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Category: Philosophy

  • Memorial Day

    Memorial Day always puts me into an emotional conflict. When does respect for honorable and dutiful sacrifice begin to sanction the ill wills and greed that required it? Do we have any more righteous wars left in us? Did we ever? I find myself thinking that, just like Valentine’s Day, this is another shitty holiday.…

  • The Degrees Of Being

    A Linguistic Framework Metaphysics is primarily concerned with the nature of being. Unfortunately, debate in metaphysics is often frustrated by the circular, imprecise semiotic handed down by ancient philosophers and their hope for obvious symmetry and coherence in the universe. Too frequently, strong minds chase one another around in circles during debate because they do…

  • The Two Sides Of The Same Coin

    Throughout history, the rational, scientific perspective of the world has come into bitter conflict with the predominant theological or idealistic views of the time. Religious leaders have struggled to insure, under the shadows of doubt cast by empirical discoveries and ideas, the continued faith of their followers. Conversely, rational thinkers have striven to convince the…

  • Where Lies the Jina?

    In studying and analyzing various religious sects and traditions, scholars try to draw parallels between faiths in an effort to categorize and relate religions. Using such restrictive methods as a guide, some theological scholars have described the northeastern religion of Jainism as being somewhere between Hinduism and early Buddhism. Geographically, the Jainist faith is between…

  • Energetic Triadism

    Perhaps the most popular points of discussion among philosophers of metaphysics consist of theories on minds and matter. Throughout the course of Western philosophical thought, a number of noteworthy thinkers have endeavored to present their views on these subjects in the hopes of providing insight into the workings of the universe. I also, being a…

  • Foundation Vexation

    Foundationalists have assumed a heavy burden. They seek to reveal the nature of sense experience. The focus of current debate amongst their ranks explores the viability of there existing some given in sense experience. There are those such as M. Schlick who seek some connection to the raw nature of that which the senses interpret.…

  • Hume’s Causal Confusion

    It is every philosopher’s dream to one day divine the meaning of the universe, to reveal the grand scheme of things for all to see. David Hume endeavors towards a goal no less difficult in trying to unlock the connection between simple cause and effect relations. In his novel An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, he…

  • A Dubious Dichotomy

    A society—any society—is formed by entities too weak to bear their environment and who must band together to survive. An embryonic society, struggling forth from non-existence, invariably must address certain key issues of coexistence and then develop mechanisms by which these issues may be met. Providence clearly is the first matter requiring attention, because it…

  • Political Versus Social Emancipation

    History, specifically sociological history, flows with the sweeping currents and cycling eddies of a swift river. Karl Marx, in his essay entitled “On the Jewish Question,” like an intrepid and daring mariner charts and analyzes the flow of sociological history up to his era and then endeavors to cast a line to individuals drowning in…

  • The Melding of Thought

    Around sixth century B.C., the Greek philosophers underwent the crucial intellectual evolution from ignorant myth-makers to rational, analytically thinking men. Thomas H. Greer, in his essay “The Foundations of Western Philosophy,” describes the Greeks’ shift from mythologically based idealists to empirical, deductive thinkers, presenting this shift as a new scope through which they began viewing…