The Workers in the Vineyard is one of Jesus’s longest parables, and probably involves more moral concepts than any other: For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 13: Solidarity
Is Jesus's moral philosophy broad in scope, such that it includes a political morality, or narrower, consisting only of private virtues? This is the question we began debating in the previous installment. There, we considered two reasons why people may advocate the "narrow" view: clinging to an image of Jesus as presented in right-wing ideology, and the false dichotomy that Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 12: Personal or Political?
Jesus’s call to common living (the sharing of all money and possessions) is read by many as a political conviction about how society should be. And while this has not been the traditional interpretation of the Christian establishment, it is a popular means of arguing that Jesus intended his moral philosophy to be applied at a socioeconomic, as well as personal, level. In the Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 11: Poverty
Some of Jesus’s teachings go beyond the virtue of nonpossessiveness and become notably specific about what to do with wealth once you have detached yourself from it: give it away to the poor (Hill, 63). But was Jesus espousing a political philosophy or merely a private morality? Was Jesus a communist? And if Jesus valued being poor, did he do so as a means to an end, or as Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 10: More Mammon
In the last installment we revisited the parable of the Dishonest Manager (Luke 16:1–13), which we looked at in part 3 in relation to Jesus’s shocking example of a man who steals his boss’s money as an image to depict "the kingdom of God." But more shocking is the character of the king in the parable of the Ten Pounds (Luke 19:11–27), who at the end of the story, apparently has Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 9: Mammon
As it’s been nine months since the last installment of this project, let's recap: Parts one to four were primarily concerned with the foundational, regulative virtue of prudence, and the last four parts continued to identify ways in which individuals can improve themselves. These were virtues of humility, nonjudgmentalism, and nonpossessiveness. We explored these three virtues Continue Reading …
Entering the Stoic World, Part 2: Metaphysics
This post examines the metaphysics or philosophy of nature behind the Stoic views on community and detachment described in Part 1, and how this metaphysics changed in the later centuries of the school's history. Before going into detail, it will be helpful to contextualize the Stoics' metaphysics within their broader tradition of philosophy. Despite preferring their porticoes Continue Reading …
Entering the Stoic World, Part 1: Cynicism 2.0
Monday the 2nd to Sunday the 8th of November 2015 is the fourth annual international Live Like A Stoic Week. The organizers, Stoicism Today, have provided lots of resources on mental exercises and principles of virtue to assist you in the endeavor, along with psychological reasons for aspiring to this practice in the modern world. So, why I am here? To provide some less Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 8: More Possessiveness
This part continues straight on from the previous one, exploring the virtue of nonpossessivenes in relation to Jesus's parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13–21), but also takes a look at some similarities between this virtue and ideas from other ancient traditions. Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 7: Possessiveness
What is the most repeated phrase in the Bible? “Do not worry.” In this part, we continue from where we left off with Jesus's statements on justice, analyzing his approach to anxiety. In the previous part we saw how one section of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:19–34) can be applied to one common form of anxiety—negative self-image—and here we will turn to worries about Continue Reading …
Papal Environmentalism’s “Ecological Debt”
If you needed proof that Pope Francis's recent encyclical letter on care for the environment, Laudato si', was not only seminal but radical, it would be that it is now being published by Verso, a leading publisher of leftist continental philosophy. It is sad, then, that rather than focusing on the ideas themselves, all of the attention being given to this event is to Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 6: Judgment
Justice The philosopher Don Cupitt highlights that in the parables, “Jesus sharply criticizes and even ridicules ordinary people's ideas of justice and equity.” (2009, 78) Part of this radicalism, the Catholic Church teaches, is that “Jesus identifies with the poor of every kind and makes active love towards them the condition for entering the kingdom.” (1994, §544) Another Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 5: Inwardness
One day in Synagogue a rabbi and a cantor and a janitor were preparing for the Day of Atonement. The rabbi beat his breast and bowed his head and said aloud, "I am nothing, I am nothing." The cantor beat his breast and bowed his head and said aloud, "I am nothing, I am nothing." The janitor beat his breast and bowed his head and said aloud, "I am nothing, I am Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 4: Imprudence?
The Unjust Judge In a certain city there was a judge... [and] In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, "Grant me justice against my opponent." For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, "Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 3: Shocking Images
In the previous part dedicated to prudence, one of the parables I analyzed was "the Assassin" from the noncanonical Gospel of Thomas. The question of why this parable is not in the biblical canon is an intriguing one. It may simply have been invented by the authors of Thomas, but it does not sound unlike Jesus to me. Now, as well as it being the only noncanonical parable of the Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 2: Prudence
Part 1 of this series ended with my arguments that because Jesus was not a systematic philosopher, it would be helpful to elaborate his moral teachings in the framework of an ethical system, and that virtue ethics is the system best suited to this purpose, as many Christians have traditionally thought. Taking up this approach, in Parts 2 to 4 I discuss several of Jesus's Continue Reading …
Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 1: Introduction
Jesus was a philosopher. If you doubt this, I'd like to persuade you by way of his parables, which imply a certain kind of ethical system with several key values. These include, principally, prudence, nonpossessiveness, nonjudgmentalism, humility, inclusion, and forgiveness. This is post is the first of several parts. In future parts, I'll address parables themselves. In Continue Reading …
Virtual Insanity: Social Media with Jacques Lacan
[A post from Peter Hardy, longtime fan and contributor] For a couple of years I have been lurking on PEL's Facebook group, biding my time for the perfect moment to pounce on this blog. Recently I got to thinking about the philosophical ramifications of social media. Especially as we've just been looking at Jacques Lacan, for whom a central concern was to highlight negative Continue Reading …