My colleagues in the Department of Philosophy, Shawn Klein and Matthew Flamm, will be leading a reading group on Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Adam Smith is best known as an economist and a critic of mercantilism and as an early advocate of market economies. Less well known is Smith the moral philosopher. […]
Reading group on Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments Read More »
A warning to start: This video is repulsive, but I can’t stop thinking about it. The scene is Christmas morning, and we see a youth opening a present. He first thinks he’s gotten an Xbox — but then he realizes that his present is clothes packaged in an Xbox container. We see the kid’s emotions
Sadistic gift giving Read More »
Heard on a call-in talk show about this year’s most popular songs. A young woman phoned in to give her opinion about the rankings and along the way made this comment: “A lot of radio stations have ‘The Drive at 5’ shows, when they play a lot of cool songs without commercials. I think it’s
Fairness: frontiers in re-definition Read More »
[This is Section 16 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.] 16. Eugenics Nazi education and censorship attempted to control people’s minds. The Nazis also controlled the bodies of their citizens as much as possible. Milder controls involved new public-health measures such as an aggressive campaign against smoking: the Nazis banned smoking in certain public places, ran
Eugenics [Section 16 of Nietzsche and the Nazis] Read More »
Following up on an earlier post contrasting modernism with pre-modernism, I here contrast post-modernism to both. Postmodernism as a philosophical system is defined by means of its characteristic claims in the five major branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, human nature, ethics, and politics. Postmodernism as a historical movement is defined by the time of its
Defining postmodernism Read More »
Intellectual systems and movements are defined philosophically by means of their characteristic claims in the five major branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, human nature, ethics, and politics. As historical movements, they are defined by the time of their formulation and most vigorous activity. So in the following table I offer a definitions of pre-modernism and
Defining modernism and pre-modernism Read More »
Here’s a 55-second video clip about CEE‘s winning a 2009 Templeton Freedom Award from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation: This video is also posted at AERF’s Atlas Network site.
CEE’s Templeton Award — short video Read More »
A vigorous culture carries on its debates at many levels and via many media, all the way down to the bumper sticker. I enjoy the cleverness that goes into many stickers, as well as the ongoing one-upmanship. These “Coexist” stickers have been around for awhile now: Islam, peace, men/women, Judaism, paganism, Taoism/Confucianism, Christianity — can’t
Coexist or Uncoexist? Read More »