Author: Spencer Case Categories: Historical Philosophy, Social and Political Philosophy, Ethics Word Count: 1,000 Plato’s Crito describes a conversation that takes place in 399 B.C.E. in an Athens prison, where Socrates awaits execution. Not long before, an assembly of more than 500 Athenian citizens convicted Socrates of corrupting the youth and impiety, essentially failing to … Continue reading Plato’s Crito: When Should We Break the Law?
Author: Charles Miceli Category: Historical Philosophy, Epistemology Word Count: 994 If you are reading this, then you are probably looking at a screen or a piece of paper. Think to yourself: “I have some paper in my hand,” “I am in front of a computer” or whatever fits. Is your belief here certain? Is there … Continue reading “I think, therefore I am”: Descartes on the Foundations of Knowledge
Author: Marc Bobro Categories: Historical Philosophy, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind and Language, Philosophy of Religion Word Count: 999 Editor’s Note: This essay is the second in a two-part series on Descartes’ Meditations. The first essay is here. 4. Meditation 4: The Source of Human Error Descartes argued in Meditation 3 that since God exists, … Continue reading Descartes’ Meditations 4-6
Author: Marc Bobro Categories: Historical Philosophy, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind and Language, Philosophy of Religion Word Count: 998 Editor’s Note: This essay is the first in a two-part series on Descartes’ Meditations. The second essay is here. In an era of great debate over the fundamental facts of nature—e.g., about the Earth’s place in … Continue reading Descartes’ Meditations 1-3
Author: Simone Webb Category: Historical Philosophy, Philosophy of Sex and Gender, Social and Political Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of Education Word Count: 978 Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) is established in the popular imagination as the “first feminist,” but another philosopher provided a systematic analysis of women’s subjugated condition and a call for female education nearly a century before … Continue reading Mary Astell’s “A Serious Proposal to the Ladies” (1694)
Author: Nicholaos Jones Category: Historical Philosophy, Metaphysics, Buddhist Philosophy Word Count: 991 Abhidharma is a scholastic tradition of Buddhism, arising in India during the 3rd century BCE, directed toward systematizing discourses written during the first few centuries of Buddhism. Those early discourses tend to analyze the objects of our experience – physical things and mental events … Continue reading Dharma in Abhidharma Buddhism
Author: Marc Bobro Category: Historical Philosophy, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Religion Word count: 999 Imagine that your bicycle keeps dropping its chain. Annoyed, you take it to a bike shop to determine the cause in order to fix the problem. The mechanic informs you that the problem cannot be fixed because there is no reason why … Continue reading Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason
Author: Justin Remhof Categories: Phenomenology and Existentialism; Philosophy of Religion; Ethics; Historical Philosophy Word Count: 985 Nietzsche is perhaps most famous for making the striking claim that God is dead. He writes, “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!” (GS 125). What does this mean? Straightforwardly, it seems nonsensical. God is supposed to be eternal, … Continue reading “God is dead”: Nietzsche and the Death of God
Author: Ryan Jenkins Category: Historical Philosophy, Metaphysics, Ethics Word Count: 938 You have often heard it said that the Form of the Good is the greatest thing to learn about, and that it is by their relation to it that just things and [other virtuous things] become useful and beneficial (Republic, 505a). Plato’s Republic is a wide-ranging tract, admired for … Continue reading Plato’s Form of the Good
The general idea of alienation is simple: Something is alienating when what is (or should be) familiar and connected comes to seem foreign or disconnected. So if work in a capitalist society inhibits the realization of our species-being, then work is to that extent alienating.
