A Thinking Reed

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

Social and ethical issues

  • A dual-aspect political theory?

    I started reading Thomas Nagel’s Equality and Partiality, on the subject of moral and political philosophy. Those familiar with Nagel’s work will note a recurring theme concerning the different, and often apparently irreconcilable, views of ourselves that we’re compelled to take by personal experience and more reflective, impersonal stance. For instance, from my own first-person Read more

  • All creatures great and small

    I just noticed that the Humane Society has put together a rather nice page on Animals and Religion and produced a 25-minute documentary called “Eating Mercifully.” The HSUS’s approach to religion is similar to its approach to the public at large: it assumes that principles of compassion and merciful treatment are already embedded in our Read more

  • One world?

    I recently read Peter Singer’s One World: The Ethics of Globalization, which was originally delivered as a series of lectures in 2000. I had a longish post in the hopper about national loyalties and obligations to strangers, but it didn’t really go anywhere so I junked it. Suffice it to say, I don’t always agree Read more

  • Bittman on our meat-guzzling way of life

    Readers of the previous post might be interested in this talk from Mark Bittman: “What’s wrong with what we eat.” His story will be familiar to people who follow these issues, but it’s a good primer. Bittman makes a big deal out of the meat issue (rightly, IMO) and the impact that our levels of Read more

  • 2008: The year in book blogging

    I’m not going to provide a best books of the year list, but here’s a sampling of those that got their hooks into me enough to generate some more or less in-depth blogging (needless to say, most of these weren’t published in 2008): Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Power “Empire of dysfunction” Evelyn Pluhar, Beyond Read more

  • Pre-Christmas odds and ends

    The ATR household is off to visit family for the better part of the next week, so blogging will be light–well, even lighter than usual. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve been reading ’round the Web lately: Christopher has several posts on l’affaire Rick Warren that are, as usual, very much worth your time. (See Read more

  • November/December reading notes

    Also known as the lazy man’s book review, or capsule reflections on books I might not get around to posting on at greater length: Ecology at the Heart of Faith by Denis Edwards and Nature Reborn: The Ecological and Cosmic Promise of Christian Theology by H. Paul Santmire A Catholic (Edwards) and a Lutheran (Santmire) Read more

  • Blogs of Christmas past

    Since content will likely be light this coming week, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to offer up some representative posts from the previous four Decembers since I started blogging, as a kind of retrospective. (Note: some of these originally appeared on my first blog, “Verbum Ipsum,” but have been imported to WP; Read more

  • The evil empire–a little less evil

    Starbucks is going all fair trade in the UK. (via) (I don’t really think Starbucks is evil; but this still seems like a good thing–though I realize there’s debate over the effectiveness of fair trade programs.) Read more

  • Assorted links with no particular unifying theme

    –Lynn on why some people are pro-choice on abortion but anti-gay marriage and the various meanings of “sodomy” –Matt Yglesias on DC Statehood (bonus: a couple of nifty images of US flags with 51 stars from Yglesias commenters) –Humane Society CEO Wayne Pacelle recently appeared on the Kojo Nnamdi show, an excellent program on DC’s Read more