Author: Kleiner

Christine O’Donnell has certainly managed to keep things interesting in her campaign (witchcraft?).  I am not here interested in defending O’Donnell as a political figure.  But I do want to take up one of the remarks that led to a media sensation.  O’Donnell has been almost universally pilloried for her remarks on masturbation.  She dared to remark that, “Lust in your heart is committing adultery, and you can’t masturbate without lust.”  This remark has led her to be mocked as naive, puritanical, idiotic, etc.

I want to examine her claim in a serious way.  Continue reading “On the question of lust”

In honor of the recent beatification of John Henry Cardinal Newman, USU philosopher Richard Sherlock will present a lecture on Newman and the Idea of a University.  He will explore Newman’s defense of liberal arts education.

Monday, October 11, 4pm in Main 121.

All are welcome.

There is relatively high per-capita beardedness in our philosophy department.  Ever wonder why?  While I am not sure Hunemann is interested in this defense, this article defends the thesis that “the practice of shaving is alike ridiculous and absurd, and that it violates one of the laws of nature.”  (Hat tip to Mike Linford for the link).

The more I think about the NYC mosque controversy, the more I realize that I just don’t really care.  R.R. Reno gave voice to that feeling in an article this morning.  I particularly liked these passages:

“I’m not interested in denying the specific feelings, worries, or fears, but let’s look at the context. America is an extremely powerful nation with a very robust, vibrant, and remarkably successful culture. Therefore—and this goes to the root of my indifference to the issue—an Islamic Center in New York is irrelevant. Compared to the locomotive of American society, it’s like a penny on a railroad track. […]

Aristotle ranked magnanimity among the virtues that characterize a man who is at once powerful and noble. This virtue involves treating those who are weaker with a certain indulgence. When a servant breaks a vase, a magnanimous soul waves it off. If an underling owes a debt, it is forgiven as a gesture of indifference. “Don’t worry about it,” says the magnanimous person.

Although we often see its fierce side in the news, by and large Islam is weak. It’s not vying for political control or cultural dominance in America, where it’s largely irrelevant. Radical Islam is of course a global threat, but mostly as a power of disintegration rather than a force to be reckoned with. The country currently facing an existential threat from Islam is Pakistan, not America.

We should be magnanimous. Abdul Rauf’s Islamic Center on Park Place may be a good idea or a bad idea. I’m not sure myself. But this seems obvious: in comparison to the very big fact of America, it’s a small idea, and not worth worrying about.”

Andy Martin article called “The Phenomenology of Ugly” on why so many philosophers are ugly and how philosophy can save us from our ugliness.

“It is no coincidence that one of our founding philosophers, Socrates, makes a big deal out of his own ugliness. It is the comic side of the great man. Socrates is (a) a thinker who asks profound and awkward questions (b) ugly. In Renaissance neo-Platonism (take, for example, Erasmus and his account of  “foolosophers” in “The Praise of Folly”) Socrates, still spectacularly ugly, acquires an explicitly Christian logic: philosophy is there — like Sartre’s angelic curls — to save us from our ugliness (perhaps more moral than physical).”