Community
Man the Political Animal: On the Intrinsic Goodness of Political Community by Michael W. Hannon. Our arguments for limited government should recognize political community as an intrinsic good, not mistake it for a merely instrumental one. More at PD.
Søren
I Still Love Kierkegaard by Julian Baggini. I fell for Søren Kierkegaard as a teenager, and he has accompanied me on my intellectual travels ever since, not so much side by side as always a few steps ahead or lurking [...]
Cultures
Two Cultures: Faith & Reason by Peter Kreeft. They are historical events that arose at a certain time in history. They are not simply permanent realities in human nature that are timeless and not culturally determined. Human nature is of [...]
Trouble
The Trouble with the Enlightenment by Ollie Cussen. Arguments about the Age of Reason have become stale. Can a new book transform the debate? More.
Anxiety
How Kierkegaard Changed My Life by Michael D. Stark. On the famed philosopher’s message for anxious Christians. More.
Future
The Singularity of Fools by David Rieff. A special report from the utopian future. Read more at FP.
Dennett
Philosophy That Stirs the Waters by Jennifer Schuessler. On a recent sunny afternoon, Daniel Dennett showed up at the community boathouse on the Charles River ready for philosophical and nautical action. Mr. Dennett, the co-director of the Center for Cognitive [...]
Believe?
What Do Philosophers Believe? by David Bourget & David J. Chalmers. What are the philosophical views of contemporary professional philosophers? Are more philosophers theists or atheists? Physicalists or non-physicalists? Deontologists, consequentialists, or virtue ethicists? We surveyed many professional philosophers in [...]
Hart
Sheer Hart Attack: Morality, Rationality, and Theology by Edward Feser. Natural law theory makes a very limited, but very important claim—that there is common ground between all human beings, and particularly between religious believers and non-believers, on which moral disagreements [...]
Children
To Whom Do Children Belong? by Melissa Moschella. Harris-Perry argued that if we are going to start investing adequately in our public schools, “we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or [...]
Predict?
Can the Doomsday Argument Predict Our Odds of Survival? by George Dvorsky. The classic form of the Doomsday Argument says it’s more likely that we’re closer to the end of our civilization than the beginning. In other words, apocalyptic destruction [...]
Determinism?
Quantum Mechanics Supports Free Will by Tom Hartsfield. Do you believe in free will? Some physicists and neuroscientists believe in the opposite proposition: determinism. The mathematics of quantum mechanics have a say in this argument: Determinism is impossible unless you [...]
Teapot
Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist’s Teapot by Brian Garvey. Atheists often admit that there is no positive evidence for atheism. Many argue that there is nonetheless a prima facie argument, which I will refer to as [...]
Thomas
You can read an excerpt from Aquinas and the Supreme Court: Biblical Narratives of Jews, Gentiles and Gender by Eugene F. Rogers, Jr. here. (pdf)
Heretic
The Heretic by Andrew Ferguson. Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him? More at TWS.
Odd Couple
Evolution and Existentialism, an Intellectual Odd Couple by David P. Barash. Interdisciplinary efforts, for all their ostensible appeal, are more often praised than practiced, especially when it comes to combining the humanities and sciences. Nonetheless, connecting two intellectual perspectives that [...]
Three Bangs
Here’s an excerpt from Three Big Bangs: Matter-Energy, Life, Mind by Holmes Rolston III.
Beyond Romanticism
Natural Law Liberalism Beyond Romanticism by Nathan Schlueterl. Arguments on the nature of liberalism and America seem to go in cycles, and this recurrence suggests something of the seriousness and complexity of the issues involved. In the 1980s it was [...]
Gray
JP O’Malley interviews philosopher John Gray.
Golden Mean
Blessed Are Les Misérables: For Theirs Is the True Philosophy of Law by Michael W. Hannon. Hollywood’s new musical masterpiece illustrates a classical legal philosophy, long lost to our liberal establishment, that serves as a golden mean between tyrannical legalism [...]