A few days ago at work, I grabbed lunch with another intern. While our conversation meandered from law to politics to philosophy, it...

Whenever I write articles for this blog, I am tempted to open with anecdotes from Directed Studies, a program focusing on great books in...

In the introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Karl Marx famously characterized religion as ‘das...

In the second week of Directed Studies, a yearlong course at Yale that gives a survey of the history of Western Thought, we read...

About a month ago I went to a talk by Shelly Kagan, Clark Professor of Philosophy at Yale, on the moral status of robots. The room was...

I. Introduction Moral responsibility is a concept that permeates our regulations, legal systems, and general manner of thinking....

Blaise Pascal is one of the most famous, mathematicians, philosophers and theologians in the Western Canon. Following a period of...

It can be no secret that the term ‘fascist’ has become a particularly cantankerous word in modern politics. Under the auspices of...

For nearly its entire existence, cultural relativism has been a monolithic building block of the study of anthropology. According to John...

Euthanasia is the deliberate ending of someone’s life with the intention to end suffering. The word euthanasia itself stems from the...

Recently, Karl Lagerfeld had a go at what is in his view a form of moral hypocrisy. He argues that ‘In a meat-eating world, wearing...

Intro For most of human existence in organised society, most societies have punished the perpetrators of serious crimes with the penalty...

An animal is struck by a severe disease in the wilderness. The disease is non-curable and terminal. Being of simple mind, the animal...

Editors Note: This essay was originally written for John Locke Institute Essay Competition Intro David Hume, in an infamous footnote in...

Intro Abortion is a topic that has brought about moral acrimony like few others in recent times. Many Conservatives have compared...

Over the past few decades, there has been an increasing awareness of and support for the repatriation of colonial artefacts to their...

On April 8th, 2013, almost exactly eight years ago at the time of writing, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died of a...

Editor's Note: In this essay, in a somewhat different tone to some of my other blog posts, I decided that it would be interesting to...

Following a general disappearance from Anglo-American philosophy during the 19th Century, virtue ethics have experienced a broad...

(Figures referenced are placed at the bottom of the article) Article 25 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights...

In the opening pages of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s bestseller, ‘Freakonomics’, they state that ‘economics is, at root, the study...

I Intro The origin of the authority of scripture is highly disputed. To many, it may not have any authority at all. To determine its just...

Taoism emerged around 500 BCE during the Zhou Dynasty in China. Rather than concerning with state duties and administrations as a great...

For nearly 1500 years prior to the Enlightenment, as well as during it, Christianity held a stranglehold on Western philosophy throughout...

Introduction: The Nature Of The Beast Demonism, the theory that it is necessary for an individual to commit atrocities to help, found, or...

When driving under the influence of alcohol, drivers are unable to fully control themselves, and lose a significant degree of motor...