A defense of freedom of discussion can only be made by exploring its very real limits. This is something that Mill himself suggests in On Liberty. Paradoxically, to exercise freedom of opinion, we must have freedom from the “tyranny of opinion.” In fact, Mill tells us, government censorship should not be our primary concern. Social coercion is far more effective at producing Continue Reading …
“The Last Messiah” by Peter Wessel Zapffe: An Overview and Critical Analysis
The Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe is little-known to most Anglophone readers. He was greatly inspired by Arthur Schopenhauer and has been called one of the “bleakest thinkers of all times and places.” Zapffe was also an avid mountaineer and a friend of fellow Norwegian philosopher — and originator of deep ecology — Arne Næss. His only major work is his doctoral Continue Reading …
The Influence of Insomnia on the Life and Work of Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran (1911 – 1995) was a Romanian philosopher born in the Transylvanian village of Rasinari. His early work was written in Romanian, but when he moved to Paris in adulthood, he switched to writing in French. He is an essayist and aphorist, best known for his unrelenting pessimism, lyrical prose, and acerbic wit. His prose is often reminiscent of the other great Continue Reading …
Stop Playing the Parlor Game!
"Cancel Culture." If you’re extremely online or plugged into the discourse at all, your blood pressure probably spiked just upon reading those two words. The topic’s heat-to-light ratio is heavily skewed to heat. A recent open letter in Harper’s, signed by over 150 public intellectuals of the centrist, liberal, and leftist variety, warns of excessive and growing Continue Reading …
Murdoch, Williams, and Why I Miss My Friends
Since becoming furloughed, I’ve taken up gardening to occupy what are becoming increasingly empty days. Discovering the new settings on my lawnmower kept me busy from Sunday through to Wednesday, but I had to stop out of fear for the health of the grass and my own fragile sanity. Time in the garden has been reminding me of Iris Murdoch’s encounter with a kestrel. The writer, Continue Reading …
Lucifer: How a Decent Deity Got a Bad Rap (Part 4)
We've seen that the New Testament exhibits contradictory versions of Satan. By the time of the Church Fathers, though, this indeterminate species of Satan will become extinct, and the Devil will become evil incarnate—Tempter but never Tester. A work that cannot be ignored in this development is The Life of Adam and Eve. According to Forsyth, the original book, now lost, was Continue Reading …
Lucifer: How a Decent Deity Got a Bad Rap (Part 3)
We've seen that there are few traces of the Lucifer we’ve all come to know and loathe in the Old Testament. We will have to dig through the somewhat obscure books of intertestamental literature to find the sketchy outlines of a familiar likeness. The intertestamental period covers the 400 or so years that span the writing of the last book of the Old Testament and the Continue Reading …
Lucifer: How a Decent Deity Got a Bad Rap (Part 2)
In our previous installment, we saw that there never was any Lucifer in the Old Testament. So who, then, was Satan? The word debuts in the Book of Numbers. I say “word” rather than “name” because satan originally was not a name but an office. As Elaine Pagels explains in The Origin of Satan: …the Hebrew term the satan describes an adversarial role. It is not the name of a Continue Reading …
Lucifer: How a Decent Deity Got a Bad Rap (Part 1)
But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most? —Mark Twain Whole episodes of history may very well hinge on a letter—a capital letter that completely altered the understanding of the word it began and signaled a theological shift and an attendant cosmological revision. Before we can appreciate Continue Reading …
Should We Always Seek to Forgive?
Some time ago, five men were jailed for their part in a failed attempt to break into the wine cellar of famed collector Michel-Jack Chasseuil. The men threatened Chasseuil with a Kalashnikov rifle, punched him, and broke a few of his fingers. With the ordeal behind him, Chasseuil commented: "Je pardonne mais je n’excuse pas" (I forgive but I do not excuse). What did Continue Reading …
Myths, Miasma, and Global Warming: Follow Your Nose
Scientists today spend little time learning about prescientific or debunked scientific theories; these are studied by historians and philosophers of science and largely ignored in the hard sciences. However, in his book Is Water H20? Evidence, Realism and Pluralism philosopher of science Hasok Chang calls for a plurality in science aimed at keeping multiple systems of Continue Reading …
Revisiting Philosophy and Media Critique (Why Pretty Much Pop?)
Thanks to all of you that have extended your hearts beyond the core PEL group that you know and love to listen to some of my spin-off shows. I'm well aware that being into songwriting techniques and musicians' personalities as exhibited on Nakedly Examined Music is not at all the same thing as being into philosophy, and that it's mostly just coincidence if a PEL fan might also Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 23: #SimulatorShowdown
The twenty-third and final installment of an ongoing series about the intersection between religion and technology. The previous essay is here. Welcome to the final installment of our series, Saints & Simulators. All along we've been exploring the overlap between modern high technology, traditional religion, and all the contested philosophical battleground in between. Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 22: #ThePerennialPhilosophy
The twenty-second installment of an ongoing series about the intersection between religion and technology. The previous essay is here; the next essay is here. As we sink deeper and deeper into the realm of religion, we find ourselves forced to face up to a core religious dilemma of the modern, globalized world, the same dilemma glossed over by Pascal in his wager: In a world Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 21: #TheProblemOfEvil
The twenty-first installment of an ongoing series about the intersection between religion and technology. The previous essay is here. (Last time, we looked at ancient Greek philosopher Plato, and the Neoplatonic interpretation of his work as focused around illuminating the nature of a single divine ideal.) The reason Plato believes the Great Good Thing exists, and the Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 20: #theOne
Twentieth in an ongoing series on the nexus between religion and technology. The previous essay is here; the next essay is here. Out of the two objections we raised against the concept of God as the "Lonely Dungeon Master" (at the end of our last segment), the conceptual complexity of the Dungeon Master’s world is perhaps the easier one to address. In our outline of the Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 19: #TheLonelyDungeonMaster
Nineteenth in an ongoing series on the nexus between religion and technology. The previous essay is here. In the last essay, we talked about the eerily godlike role played by the simulator in Nick Bostrom's theory that posits we all exist only within a computer simulation, and the fact that, even so, it would be unknowable what kind of god the simulator might be. But is it Continue Reading …
Saints & Simulators 18: #Gaia
Eighteenth in an ongoing series on the nexus between religion and technology. The previous essay is here; the next essay is here. The reason, perhaps, that Professor Nick Bostrom’s demonstration of the probability of God’s existence has received so little attention and notice (especially as compared to the stir and commotion caused by his demonstration of the probability Continue Reading …
Can Meditation Help Enable Human Flourishing?
A few years ago, philosopher Owen Flanagan appeared on the Partially Examined Life podcast to discuss his 2011 book, The Bodhisattva's Brain. In this work, he argues that the Buddhist theory of human flourishing, when rendered in naturalistic terms, should be of interest to many in the West. For Flanagan, implicit in Buddhism is the promise that one can achieve “a stable sense Continue Reading …
Saints and Simulators 17: #PascalReloaded
Seventeenth in an ongoing series about the interface between religion and technology. The previous episode is here. Last week we discussed Newcomb's Paradox, a thought experiment about the rational response to an omniscient being, and also Roko's Basilisk, the frightening digital boogeyman the paradox spawned in the minds of those who pursued the train of thought too far. It Continue Reading …