“The eternal and infinite being we call ‘God’ or ‘Nature’ necessarily acts as it does,” writes Spinoza. But what does this mean? (more...)

A poem by Professor Michael Hauskeller. (more...)

For Epicurus, pleasure is nothing but the absence of pain. Pain can further be subdivided into pain of the body and trouble in the soul. (more...)

Richard Taylor (1919–2003) thought that it’s creativity that makes us feel happy and fulfilled. According to Taylor, a life lived without exercising one’s creativity is a wasted life. (more...)

Erich Fromm points out that capitalism, in order to work, requires a large population of identical consumers with identical taste. (more...)

For Aristotle, happiness is connected to function. Everything in the universe has a function, and a happy human life is one in which we fulfil that function. (more...)

German Romantics, much like their English counterparts, valued spontaneity and naturalness, in part as a reaction to the beginning loss of the natural world due to industrialisation and urbanisation. (more...)

Erich Fromm and Richard Taylor on the perils of capitalism. (more...)

The Turing Test wanted to provide a way to judge whether computers are intelligent, but pretending to be human in a chat is not the same as being intelligent. (more...)

Technology, at least in the way that it is deployed in capitalism contradicts the essential simplicity of the ideal Epicurean life. (more...)

In utilitarianism, stealing would only be immoral if it leads to bad consequences for the stakeholders. For Kant, it would always be immoral. (more...)

Deontological ethics is about actions that must be performed (or must not be performed) because the actions themselves are intrinsically good or bad. (more...)

Love is characterised by: 1. Exclusivity; 2. Constancy; 3. Reciprocity; 4. Uniqueness; and 5. Irrepleaceability of the beloved. (more...)

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that we can recognise the highest good because we do everything else for its sake, while we never say that we pursue the highest good for any other thing’s sake. For Aristotle, the highest good is the happy life. (more...)

Peter Singer’s Drowning Child thought experiment: If, on the way to the office, we saw a child drowning in a pond, would we think that we have to save it? (more...)

Whistleblowing might be wrong because it violates one’s obligations to one’s friends, relatives, co-workers or superiors. (more...)

For St Augustine, the pleasure inherent in any activity is good as long as the activity is performed because of its intended function. (more...)

For Confucius, one’s personal loyalties to family, friends, co-workers and superiors are more important than the rules of some abstract ethical theory. (more...)

The theory of evolution changed our understanding of our own humanity, but overlooks that we are able to act against our instincts and to be truly free. (more...)

Modern ecological ethics reaches back to Aristotle and his idea that the flourishing of any one thing is dependent on the flourishing of everything else. (more...)

Aristotle on living a life well through exercising one’s virtues. (more...)

For Aristotle, the moral development of a person progresses in three stages: from akrates, to enkrates, to sophron or wise person. (more...)

A rant about the ontological commitment of the existential quantifier. (more...)

In Plato’s Symposion, the doctor Eryximachos says that love is the harmony of opposites. This resonates with beliefs in the traditional medicine of many cultures, as well as with our concept of a “balanced” person. (more...)

September 26: Martin Heidegger’s Birthday (1889-1976) (more...)

In Plato’s Symposium, Plato defines love as the desire for the eternal possession of the good. (more...)

Did you know that singer Olivia Newton-John is the granddaughter of the famous physicist Max Born, one of the two people who claimed to have discovered the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics? (more...)

John Horton Conway (1937-2020), mathematician, inventor of the “Game of Life” simulation of cellular automata. (more...)

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), socialist revolutionary, once said: “Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.” (more...)

Surveillance, instead of forcing citizens to behave more ethically, in reality undermines the essence of morality. According to Immanuel Kant as well as the Bible, the free human choice is the basis for all moral behaviour. (more...)

Aristotle distinguishes four causes which determine the nature and purpose of every thing: the “material”, the “formal”, the “efficient” and the “final” or “teleological” causes. (more...)