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Read a book review on the topic here. Sample passage:

Though clearly fond of the bioethicist-physicians, bioethicist-philosophers, and bioethicist-legal scholars they interviewed, Fox and Swazey describe themselves as “critical of what we regard as the field’s deficiencies and blind spots.” They identify these as the use of dumbed-down teaching formulae, an insensitivity to cultural differences, and the tendency of American bioethicists to emphasize “individual rights, and rationality” instead of “community, and common good,” which are the values that Fox and Swazey favor.

Fox and Swazey claim bioethicists would do better if they stuck to policy and economic questions, but the reviewer isn’t sure why.

… according to Business Week:

The financial and climate crises, global consumption habits, and other 21st-century challenges call for a “killer app.” I think I’ve found it: philosophy.

Philosophy can help us address the (literally) existential challenges the world currently confronts, but only if we take it off the back burner and apply it as a burning platform in business.

Here is an interesting article on Obama and his debt (particular in his Nobel acceptance speech) to American protestant theologian/philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr, who Obama has called “one of his favorite philosophers”.

Curious what people think about the split of HASS into two different colleges, with the arts (“fine arts”) becoming a college and the humanities and social sciences remaining (HSS, and I propose we pronounce this “hiss”).

College of HSS:  Humanities: English, History, Languages, Philosophy, Speech and then the Social Sciences: Aerospace Studies, Journalism, Military Science, Sociology, Social Work, Anthropology, Political Science

Caine College of Arts: Arts, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, Music, Theater.

Here is something that has been tumbling around my head:  As a philosopher, I feel closer to the Arts than I do to the Social Sciences. Broadly speaking, let’s say philosophy concerns the good, the true and the beautiful.  The arts concern the beautiful, often the good, and perhaps the true (whether they consider the true is a philosophical debate).  The social sciences, on the other hand, do not consider the beautiful and they do not consider the good.  They don’t even consider the true, except in some reduced sense of the “factual”.  I should say that I don’t mean this in a derogatory way.  There is value in the social science exercise.

Notable exception is political science.  It considers the good and probably the true.  But I am not sure political science is a “social science”.  I majored in “Politics” in college, it was only later that my college renamed the department “political science”.  In fact, I am tempted to advance this claim – the more political inquiry trends toward being a social science the less those engaged in the inquiry consider the good or the true and the more they consider the “merely factual”.

Assuming that the Arts here are not taught in a merely technical way, might we then say that philosophy (and we could make a similar case with the other humanities) are closer to the Arts than to the Social Sciences.  The college reorganization, then, should have been to have a HA college (humanities and arts) and an SS college (social sciences).

Thoughts?  Am I being unfair to any of the disciplines?

One of my past masters from Boston College, Peter Kreeft, will be speaking on “Why is there suffering?” in Salt Lake City at the St Catherine of Siena Newman Center (U of Utah), Jan 31.  Kreeft is a well known popular Catholic apologist, and that is what you will get in the lecture.  Details here.

I am personally very excited.  One could not overstate the enormous influence Peter Kreeft has had on my life.  I took every one of his graduate level courses at BC and can tell you that he is a brilliant lecturer when he has to lecture, but is by far the best Socratic teacher I’ve ever seen.  It is not to much to say that I learned more from him about the art of teaching and the task of philosophy than anyone else.  And, to take off my philosopher’s cap for a moment, he played a greater role than any other mortal in my moving from atheism to Catholicism.

Hope to see you at the lecture!