Keyword: aristotle
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Worthy Causes I grew up in a Protestant church that believed in a literal interpretation of the King James Bible. Since there is no mention in the Bible of Dec. 25, the church refused to make Christmas a religious observance. Baldwin pianos and Hammond organs were verboten for the same reason. In that they are probably right, since Christmas was adapted to a pagan festival. There is no written record of when the Christ child was born. Nevertheless, that didn't stop my family from observing Christmas, since, like most families with small children, Christmas was more about Santa Claus than...
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The Delusion of Darwinian Natural Law Marc D. GuerraIn a short, inconspicuous paragraph in the conclusion to the first edition of On the Origin of Species, Darwin speculates that "in the distant future … psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation." One hundred and forty years later, Darwin's eerie prediction about the revolutionary effect of his work on human beings' self-understanding seems all too prophetic. After a century of dissemination, the once-novel theory of evolution is widely accepted as established scientific fact. Given the quasi-religious hold...
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Modern liberalism, even as its philosophers hold that no act is objectively sinful, treats hypocrisy as a serious sin. Why? If nothing is sinful, why is hypocrisy sinful? Hypocrisy is sinful -- that is, damaging to the soul -- if the moral principles the hypocrite voices then violates are true. But liberals tell us those principles aren't true, that humans can depart from them without damage to their character. So what's the moral problem with violating a moral code liberals consider false in the first place? Hypocrisy is a moral problem, but liberals can't reach that conclusion on the basis...
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According to Aristotle, the wise man strives always for moderation. In art and in life, he argued, “The Golden Mean is best.” Medieval theologians agreed, noting that temperance, one of the seven cardinal virtues, requires moderation in all things. In politics especially, moderation is an important virtue. Barry Goldwater was wrong. Extremism in the defense of liberty may in fact be a vice: it may destroy the very liberty it claims to be defending. One of the great strengths of America is that, through most of our history, we’ve avoided political extremes, choosing the path of moderation. In the first...
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In our capacity as political scientists, historians, or philosophers we all have had occasion at one time or another to engage in debate with ideologists – whether communists or intellectuals of a persuasion closer to home. And we have all discovered on such occasions that no agreement, or even an honest disagreement, could be reached, because the exchange of argument was disturbed by a profound difference of attitude with regard to all fundamental questions of human existence – with regard to the nature of man, to his place in the world, to his place in society and history, to his...
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<p>Berkeley, the first city to ban Styrofoam and wood-fired pizza ovens, could become the first to enact Aristotle's ancient law of logic -- that every entity is equal to itself. In a philosophical effort to come up with a city law that no one could ever break, conceptual artist Jonathon Keats wants Berkeley to legally acknowledge Aristotle's law, commonly expressed as A=A.</p>
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Who says education has improved in 2000 years? You couldn’t prove it by this man. ACHIEVMENT For the excellence of an achievement is not the same as that of a possession: the possession that we prize most is that which is most valuable, e.g. gold; but the achievement is the one that is great and splendid (because the contemplation of such a thing excites one's administration, and magnificence is an object of administration), and magnificence is an achievement is excellence on a grand scale. - Aristotle, Ethics. c.334-23 B.C. ACTION Just as at the Olympic Games it is not the...
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An excerpt from "Culture Wars Invade the Lives of Boys". [full text] ... Christina Hoff Sommers, a former philosophy professor turned popular writer, is the author of the most intense salvo: The War against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men (Simon and Schuster, 2000; $25). Now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Sommers throws down the gauntlet from the book's opening pages. She writes that it has fallen to her to tell "how we are turning against boys and forgetting a simple truth: that the energy, competitiveness and corporal daring of normal, decent males is...
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[CAPITALISMMAGAZINE.COM] How do you get young Middle Eastern men to fly a jet full of Americans into the side of a skyscraper? You tell them their creator will love them for it and reward them beyond their wildest dreams. But they have to believe in such a creator first. To instill this belief you educate them from a very young age. You tell them things like: in death, the true believer lives. In life, the true believer, when directed by god, kills unbelievers. In both death and life, a true believer's happiness is fulfilled by a grateful and all-powerful god....
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