Category: politics

• 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,…
• May 14, 2014

  Our modern moral metaphysic: My basic set of questions

  In the past weeks, I have been investigating the main assumptions that underlie our modern moral metaphysic. So far, I have examined arguments 4 and 3 (in that order). 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…
• May 13, 2014

  Putting problems in their place

  The major purpose of reigning in the use of the word ‘problem’ is to clear a path to the thesis that the world is good and, beyond this, beautiful. The minor purpose is to return the concept ‘problem’ to its proper linguistic settings. Certain concepts are ‘at home’ in certain linguistic contexts. Yet for social, historical, metaphysical, and political reasons, some…
• May 10, 2014

  How the ‘problematized world’ can never become a home

  My last post rushed to this conclusion: ‘Thus, the problem-solver who tries to make the world into a home cannot do so.’ Let me try again, this time more slowly, in order to reach this conclusion. Recall that the kind of person we are describing believes that, in a basic sort of way, the world is full of problems and…
• May 9, 2014

  The world problem-solver: Not a home, not free enough

  The chief reason that one may spend one’s life trying to solve the world’s problems is that one believes that doing so is identical with the good life. To lead a good life is to solve the world’s problems. But this thesis cannot hold up under scrutiny. The world problem-solver, having taken the world not to be a home at the…