In the pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.
Less and less do you need to force things,
until you finally arrive at non-action. 
When nothing is done, 
nothing is left undone.

True mastery can be gained 
by letting things go their own way.
It can't be gained by interfering.

-  Lao Tzu ( Read more... )

Stephen Hicks and Rockford College have just received a grant to open up a Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship.  This is a boon to capitalism and intellectual activism.  Go Stephen!

Upon finishing Hilary Putnam's The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy the other day, I was struck by how similar his argument is to Ayn Rand's neo-Aristotelian bridge over the is/ought gap.  The gist of the argument is not that  facts and values are the same thing, or that they are indistinguishable, but that in most cases, facts and values are ( Read more... )

I finished Walden yesterday.  I found it excellent, albeit as schizophrenic a work of amateur philosophy as I've read in some time.  Thoreau is undoubtably a master of the written word, with the ability to turn a phrase in such a way that it locks itself in the reader's head and makes him pause to think, even when he is speed-reading.  His ( Read more... )

A short but inspiring article by Tibor Machan, on what it is to be a Self-Made Individual.

"a self-made individual is one who thinks though the ideas and principles on which he or she bases his or he conduct before leaping to action. Self-made means not simply accepting what others tell one, not relying solely on the advice one gets from others in ( Read more... )

The causes of death of famous philosophers:

Aquinas: Last causes
Aristotle: Excessive moderation
Augustine: Hippo
Ayer: Unverifiable
Bacon, F: Hit by idol in market place
Berkeley: Divine neglect
Boole: Became inverted
Bradley: Absolutely everything
Buridan: Asinine starvation
Calvin: Predestined
Camus: Found exit
Cassirer: Symbolic causes
( Read more... )

You'd have to be a student of philosophy to even get most of these; even then, they aren't all funny, though a few are pretty good.  I had to think about a couple of them before I got them.  I chuckled.  (The St. Augustine, Hegel, and Derrida references are priceless.)  Thanks to Marsha Enright for the link!

The World's Shortest Philosophy ( Read more... )

My little piece on Liberalism is the article of the day at Sense of Life Objectivists (SOLO). Check it out.

"Liberalism is a political philosophy, a set of convictions about the nature of government and social organization. In its original and true form, liberalism upholds the individual’s right to his own life, liberty, and property, and his ( Read more... )

You all know him:  Guy In Philosophy Class Needs To Shut The Fuck Up

"According to students enrolled in professor Michael Rosenthal's Philosophy 101 course at Dartmouth College, that guy, Darrin Floen, the one who sits at the back of the class and acts like he's Aristotle, seriously needs to shut the fuck up."

I read George Orwell's Animal Farm yesterday, for the first time.  Awesome book.  Orwell's prose, as always, is brilliant, the story is quick and to the point, and while funny, it scares the living shit out of me.

One parable I walked away with is that of the Bolshevik Revolution and the later Communist Party purgings in Soviet Russia - this ( Read more... )