Category: Applied Philosophy
The (Economic?) Case for Babies
I’m in the market for babies and, based on the research, it’s prime time to be having them. Happily married, financially stable, and with a happiness quotient that should make the rich and famous envious, my wife and I are...
A Letter to a Former Student, on the Occasion of a Difficult Day
Newer readers to Mere-O may not know that for two years I worked as an educator, and was blessed to have an incredible set of students. This is a letter I wrote tonight to one of them. I post it...
Fear and Greatness: Why American Citizens Should Worry That the Terror of Terrorism Has Such Little Effect on the Behaviors and Beliefs of Men
Every generation struggles towards a certain self-understanding as its members move from immaturity to adulthood and walk through the trials of growing, thinking, discovering, and confronting responsibility. This path of maturation cannot be trod by a substitute, nor can it...
Old and Relevant: Leviathan
When Thomas Hobbes wrote his Leviathan, the English were in the midst of a series of civil wars, battling their brothers over religious and political issues. Charles I struggled with a Puritan Parliament that, among other things, aimed to build...
Thomas Says: A Recap on Killing
This is the last post in the Thomas Says series on killing. I want to summarize some points Thomas makes in this question of the Summa. First, let’s note the obvious, which hasn’t been noted yet in this series: The...
Thomas Says: What Happens if, Whoops, I Killed You?
This is the second-to-last post summarizing the position on killing laid out by Thomas Aquinas in the Summa. In the concluding post I will pull together a number of points about his position on killing. In this post I will...
Old and Relevant: Plato's Anthropological Principle
Perhaps the most famous dialogue penned by Plato is his far-reaching Republic. In this work he addresses the popular philosophy of his day—a philosophy that was promulgated by a group of teachers known to us as Sophists. The Sophists were...
Old and Relevant: Augustine's City of God
No doubt many of our readers are very familiar with all the quotable (and some unquotable) C. S. Lewis, so they should not be surprised to be reminded that the eminently understandable academician said, “The only palliative is to keep...
Thomas Says: Why You Can (And Should) Kill in Self-Defense, Part 2
In this post, I want to conclude my summary and discussion of Thomas’s reasoning about killing in self-defense by examining the objections to his position that he considers and his replies to those objections. (The first post is here; the...
Thomas Says: Why You Can (And Should) Kill in Self-Defense, Part 1
Fewer topics in Thomas’s moral philosophy have received more attention than his treatment of what has come to be known as double-effect. What is particularly interesting is that Thomas manages to inspire such interest in the space of one paragraph,...