An Olympiad of the least plausible claims ever made by philosophers would be a very busy competition indeed. One of the favourites for a podium place, however, would have to be Plato’s argument that no one knowingly chooses to do wrong. To do wrong is to err, and no one errs willingly. We are all only doing our best.
ReadWhat I think many religions have got right is that we are, in a sense, terminally inadequate. Even the best fall short, which is why there is a whole industry devoted to knocking so-called saints off their pedestals. And it is important that we recognise this: it is impossible to do better if you are under the illusion you’re already the best.
ReadIs Wittgenstein’s famous aphorism, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”, a profound truth? Or is it a banal truism, along the lines of “That which you cannot move, you must leave where it is”? It may sound platitudinous, but if you think about what exactly lies beyond the limits of language, matters soon become much more opaque.
ReadOrganised religion has lost its central place in most European countries, but it has not necessarily been replaced by atheism. The confused majority is “spiritual but not religious”, hungry for alternatives to the perceived materialism of modern life. “The more we’re distracted by stuff,” suggests Father Stephen, “the more we’re also attracted by what we’re missing.” We suspected that there might be aspects of monastic life that those who share this yearning can learn from, without having to take on board its religious commitments and beliefs…
ReadABSTRACT: Concerns about making character formation a strand of public policy centre around both doubts about the empirical basis of such policies and the appropriate role of government in shaping and directing private life. To address both sets of concerns it is helpful to think of two key aspects of character in terms of their “thickness”. First, research in psychology has suggested that many aspects of character are highly variable according to situation. We can call these “thin” character traits are opposed to “thick” traits which are more robust. Second, some of the aspects of character being advocated as the appropriate object of public policy are based on capabilities and are normatively “thin”, in that they are not tied to any specific substantive conception of the good life. Some character traits, however, are normatively “thick”, and so their promotion would be tied to a substantive ideal. In both cases, thick and thin are matters of degree and there is not sharp distinction between the two. Nevertheless, the distinction is important and I will argue that a basic liberal position is that state policy should, in both respects, be as thin as possible, and I will attempt to sketch a means of determining what this is.
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