BBC - Science & Nature - Human Body and Mind - Mind - Morals

A ten minute test of your attitudes about morality and social responsibility, it is claimed. Thanks to Sarah Comeras for finding this.

Plato, Dialogues, vol. 2 - Meno, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Gorgias, Appendix I - Lesser, Hippias, Alcibiades I, Menexenus, Appendix II - Alcibiades II, Eryxias ToC: The Online Library of Liberty

Nice free online book--and pdf if you want to print out a dialogue or two.

Jean-Paul Sartre summary

One page summary of quotations from Sartre that gives the gist of it. If you want Sartre in a nutshell, read this one.

Buddhist Art [Pacific Asia Museum]
A lovely way to begin to know Buddhism--through art. Browse the whole site to learn more about The Buddha, Buddhist places, Compassionate Beings, and Signs and Rituals.

Intercollegiate Studies Institute - College Guide - Study Guides for the Liberal Arts
You can join for free. Good stuff.

The Tree of Philosophy
THE TREE OF PHILOSOPHY
A COURSE OF INTRODUCTORY LECTURES
FOR BEGINNING STUDENTS OF PHILOSOPHY
by Stephen Palmquist
Click here to see the new, fourth (2000) edition of this book, including a glossary and eight new lectures!
Full Text ASCII Archive

The Radical Academy Homepage

Clear and concise written, this is a very rich site you should certainly explore. It attacks the nihilists and skeptics and defends a traditional, conservative view of enduring philosophical issues.

Hobbes

This is a terrific site. All you need to get started learning about Hobbes in depth. Be sure to click to see the pictures. Has a link to Johjn Aubrey's brief biography of Hobbes from Brief Lives.

Highly Recommended.

radio show

Ethics Show
Looks good to me!

Hobbes life

A nice Hobbes page

Gozzoli's Augustine
The saint through art. If you want to know more about St. Augustine, check out this site.

What is evil?

A recent thread got me to thinking.

Some see evil as a positive force. In The Book of Job, Satan tells the Lord that he has just returned "from walking to and fro upon the earth." People who perform exorcisms believe in evil in this sense.

Then there is the absence of good view, by which evil is not a something but a nothing, so there is no evil in a that sense.

And then there is the Socrates/Buddha view that evil is just ignorance.

There is also a view that circumstances can make us do evil, so it is really just a force of nature. Given the right circumstances, presto: evil happens.

And then there is the "Evil is Illness" theory. This is the most common in the modern liberal state. At least up to a point, we prefer to order treatment rather than punishment, at both the societal and personal levels.

A student asks>>Why haven't I heard more Muslims coming forth >and denouncing the violence?

There were a lot of calls for restraint from Muslims--after all, the rioting was their turf. But I know what you mean--the volume was NOT deafening.

I think the answer to your question is partly cultural. Here is my thinking about what goes on. Being in the Have-Not world is not easy, especially for intellectuals. They feel ashamed. They look for reasons. Marx was supposed to be their answer back in the Cold War period after WWII. (The Marxist Mythos is that the Have-Nots are victims. The Haves are thieves. Get rid of private property and all will be equal in love and harmony. )The L in the PLO of the Palestinians stands for Liberation, and it isn't salvation or celestial virgins it has in mind. Liberation in the Marxist-Leniinist or Maoist vocabulary is about this life on earth only. (But now these guys are out and Hamas, the Reactionary force, has taken the election.)

But the Marxist god failed. The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union is no more.

What to do? Go Back to God. A Muslim identity. React by retreating to the past, to retrieve our ROOTS. It is not reason that matters. It is faith. (Some fascists prefer: It is BLOOD. It is RACE. Same difference.) From these we gain authorit for ACTION. The Koran will unite us into an unstoppable power. We will bring about the City of God.

Pretty Intoxicating stuff. Identity is a powerful force. People will die and kill for their idea of their own identity, even if they could not say what an identity in itself really is, or even if for sure it exists.

Now here is a difficult problem: if we screw the United Arab Emirates on the ports matter, we will be screwing our chance of getting the moderate Arab voices you wish to hear to speak up for us. Why would they? If an international company based in a moderate, co-operative Muslim country cannot do business in the West on the same basis as every other company (including companies from murderous regimes like China's) then why would a Muslim want to go public for the West? How tragic that rational responses to the plan will never be heard under the ROAR of outrage from the xenophobic populists of talk radio and the self-serving pols looking to score points on the other side of the aisle.

w.bloggar
Wonderful freeware program. If Blogger.com's BlogThis! does not work for you, download this free program. It will let you add to your blog very easily. Be sure to get release 4.00 and just follow the directions.

Jerz: Media Aesthetics: Plato, ''Phaedrus'' (excerpt)
A short excerpt of a dialog.