reason that does not simply solve a given problem, but asks further unsettling questions, such as how did this problem arise in the first place?
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SOURCE: The Conversation
3/12/2020
Why a Roman Philosopher’s Views on the Fear of Death Matter as Coronavirus Spreads
by Thomas Nail
Instead of worrying about what may happen after death, Lucretius advises people to focus on keeping their bodies healthy and helping others do the same.
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SOURCE: The New York Times
1/21/20
The Road to Auschwitz Wasn't Paved With Indifference
by Rivka Weinberg
We don’t have to be ‘upstanders’ to avoid genocides. We just have to make sure not to help them along.
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12/1/2019
Losing Sight of Jefferson and Falling into Plato
by M. Andrew Holowchak
Socratic Styled Teaching in Twenty-First Century American Classrooms
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10/27/2019
Did Jefferson Think Humans Occupied a Privileged Position in the Cosmos?
by M. Andrew Holowchak
Just where did humans fit in the wondrous and gargantuan cosmos for Thomas Jefferson?
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9/15/19
The Apolitical Antidote to Unjust Politics
by Steele Brand
Throughout history apolitics guided the greatest minds living in the most unjust times.
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6/30/19
What We Can Learn About Tough Times and Problem-Solving from the 1970s
by Tracy Dahlby
If 70s sage E.F. Schumacher has anything to teach us today, it may lie in his chronically appealing idea that optimism about the human spirit, and faith in our potential for problem-solving, can flourish even in the toughest of times.
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SOURCE: The Hill
1/14/19
Barr memo suggests: To understand the Trump administration, read Hobbes
by Eric Terzuolo
To the extent that there is a Trump administration philosophy of the state, the Kavanaugh article and Barr memo are foundational documents.
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3/4/18
It Wasn’t Just the Philosophers Like Diderot Who Invented the Enlightenment
by Paola Bertucci
So did the practical people known as artisans. We should acknowledge their contribution.
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SOURCE: The Washington Post
4-28-15
Philosophy’s gender bias
by Andrew Janiak and Christia Mercer
For too long, scholars say, women have been ignored.
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SOURCE: New York Times
9-18-13
Science’s Humanities Gap
by Gary Gutting
Humanists have been much more receptive to science than vice-versa.
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How to Cope with Information Overload
by Walter G. Moss
Image via Shutterstock.In the 1840s, in his Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote:A man .... steps out into the world’s multiplicity, like one that comes from the country into the great noisy city, into the multiplicity where men engrossed in affairs hurry past one another, where each looks out for what belongs to him in the vast "back and forth," where everything is in passing ... For here one can experience everything possible, or that everything is possible. ... So this man stands there. He has in himself a susceptibility for the disease of double-mindedness. ... Swiftly, alas, swiftly he is infected -- one more victim. This is nothing new, but an old story. As it has happened to him, so it has happened with the double-minded ones who have gone before him.
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Philosophy Matters
by Yvonne Sherratt
Martin Heidegger, one of Hitler's philosophers. Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN.With today's heated rhetoric against the study of history and philosophy, it's worth reminding our readers that philosophy matters, and -- tragically -- one of the ways it matters is how it can be twisted into support for atrocities.
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Are We Still in the Dead Grip of a Premodern Conception of Time?
by George E. Marcus
Image via Shutterstock.
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