Philosophy

The Secret Purpose of Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’2
- Philosophy, Featured, History, Literature
- March 13, 2024
The most common view today of 15th-century Florentine philosopher-statesman Niccolò Machiavelli is that he was evil. Dubbed the founder of modern political philosophy, his evil reputation comes from his most famous work, The Prince, which openly endorses treachery, deceit, and backstabbing as political tactics. So, it’s no wonder that most people’s idea of Machiavelli is
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‘The Great Divorce’: What C.S. Lewis Would Say About Modern ‘Love’4
- Culture, Featured, Literature, Philosophy
- March 8, 2024
The plot of C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce is straightforward. The narrator, who strongly resembles Lewis, boards a bus along with some others traveling from Hell to Heaven. Once they’ve arrived at their destination, the quarrelsome passengers disembark, become Ghosts, and find themselves scarcely able to bear the reality of their physical environment—even the unbending
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Why Solzhenitsyn’s Line Between Good and Evil Matters 5
- Philosophy
- March 8, 2024
We want to think that the line between good and evil is clear and that individuals fall into one camp or another. In The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 1, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate
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‘The New York Times,’ the 1619 Project, and ‘Quid Est Veritas’?4
- Philosophy, Featured
- February 27, 2024
Many of us have heard of the 1619 Project and its attempt to reinvent American history. 1619, according to The New York Times writers, is the year that the first slaves arrived on American soil. And since, according to the 1619 Project, unjust slave labor initiated and sustained the socioeconomic structure of America, 1619 is
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Returning to First Things to Save Civilization 7
- Culture, Philosophy
- February 19, 2024
In this most rare and radiant of Wisconsin February’s, with record-high temperatures and ample sunshine, my wife has been tapping trees and making maple syrup. I applaud her efforts, and I gratefully ingest the fruit of her labors. The sap has been running steadily, recklessly, almost, overflowing the pails she uses, turning their sides sleek
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What Did Nietzsche Mean by ‘God is Dead’?3
- Culture, Philosophy, Religion
- February 5, 2024
In The Gay Science (1882), Friedrich Nietzsche’s character of the madman had proclaimed, “God is dead.” The Time cover for April 8, 1966, turned this proclamation into a provocative question for a world where religious practice was waning: But, though most people have heard of Nietzsche’s “God is dead” claim, there are few who understand
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