Category: ethics

• June 20, 2014

  And if the world weren’t broken?

  It is often said that the world is broken and thus in need of fixing. I do not think so. We would not say that something is broken unless we also thought that it had once been intact. Something that is intact has all its pieces together, with each piece connected in the proper fashion to…
• June 19, 2014

  4 responses to the world’s being broken

  Suppose you begin with the thought that the world in its entirety is broken. Then, there are only four possible ways of responding to its brokenness: return it to a prior state before it was broken, bring it to a new state that is better off than the broken state, smash the broken thing and begin…
• June 18, 2014

  ‘Could be broken’ and ‘is broken’

  In the last couple of posts, I have been examining this argument: 2.) Because the world is broken or out-of-order, it needs to be fixed or restored. Let me set the stage for the next post about the view that the world (or some large sections of it anyway) is already broken. So far, I have…
• June 17, 2014

  If the world is broken, then one is bound to worry

  Recall that I have just begun to call into question one of the reigning theses of our modern moral metaphysic. This is that the world, being broken, is in need of fixing. In the last post, I spoke of those who work (as it were) on the front end, believing that the world’s being broken means…
• June 16, 2014

  ‘All things could potentially go wrong’

  I have returned from Banff and now take up again the arguments that make up our modern moral metaphysic. They are: 1.) Because the world is lost and fallen, it needs to be changed or ultimately saved. 2.) Because the world is broken or out-of-order, it needs to be fixed or restored. 3.) Constituted by problems,…