Adding philosophical depth to anything and everything
We are all individuals embedded in a world. We each have a certain degree of freedom that is limited by the reality that we all share a physical world and a human society. Philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Max Weber, Erving Goffman, and Jeff Malpas and sociologists such as Pierre […]
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Why do injustices continue to happen? We say it is because of prejudice but what is prejudice? It is difficult to fight something that we cannot define and one of the important tasks in philosophy is understanding what is behind social phenomena like prejudice. Recognition is the key.
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Listen here: Welcome to the Insert Philosophy Here podcast. Inserting the principles of philosophy into real life. In this week’s episode of the Insert Philosophy Here podcast’s philosophical look on current world events, the dominant world event, of course, is still Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The previous episode, I […]
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Putin’s invasion of Ukraine brings up a vexing philosophical question: when is war morally defensible? A small but ancient part of political philosophy is known as “just war theory.” There are two aspects to just war theory. One explores the question of when it is just for a nation or […]
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I’ve taught university courses since 1998. Someone born that year could have just graduated from a university. Chances are good that such a person has graduated with a heavy load of student loan debt. That is more than unfortunate; that is morally wrong. Joe Biden promised that when he became […]
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Social recognition among individuals and groups is what keeps together communities. Without it, struggles for justice and freedom are impossible. All struggles for justice include the struggle for the authority and power to claim recognition. Excerpt from the book, Rethinking Misrecognition and Struggles for Recognition: Critical Theory Beyond Honneth. Used […]
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In my previous article on German philosopher Max Scheler, I briefly summarized his philosophy of persons. He optimistically saw the possibilities for humanity if we could recognize the positive value of the individual person. Scheler was also able to see the negative possibilities of human interaction. In 1914, near the […]
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Largely underestimated is the significant influence that John Calvin has had on culture in the United States. Perhaps only John Locke has had more philosophical influence on the American Zeitgeist than has Calvin. To understand America and its uniqueness, you need to understand Calvin’s unique ideology and how his Calvinism […]
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Siloization – ˈsī-lō-ə-ˈzā-shən : the process of isolating a group apart from others especially in ways that hinder communication and cooperation In business jargon, “silo teams” refer to situations in which teams or departments don’t communicate with each other and don’t know what each other are doing. Almost always, this […]
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“Generally speaking, violence always rises out of impotence. It is the hope of those who have no power to find a substitute for it and this hope, I think, is in vain. Violence can destroy power, but it can never replace it.” – Hannah Arendt It’s an old adage that […]
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