Transforming Aristotelian Thinkers: How Early Christianity Won Over the Intellectual Elite
For those trained in Aristotelian thought, Christianity required not just belief—but an intellectual transformation.
Philosophy
When Aquinas Baptized Aristotle: How Faith and Reason Built Western Civilization
Thomas Aquinas, guided by divine wisdom, took the writings of Aristotle—pagan, rationalistic, and seemingly foreign to Christian revelation—and redeemed them for the glory of God.
The Bible’s Clear Distinction Between Murder and Killing: Confronting Evil in a Fallen World
The Bible draws a clear and vital distinction between murder and killing, addressing both the sacredness of life and the reality of living in a fallen world.
Ancient Philosophical Debates and Modern Ideological Divisions: The Profound Influence of Plato’s Quest for Truth and Morality
Throughout history, the timeless debates among philosophers have continued to influence human thought and ideology.
Standards are the Raw Materials of Virtue: He Who Controls the Standards, Controls Behavior
Standards are the Raw Materials of Virtue: He Who Controls the Standards, Controls Behavior In one sense, virtue is how a society controls and manages behavior. Some systems and societies use virtue to produce beneficent outcomes, while others use virtue, at least as the societal standards define it, to produce power and control. Religions historically …
The Enlightenment and Religion
The enlightenment as a philosophical movement is sometimes difficult to understand in that many of the arguments seem to be contrived in the style of the Sophists that so angered Plato.
Science, Rationalism and the Enlightenment
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.
The Enlightenment as a Political Movement
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 …
The Enlightenment and The Science of Man
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 …
Citizen Responsibility
Up to this point we have been looking at the responsibilities 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 …
Why Are We Here? (Part 1)
Why Are We Here? (Part 1) “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” ~ Matthew 25:21 (ESV) Greetings my fellow Americans! Many, including myself, have written quite a bit over the …
Thursday Musings
I read the classics and mythologies because my grandmother put them in front of me. I would rather have been playing with friends. I ask questions because my grandmother asked me. So, in keeping with the foregoing, what concerns do I see in the country today. Middle ground. Who defines exactly where or what that …
The Ten Commandments – Part One
As we continue to explore the philosophical basis for western civilization, it is key to understand that the underpinnings of what we consider morality today is rooted in the Ten Commandments of the Hebrew Torah. Whether one considers them to be divinely inspired or not, they have been pillars of our civilization for centuries, and …
Post Modernism and the Commandments
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.
The Ten Commandments Part II
Last time we met, we looked at the first three commandments that God gave to his people through Moses. For the purposes of better understanding western thought, it is critical to recognize that the Ten Commandants have been the bedrock of western morality for centuries. As we discussed, the entire law of Moses is predicated on two …
Aristotle and the Types of Constitutions
We already saw how Aristotle, and Plato before him, saw the possibility of arranging the city state with rule either of the entire population of citizens, the few, or a single person. Each of these arrangements could be either good or bad. In an organization of the many, democracy would naturally lead to tyranny while polity (rule …
Aristotle
Earlier we saw that Plato believed that democracy would inevitably lead to tyranny. He believed this because he believed that the nature of man was immutable, and that the those in the ‘iron and bronze’ levels of society would be driven by their desire for the accumulation of wealth, and that those in the ‘gold and …
The Modern Plato
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 …
What is Good
In my last article I mentioned that Plato lamented the Sophists use of language as a game, rather than as a tool to get to Truth. Since Plato, and his student Aristotle, had a major effect on both our modern scientific thought process and philosophical view of the world, it would be worth it to …
The Stoics Today
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?