Citizen Writers Fighting Censorship by Helping Americans Understand Issues Affecting the Republic.
John Parillo 
As I was responsible yesterday for your overconsumption of wine, perhaps I can offer amends today. Remember that in the discussion of the nature of a chair, Plato hypothesized that the form of a chair existed separately from the existence of any particular chair or of the craftsman who make them. That form did not depend on space or …
In Plato’s “Republic” he sets about to explore what is the good life. In that analysis he discusses the very nature of goodness.
Not every question is asked in order to get an answer. In the scene I described in my last article, the Roman ruler asks this question not in order to better understand the Truth, but rather to mock the very idea of Truth. Think of it along the lines of your significant other asking, “What …
George Washington cautioned in his Farewell Address that “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
There are widely varying views of the responibility of leaders in the proper formation of government. Plato believed in the philosopher king while his student Aristotle believed in the rule of law and the proper formation of a constitution consisting of the laws, traditions, and habits that together form the nature of a country.
Americans murdered, hostages taken, Hamas is running amok. What did President Madison do when faced with a similar situation?
I believe that it is worthwhile to consider why we have elections. The first reason is the obvious one, we use elections to choose representatives. That is how a representative government works. That concept was reinforced by the Christian concept that God made all men and that there is, therefore, no longer Roman or Jew, freeman …
The age of enlightenment in the mid 1700’s was led by thinkers such as Voltaire, Descartes, and Montesquieu in France, and Kant and Mendelssohn in Germany. These philosophers believed that a new world was dawning.
Over the last few days, we have been exploring the enlightenment as a philosophical movement. This movement started as a reaction to the significant advances in math and science, particularly Isaac Newton’s mathematical modeling of planetary movement, which described their orbits without the traditional process of metaphysics, the understanding of the planet’s first principles. From there, the …
As we continue trying to understand the philosophy of the enlightenment (an admitted challenge for me I freely admit) we started with Newton’s mathematical explanation of the movement of planets. He completed this analysis without the use of metaphysics, the intellectual discipline where the observer would attempt to understand the entire nature of the item that …
Last time we talked about rationalism and the enlightenment, how science became a large influence on the philosophers of the time and how they felt that science would continue to unlock the secrets of the universe to mankind, both those secrets that were scientifically provable, and those that existed in a philosophical sense. Another …
Citizenship can mean many things, depending on your viewpoint
What can we learn from someone living four or five thousand years ago that is applicable today?
The Hebrews, like the Stoics, did not have the benefit of modern science, neither were they fools. Their brightest people looked at the world that surrounded them and tried to make sense of it in the same way that we do.
The cave painting and the grave tell us that early man was aware of himself and thought about himself as an individual, and as mortal.
With the wrap up of the Federalist Papers last week I will be taking a break from writing for this website. When I started this effort, I remember thinking to myself that this was an extended love letter to my country addressed to my children. I do not believe that I am reflexively patriotic. My …
For those who have been suffering through my articles for the past many days, you probably suspected early on what it was I was trying to do. We started with the most basic philosophical question, who am I and why am I here, and have worked our way through some of the highlights of western thought. This …
A a person who torments you out of greed will be satisfied when he takes what is yours. A person who torments you for your own good will never be satisfied.
What were the lessons of the Stoics, why were they critical in Admiral Stockdale’s survival as a POW, and what can they tell us today?