A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Philosophy

  • Thought for the day

    Sorry for the light blogging – work is v. busy. So, in the absence of original content, here’s a quote from an essay by Stephen R.L. Clark called “The Rights of Wild Things,” found in the collection Animals and Their Moral Standing: Stoic theory offers us the ideal of the World State in which men Read more

  • Theologians, take heed!

    The medieval philosophy and theology blog Scholasticus has posted a fantastic quote from philosopher Peter Van Inwagen: One advantage philosophers bring to theology is that they know too much about philosophy to be overly impressed by the fact that a particular philosopher has said this or that. Philosophers of the present day know what Thomas Read more

  • Wolterstorff on religion, liberty, and democracy

    The other day I was browsing my iTunes library and came across this talk by Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff on religious grounds for political liberty and democracy that I had apparently downloaded and then promptly forgot about. So I finally listened to it and it’s quite good. One of the points that Wolterstorff makes which, Read more

  • God and the evolving universe

    I’m glad to see that First Things made Avery Dulles’ article on God and evolution available as this month’s free article. Dulles distinguishes three (non-creationist) approaches to evolution: theistic evolutionism which sees the process of evolution as the outworking of inherent properties of the universe established by God, Intelligent design, which claims that certain particular Read more

  • The anti-utopian

    Nice profile (from a couple of months ago) of the eclectic and eccentric British political thinker John Gray. I’ve always found Gray’s stuff fascinating, and this piece puts his various ideological twists and turns (from Thatcherite neo-liberal, to skeptic of neo-liberalism, to all-around pessimist) in context. (Found here.) Read more

  • From animal rights to cosmic democracy

    The second part of Clark’s essay on “Animals, Ecosystems, and the Liberal Ethic” wades into deeper and more interesting waters. Clark contends that it’s “better to abandon abstract argument, in favour of historical.” Ownership, he maintains, is a social concept and thus the idea that we can do whatever we want with what we “own” Read more

  • Debating the bomb

    Apparently some people never get tired of arguing about whether the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified. Happily, though, there is a link there to G.E.M. Anscombe’s “Mr Truman’s Degree” in its entriety, which I don’t think I’ve been able to find on the web before now. I mean, look: in terms of Read more

  • Could we turn out not to have free will?

    Ramesh Ponnuru wrote a blog post suggesting that some forms of atheism make free will and moral reasoning absurd. Will Wilkinson responded by essentially saying that this is a psuedo-problem (link via Unqualified Offerings). I think Wilkinson doesn’t really acknowledge the source of the worry here. He writes: Here are two things you know: free Read more

  • Respect for life as a communal value

    In yesterday’s Boston Globe, Harvard political philosopher Michael J. Sandel accused President Bush of moral inconsistency with respect to the President’s position on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). According to Sandel, if Bush regards the destruction of embryos as tantamount to killing a full-grown person, then he ought logically call for a Read more

  • God, animals, and rights

    Brandon has a very good post in response to the post below on animal rights. He argues for a view of rights that is grounded in justice and explicitly connected with our status as creatures of God (all of us, that is). He notes that this can be done in a quasi-Lockean manner, seeing all Read more