#classical-philosophy

#classical-philosophy

The discovery of a few pages from an original edition of Hugo's work would then be a momentous event. This is precisely what specialists in Empedocles are experiencing today.

The widespread practice of showing the Eid Al Adha slaughtering to children can desensitize them to violence, as many families take pride in this tradition.

Attar's 'Conference of the Birds' follows a flock of souls seeking the Simorgh, symbolizing the Divine, through seven valleys, ultimately revealing the Divine as a reflection of the self in relation with others.

It started with a book launch in 2021. I'd been living in London as a social media journalist when I asked my then-publication's culture editor to send me to one of these exclusive-sounding events, as 1) I'd never been and 2) I just really wanted to be a person who "has a book launch to go to." Thankfully, there was one that exact day-and he put my name on the list for the release of Mary Beard's Emperor of Rome. Huzzah.

It wasn't until Whitmarsh had been herded into the main hall that he grasped what he'd signed up for: 'a geopolitical event, not an intellectual one,' as he put it, with hosts including Greece and China's ministries of culture.

Alysa Liu became the youngest national champion in American figure skating at 13. She made the 2022 Olympic team at 16. And she hated it. After Beijing, she retired, threw her skates in a closet, enrolled at UCLA, and spent 18 months figuring out who she was when nobody was giving her a score. Then she walked into a rink, landed a triple like she had never left, and called her coaches.

In antiquity, many opined about "the elements" in combination. Around 2500 years ago, Leucippus and Democritus founded the idea of atoms. Perhaps everything, they opined, was composed of indivisible building blocks. In the late 1700s, hydrogen and oxygen were discovered. Circa 1804, John Dalton revived atomism to explain chemical behavior. Then in 1869, Mendeleev developed the periodic table: organizing the atoms.

A mentor once told me that, when writing a research statement for a professorship, I had to start with the most ambitious pitch I could imagine - and then go ten times bigger. It's tricky enough to do this as a cosmologist, given that the topic of study is the entire Universe. But there is a quest that is more ambitious still: to find out 'what are we doing here?'

What could be more important for the future of any society than the education of its children? Innovative theories abound. Educators are constantly presenting groundbreaking new paradigms for improving a child's academic achievement. In the past quarter century or so, these have included: * Expanding educational opportunities for preschoolers * Selecting the best teachers for a child * Making instruction more relevant * Establishing or strengthening character education * Providing a multidisciplinary education * Defining the boundaries for student-teacher relationships * Approaching literacy from a whole language perspective * Fostering critical thinking skills

Spinoza was an heir to both Jewish and Christian culture-in Amsterdam he grew up in a Jewish community within a Protestant society-yet he distanced himself from both these religions. He did not want to be a member of a religious institution with strict, prescriptive codes of belonging and belief. He feared-quite rightly-that a [institutional religion would constrain philosophical freedom].

Some citizens might see themselves as Christian nationalists simply because they are Christian and patriotic. Others, however, assert that the United States is rightfully a Christian nation that ought to be governed by Christian leaders, ethics and laws. As a historian, I'm aware that Christian nationalism relies upon a selective and often distorted view of American history.

This APA Blog series has broadly explored philosophy and technology with a throughline on the influence of technology and AI on well-being. This month's post brings those themes into focus recounting a vital Washington Post Opinion piece by friend of the APA Blog, Samuel Kimbriel. Samuel is the founding director of the Aspen Institute's Philosophy and Society Initiative and Editor at Large for Wisdom of Crowds. We collaborated on a Substack Newsletter about intellectual ambition, building on his essay, Thinking is Risky.

A drawn circle is at least something physical. You can see it, touch it, erase it. The skeptic can still say, "Circles are grounded in physical reality. Justice is different; it's just an idea in your head." So let's talk about the number two. Point to it. Not two apples, not two fingers, not a numeral on a page-that's just a symbol.

Happiness today is narrowly defined by some positive psychologists as a joyous state of mind or well-being. The happiness sciences see it as something you can calculate and quantify. They developed a Happiness Index and the World Happiness Report. These basically measure happiness as satisfaction, with criteria like gross domestic product per capita (money) and life expectancy (health) as some of the factors considered.

Plato's choice of this word is deliberate. He is not describing neutral carriers. He is describing people whose job is manufacturing a convincing reality for an audience that cannot see behind the curtain. Here is what matters clinically: the conjurers are not necessarily villains. They may be devoted parents, conscientious teachers, or well-meaning community leaders.

All of us live in an age where we're bombarded by social media and artificial intelligence - when striving to be your authentic self becomes an increasingly difficult task. Yet, even if it has somehow become a common goal, it is unclear how many of us can truly define the "authenticity" that we say we are pursuing.