What is free will? The words ‘Free will’ can start a firefight. As with most ideas of great controversy, it has nearly as many definitions as its controversy has contenders. Calvinists have one definition, Arminians another, other Calvinists a third,
AI is all the rage nowadays. Rage about its use, and rage to use it. Artificial intelligence is the wave of the future, some proclaim. Others call it a dud. The fact is, it’s not quite either. It’s a potentially
As per last week, the universal man does exist, for we must have a universal which the word ‘man’ refers to. The universal man does not exist, inasmuch as (contra liberalism) men are not interchangeable without regard for their history
Some define liberalism as being founded on a belief in a ‘universal man’, some common essential which, unless obscured by its refusal, is present in all persons. On this ground, liberalism asserts, no actual difference is discernable between Englishmen, Pakistanis,
The problem of evil is old and tired and jagged, the sort of thing philosophers regularly cut themselves on quite badly, then go on bleeding all over history. Then along comes an ordinary Christian and deals with it in practice,
Tautologies, we all know, are useless; definitions, meanwhile, are useful. Yet a definition, once we get down to the brass tacks of it, is very nearly a tautology; both sides of the equation, ideally, have not only the same meaning
This is Part Two of a series (I, II) on the origination of fascism and communism within liberalism. Last week we considered the nature of philosophical-intellectual lineages, introduced the two liberalisms, and defined fascism and communism. We pick up this
I read Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism a few months ago, and the whole time I read the book, one problem with Goldberg’s position plagued me: his insistence on classical liberalism (the English version, I think, in fairness to him) as
The world of the Medieval Scholastics was shaken by a great question: nominalist, conceptualist, or realist? To many of us, these terms are strange or oddly placed. ‘Realism’ seems understandable, but what about the other two? Conceptualism and nominalism are