Over cocktails a few weeks ago, I was discussing literature with friends. Conversation inevitably swung to which book had the strongest claim as “the Great American Novel.” Huck Finn immediately sprang to my mind, which I quickly changed. It’s a tie, I said. Gone with the Wind and To Kill a Mockingbird. A no-brainer. Neither
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The father of modern criminology, the 19th century Italian sociologist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), believed that criminality was genetically determined. “Born criminals” could be detected by the presence of a long list of “stigmata” such as an asymmetrical faces, sloping forehead, large ears or even left-handedness (very sinister!). Criminals were atavistic biological throwbacks, reversions to an
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Do you have low self-esteem? If you are like many people, your immediate reaction is probably, no. After all, you don’t beat yourself up mentally and emotionally, you don’t think that you are incapable, and you don’t feel worthless. Well, these are all good things, but they don’t necessarily prove that low self-esteem isn’t a
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I recently wrote how Ben Franklin had a strong aversion to church services, despite the fact that he believed in God. This posed a practical problem to him. Franklin took morality seriously and he found himself wondering how he could possibly complete his “bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection” minus the structure
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Contrary to the claims of some notable thinkers, among them the late Christopher Hitchens, Benjamin Franklin was not an atheist. He was raised as a Presbyterian and discussed his faith at length in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, the unfinished work Franklin wrote from 1771 to 1790. Here’s what he had to say on his
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American democracy is feared to be under threat. Comparisons with the 1930s are rife, and Donald Trump is now routinely called a potential Hitler or Mussolini. But some of Trump’s Republican critics have found a different source of inspiration: the great philosophers of the Enlightenment, who have a good deal to say on the subject of
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