Philosophy

The Clouds and “Socrates”

The comic genius of Aristophanes, in which “Socrates” the sacrilegious philosopher explains to the not-too-bright Strepsiades where rain and thunder come from. Potty humor ensues. Socrates: That is because these are the only goddesses; all the rest are pure myth. Strepsiades: But by the Earth! is our father, Zeus, the Olympian, not a god? Socrates: Zeus! […]

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Christian Socialism and C. S. Lewis [Open College series]

A new episode of my podcast series, produced by Possibly Correct out of Toronto. Audio: iTunes Stitcher YouTube Topics: Should Christians be socialists, and was C.S. Lewis a socialist? // Mere Christianity‘s themes // Liberal-libertarian principles — free-market economics and property rights, competence to run your own life, self-responsibility, self-respect and dignity for all, universalism

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Köhnke on the rise of Kant after 1870

From Klaus Christian Köhnke’s The Rise of Neo-Kantianism (Cambridge, 1991): “In the 1870s Kant became the most frequently read of the classics in Germany’s universities” (p. 8) That decade marked the decline of Hegelianism and triumph of neo-Kantianism: “Immediately after the Franco-Prussian war [1870-71] things moved forward rapidly and neo-Kantianism as a whole rose rapidly in the

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Collective guilt — China’s social-credit scheme and other examples

“Chinese university suspends student because of dad’s bad social-credit score.” This collectivizing-of-guilt example reminds me of the commencement ceremony at my university a few years ago, at which Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of former president George Bush, gave an apolitical speech about her non-profit work. Several of our faculty members sat in stony-frowny-face, arms-crossed silence

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Ayn Rand and Business Ethics — new booklet edition

I’m happy to announce a new edition of my “Ayn Rand and Business Ethics” has been published. Thanks to the team at The Atlas Society for producing it. The essay was originally published in The Journal of Accounting, Ethics & Public Policy and has since been translated into Korean, German, Serbo-Croatian, and Portuguese. Abstract: Most

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