Paul Gregory on How to End Packages and Bundling. A major practical problem with democracy is how opinion can be organised and measured so that something resembling a general will, or a majority, or a consensus, can be identified. How can one possibly establish all the relevant opinions and values people hold? How can we …
Michael Philips argues that the possibility of empathy is incompatible with the idea that the world is physical through and through. A few years ago I suffered from a short spell of hyperthyroidism. Excessive levels of thyroxin flooded my bloodstream. My energy kicked up in an uncomfortably jerky, speedy, edgy way. I had no patience …
Ramsey McNabb on knowing how other people feel. Tragically, Hector’s father is involved in a car accident and dies. Hector is devastated. An acquaintance, Anita, tells him that she knows just how he feels. Angered at her presumption, he responds, “No, you don’t know how I feel!” After all, how could she know how he …
Graham Haydon thinks about what it is to think about moral education. If we could categorise and quantify all the thinking devoted to education, we would find that the great majority takes for granted certain assumptions about the goals of educational policy and the means by which they are to be achieved. But it is …
Carolyn Suchy-Dicey considers the dilemma of teaching moral autonomy. Last night while working for a wedding, a girl I will call Sarah seemed her normal, bubbly self. She was given a simple task, one we do for every event, but had some difficulties performing it properly. Her response was to yell, blame, shove, and walk …
A five-minute tour of some political thinkers and ideas by Anja Steinbauer. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), one of the greatest political thinkers of the Western tradition, declared that “man is by nature a political animal.” However, there is a tension between two forces which move us; the Greeks termed them ethos – morality and kratos – …
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Stuart Greenstreet on why global warming won’t be stopped. Plato was deeply pessimistic about the ability of the human race to govern itself. In The Republic he has Socrates say: “Unless either philosophers rule in our cities or those whom now we call rulers and potentates engage genuinely and adequately in philosophy, and political power …
John Capps argues that Senator McCarthy’s anti-Communist purges helped positivism to triumph over pragmatism in American universities in the 1950’s. The McCarthy era still casts a long shadow over American politics and culture. From 1953 to 1954 Senator Joseph McCarthy summoned hundreds of witnesses before the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations with the stated intention …
Alex Carley looks briefly at the role of reason in the euthanasia debate. Rarely is philosophy so pertinent to everyday life as in the case of voluntary euthanasia. In a world which some believe to be overpopulated, there are people fighting for what they believe is their right to die. Yet, for many of us, …
Walter Ott doesn’t think so. Mrs White devoted much of her working life to her business, a small laundromat. Upon her death, her son Jimmy wonders what to do with it. Would he be harming Mrs White if he were to sell it? Does he have some kind of duty to keep it going, no …