Category: ethics
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Agonising, agonism, and nuclear power
Bridget McKenzie @ New Public Thinking discusses with finesse and honesty the nuclear problem in the context of climate change. Here is my comment. — Dear Bridget, There is a lovely line in the late philosopher Robert Nozick’s book The Examined Life about taking a position. Nozick confesses that when he was younger he believed,…
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Alternative educational models: A philosophical overview
Philosophical Questions Q: What is human nature? A: Human nature is thinking-crafting. Q: What is community? A: Community is self-governance aimed at the common good (an anarchist principle with a republican final end) Q: What is education? A: Education is the cultivation of our thinking-crafting natures realized in self-governance and striving toward the common good.…
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The last career
Head Banging It seems as though most 20- and 30-somethings I’ve run into in past months–not to mention some of the philosophical counseling clients I’ve worked with–insist on banging their heads against the wall. In quiet despair, they follow self-defeating strategies, tracing out beautiful collision courses with walls they’d already saluted with foreheads and cheekbones.…
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On Montaigne’s moment
Could Montaigne be the philosopher for the early 21st C.? When Montaigne wrote in the 1580s, the Wars of Religion were raging all around him in France. The Reformation had already put the “problem of the criterion” center stage: How do we know God, and for that matter how do we know anything? Pyrronian skepticism…
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Reflections on two months of blogging, on page clicks, referrers, searches, and, above all, anonymous readers
A blog seems to me a curious thing. One day you set up shop and natter away. The next nobody looks over your shoulder while you do so. You can write in public, but there’s no public. You urinate in the park without getting caught. Then, for no apparent reason, someone stumbles upon your blog,…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 