classics digests, reflections and reviews
Last week, a Catholic blogger Eamonn Clark responded to my blogpost titled “In Defense of Sola Scriptura”, which I wrote five years ago to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. At the end of his post, Clark wrote, “I remain unconvinced”. I can only smile and say that the feeling is mutual. Clark quoted my arguments at length and responded to them point by point. For that I’m grateful. […]
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The Case of Socrates It is a historical fact that Socrates was convicted of impiety and sentenced to death by an Athenian court in 399 BC. It is a matter of dispute whether the verdict was just and whether Socrates was right to submit to the State of Athens and not escape with the aid of his friends. In a recent blogpost, a Thomist philosopher stated that Socrates went too […]
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I’ve been extremely busy in the past months, and had no time to write a proper blogpost. But a recent event has obliged me to speak up, for “silence gives consent”, and I do not think it right to give consent to a comment made by a pubic health officer concerning my colleagues. “If people are in our healthcare system and not recognizing the importance of vaccination, then this is […]
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Preface To paraphrase Plato, the price we pay for indifference to reason is to be ruled by unreasonable people. On a personal level, I seek to understand the laws that affect or govern my life. If I cannot understand the laws, but am forced to abide by them, I’m no different from a slave; On a societal level, true democracy depends on reason. A democratic society is healthy only so […]
Read moreIn the past few years, I’ve written many posts lamenting the defeat of reason and the rise of tyranny in our time. The inevitable consequence of these is the demise of justice. So I hope my readers would forgive me if, in my pessimistic and cynical frame of mind, I’m not terribly enthused about the current protests for social justice: I tend to think of the phenomenon not as a […]
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Government officials around the world have been telling the public that their response to the pandemic is “guided by science”, and that they rely on their scientist-advisors regarding which public health measures to put in place. Most people have abided by these measures, which have effectively slowed the spread of the virus, and prevented a collapse of our healthcare system. The truth is, however, that science never guides. It may […]
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COVID-19 and Capitalism The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production and with them the whole relations of society. Everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. Man is at last compelled to face soberly, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. In Manifesto of the Communist Party written almost two centuries ago, […]
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