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...)

Thales of Miletus is generally cited as one of the first philosophers, although his contributions extended to many sciences and even to business endeavors. (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...)

Kant’s ethics is based on the value of one’s motivation and two so-called Categorical Imperatives, or general rules that must apply to every action. (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...)

Love is a very complex phenomenon that encompasses sex, friendship, self-love and selflessness, as well as God’s love in many religious traditions. (more...)

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

Without Bill Murray many movies of the past 44 years would have been a lot less memorable. (more...)

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

The French Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen is a remarkable document, not only because its main ideas found their way into many national constitutions and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (more...)

Mother Teresa, born August 26, was a divisive Saint who devoted her life to the care of the poorest in Calcutta, India. (more...)

Being right is a relative thing. No one illustrates this better than today’s celebrant: Galileo’s telescope, presented to the world on August 25, 1609. (more...)

In 1456, Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany, printed the first Bible with his new printing press using moveable type. In time, this led to an explosion of books and literacy and to the world as we know it today. (more...)

August 22 marks the birthday of both the first Geneva Convention (1864) and science fiction writer Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) (more...)