The Great Barbarism of our Day

imagesIn a world bereft of objective value, nothing is good in itself. People and things are judged valuable only if they are deemed beneficial for something else. The only “real” value is economic. As a result we’re witnessing the systematic degradation of everything. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is good per se.

Will Heaven Be Boring? Near Death Experiences and our Imagination

unknown-5Belief in the afterlife is a staple feature of all cultures throughout human history. Just what the afterlife will be like is a question of considerable debate. In the Christian tradition, heaven is said to be the deepest longing of the human heart; hell the consequence of a life of self-love and sin.

C. S. Lewis on the Practical Value of Friendship

imagesA mark of the digital age is a dearth of genuine friendship. Relationships today are largely mediated through pixels and measured by the length of a Snapchap streak or the number of Facebook “likes” received. The plague of superficiality spreads as we forget how to look others in the eye, carry on a conversation, and simply be together. The end result is an epidemic of loneliness.

The Unforgivable Sin of Philosophy?

unknown-3A standard, albeit potted, way of characterizing the dominant modes of thought for ancient, modern, and postmodern intellectuals is in terms of the relationship between being and knowing. The concept of “being” has to do with metaphysics: what kinds of things exist and how do they relate? The concept of “knowing” has to do with epistemology: what can we know and how can we know it? For the ancient thinker, as the story goes, issues of being were primary and knowing secondary. In the modern era, this relationship was reversed: knowing determines being and not vice-versa. With the so-called postmodern era—an era I think has largely passed—neither being nor knowing are primary: rather our shared use of language determines what we can know, which in turn determines what there is.

In Defense of the Liberal Arts

unspecifiedThe purpose of the university, in the good old days, was to make fully functioning human beings. Alas today the purpose of the university is to created human doings, automaton who possess marketable skills—but are incapable of participating in a thoughtful conversation. The university, traditionally a place for the cultivation of intellectual and moral virtue, is today largely driven by market factors which place a priority on sports over academics, image over substance, and research—especially grant money research—over teaching. Only the fittest students and professors survive.