Is Truth Real?

My journey through the nature of truth has personally yielded many unexpected and insightful realizations.  Early in Blackburn’s book, Truth, he suggested that the dichotomy of absolutism and relativism is probably more of a false dichotomy than a reality.  After a closer look at the issues, Blackburn has shed some light on the nuance that […]

A Prophet’s Pathos

Instead of seeing prophets as primarily predictors of the future, Heschel wants us to see them as expositors of divine pathos.  The prophets have a deep relationship with Yahweh and thus are attune to his emotional life.  The Heschel quote for this paper states that a prophet is in “fellowship with the feelings of God”.  […]

Black People Mixing Religion and Politics

There are legitimate reasons for wanting to keep politics and religion separate.  There are definitely ways of separating beliefs you have about the world into beliefs that are specifically religious.  That being said, it is much more difficult and nuanced than it may seem for black communities to separate religion from political engagement.  In some […]

Malcom and the “White Man’s Religion”

One Christianity’s fiercest critics in recent history was none other than Malcolm X.  Malcolm himself was a very religious man who admired and revered many figures in the Christian faith.  He also was very familiar with the faith itself.  His father was a pastor and Malcolm has spent much time studying the bible.  This meant […]

The Emotions of a Theory of Justice

Cohen’s criticism of Rawls is that Rawls’s theory doesn’t have any emphasis on the necessity of ethos.  There is no scheme or method on how to cultivate the emotional state of people to be emotionally engaged with the principles of justice.  For Rawls, what makes a society just is if they have laws and regulations […]

Difference Principle Indifferent to History

A historical principle says that the justice of a distribution depends upon how the distribution came about.  So, this means that a distribution is just, if it comes about by all just transfers, and it is unjust if it involves any uncorrected unjust transfers.  This is the sort of principle that Nozick’s entitlement theory is […]