[X-posted in lokisworld1 ]

I did it!  The grueling nightmare that has consumed the back of my mind for over a year is coming to an end!

That's right.  I finished my thesis.  Now - pending my advisor's approval and my defense before a committee - they will give me my degree.  And I will be done.  This rocks my socks like nothing else.

For those of you who wish ( Read more... )

Tyrion and I travelled to Chicago this past weekend, and I left him with my parents in Oak Park while I went down to the Enrights' to give an NIF presentation on applying axiology (value theory - ethics and aesthetics) to artistic nudity and erotic art.  Yes, with examples.

Here is a rough outline of my presentation:  The Morality of Beauty: ( Read more... )

From a 20th-Century philosopher whom I have only recently discovered, thanks to Bill Perry of TOC.  The philosopher is Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), a Spaniard who wrote his major works between the World Wars, as fascism was rising in Italy and Spain, and totalitarianism and socialism were gripping the world.  Ortega is a classical liberal, a ( Read more... )

[X-posted to philosophy ]

The problem with any -ism is that there are many, many things that could be meant by it, and possibly conflicting things at that.  This is particularly the case when a certain -ism applies only to one aspect of one's philosophy, or means differing things in different branches of philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, axiology).  ( Read more... )

If the wisest man knows he knows nothing, what do stupid people know?

"Have you ever seen a sail go over the sea, rounded and taut and trembling with the violence of the wind?  Like the sail, trembling with the violence of the spirit, my wisdom goes over the sea - my wild wisdom."  - Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra  p. 217

If everything ( Read more... )

I actually finished a project tonight!  Go me!  Could this be the dawn of some strange new era?  We shall see... [creepy music plays]

What I finished was this paper for an independent study in epistemology from last semester.  My prof will be happy, I hope.  I enjoyed writing it, and it turned out really well, though it took me forever and a day, ( Read more... )

Just a quick bragging announcement,

My essay, Checking Your Premises: Non-Contradiction as a Way of Life is the article of the day at SOLO.  I've been published again!  Yay!

And Heidi's essay Compromising with Reality? was the article of the day there earlier this week.

Both of these essays, btw, placed as money-makers in ARI's Atlas Shrugged ( Read more... )

Yet another reason I think Buddhism's got something going for it ( Read more... )

This is interesting: The Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries, from Human Events Online, a conservative e-zine.

They are, in short order:

1.  The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

2.  Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler

3.  Quotations from Chairman Mao, by Mao Zedong

4.  Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, by Alfred ( Read more... )