Flip Spagnoli on No Tolerance for Intolerance
Unlimited tolerance — tolerance even of intolerance — destroys itself, or at least helps those who want to destroy it. A tolerant society disappears if it tolerates certain things for too long....
View ArticleJoseph Ratzinger Asks, But What If It Is True?
The cross was not God’s last word in Jesus Christ. The tomb did not hold him fast: he is risen, and God speaks to us through the Risen One. The rich glutton in hell asked that Lazarus might appear to...
View ArticleJane Davis on a Separate Truth for Each of Us
The other thing that I have become increasingly aware of is that there is not just a single version of events called the truth. Life is not nearly as simple as that. Each of us brings to the table our...
View ArticleKacey Musgraves on Doing Good Is Hard, So Do Your Own Thing
If you save yourself for marriage You’re a bore If you don’t save yourself for marriage You’re a hor … rible person If you won’t have a drink Then you’re a prude But they’ll call you a drunk As soon as...
View ArticleThe Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays
The Epistemology of Disagreement brings together essays from a dozen philosophers on the epistemic significance of disagreement; all but one of the essays are new. Questions discussed include: When (if...
View ArticleFacebook on Gender
Agender; Androgyne; Androgynous; Bigender; Cis; Cis Female; Cis Male; Cis Man; Cis Woman; Cisgender; Cisgender Female; Cisgender Male; Cisgender Man; Cisgender Woman; Female to Male; FTM; Gender Fluid;...
View ArticlePaul McHugh on the Impossibility of Changing Sex
At the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered. “Sex change” is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or...
View ArticleE. J. Lowe on Progress in Metaphysics and Philosophy
There is a widespread assumption amongst non-philosophers, which is shared by a good many practising philosophers too, that ‘progress’ is never really made in philosophy, and above all in metaphysics....
View ArticleE.J. Lowe on Ontology, Partial Truth, and Reality
Why cannot each special science, be it empirical or a priori, address its own ontological questions on its own behalf, without recourse to any overarching ‘science of being’? The short answer to this...
View ArticleW. E. B. Dubois on Truth Transcending Color
I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that...
View ArticleOn Truth
Having outlined a theory of bullshit and falsehood, Harry G. Frankfurt turns to what lies beyond them: the truth, a concept not as obvious as some might expect. Our culture’s devotion to bullshit may...
View ArticleCosmopolitanism
AAppiah, a Princeton philosophy professor, articulates a precise yet flexible ethical manifesto for a world characterized by heretofore unthinkable interconnection but riven by escalating...
View ArticleFear of Knowledge
The idea that science is just one more way of knowing the world and that there are other, radically different, yet equally valid ways, has taken deep root in academia. In Fear of Knowledge, Paul...
View ArticleOs Guinness on the Impossibility of Objectivity
By the very nature of the problem, no one stands outside the issues and speaks with complete detachment, objectivity, and neutrality. Certainly I do not. None of us speaks from nowhere; that would be...
View ArticleBarack Obama on Racism and Perspective
Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and...
View ArticleStephen King on the Afterlife
I’m not sure there is an afterlife. OK. If there is one, here’s what I think it is. I think it’s whatever you think you’re going to get. Those suicide bombers, if they really believe that they are...
View ArticleCornel West on Truth as … huh?
I think in many ways it is the ultimate question: What is truth? How do we understand truth and what are the ways in which we wrestle with truth? And I believe that Theodor Adorno was right when he...
View ArticleR.C. Sproul on Protagoras and Humanism
Protagoras, probably the most influential Sophist in Athens, is frequently described by modern historians as the "father of humanism." His famous maxim, "Homo mensura," declares that "man is the...
View ArticleEdward R. Murrow on Truth
Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.
View ArticleTruth, Contemporary Philosophy, and the Postmodern Turn
It is difficult to think of a topic of greater concern than the nature of truth. Indeed, truth and the knowledge thereof are the very rails upon which people ought to live their lives. And over the...
View ArticleBret Stephens on the Many Angles of the Truth
[T]he truth is neither relative nor illusory nor a function of the prevailing structure of power — but also … the truth is many-sided; … none of us has a lock on it; and … we can best approach it...
View ArticleGeorge Orwell (as O’Brien) on External Reality and Postmodernism
You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see...
View ArticleArgument from Ignorance
Because something is not known to be true, it is assumed to be false.
View ArticleGoogle on Not Being Evil
Don’t be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short...
View ArticleTruth And Tolerance
Is truth knowable? If we know the truth, must we hide it in the name of tolerance? Cardinal Ratzinger engages the problem of truth, tolerance, religion and culture in the modern world. Describing the...
View ArticleJonah Goldberg on Cafeteria Religion
I also detest the tendency of Americans, Westerners, or “Moderns” to boast of how they’ve customized their religious views to fit their lifestyles. “I don’t believe in organized religion, but I’m a...
View ArticleTrue to Life
Why does truth matter, when politicians so easily sidestep it and intellectuals scorn it as irrelevant? Why be concerned over an abstract idea like truth when something that isn’t true — for example, a...
View ArticleDallas Willard on the Fellowship of Truth Seeking
Finding real truth is the point of reference we share with all human beings. No one can live without truth. Though we may disagree about which particular things are true or false, allegiance to truth —...
View Article
