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In this episode, I discuss an article by the Spanish writer Pedro Trevijano in which he distinguishes between two extreme attitudes in one’s moral philosophy. One is pharisiacal and rigid, judging others and claiming possession of absolute truth. The other has no sense of absolute truth and puts everything up for debate. I think this provides a helpful framework for considering ethical issues. https://www.religionenlibertad.com/opinion/574738836/relativismo-moral-catolico-extremismos.html?eti=5293##STAT_CONTROL_CODE_3_574738836##

In this episode I go over an argument for the immortality of the soul from St. Thomas Aquinas. The idea is that the soul can grasp unchanging principles, while the senses are rooted in a specific time and place. I tie this idea into Plato’s Theory of the Forms, which holds that there are supra-sensible ideas that are abstract patterns for all concrete realities. The mind’s ability to grasp the general formulations of mathematics makes a compelling case for its distinctness from the body. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss two conceptions of liberty. One is the ability to do what one desires. The other is the a self-mastery in which true autonomy is the following of the moral law. Kant gave us an idea of freedom that is libertarian. We are truly free when we are able to think in universal terms, and not just yield to private self-interest. I consider these ideas in light of a line from an epistle of St. Peter in which he warns us of using liberty as a cloak for malice.

In this episode, I discuss an episode in the Gospel of Matthew in which the people of Nazareth dismiss Christ for his wisdom and miracles. I was wondering how people could be so foolish and perverse? They have a “crabs in the bucket” mentality. I turn to Aquinas to illuminate how we do not directly choose evil, but instead mistakenly choose a certain pleasure that comes with an evil. We do not have a “diabolical will”—one of Kant’s ideas-because we don’t seek to rebel against the law for its own sake. We have mistaken priorities in which we value a small pleasure over the real goodness of God. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss a recent interview with Remi Brague, a prominent European thinker. He documents the phenomenon of “cancel culture.” It is common to hear about this, but we must not take it lightly. We need to recognize that political correctness protects certain dogmas from any criticism. Feminism, radical ecologism, and gender ideology, among others, do not permit dissent. These ideas are meant to drive a wedge between ourselves and the past, and we are in danger of losing touch with our moral compass.

In this episode, I discuss a fascinating and vigorous philosophical treatise by a great American, Benjamin Franklin. It is called “A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain.” Franklin denies human free will. How can we choose something to which the omnipotent God does not consent? Franklin claims that there is no evil, because pain is necessary for the existence of pleasure. There is no need for an afterlife to realize justice, because pleasure always arises in exact proportion to pain. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss how Adorno views the Enlightenment as sliding inevitably towards totalitarianism. The Enlightenment seeks to reduce reality to numerical rationality. It suffers no exemption to this reductive trend. Eventually it emerges in a totalitarian political system that brings every aspect of human life under its control. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Aporia is a state of speechlessness in which we are unable to articulate a mysterious phenomenon. In this podcast, I explore the precarious existence of time, and how it is an aporia insofar as it is defined by being and non-being. Death is also an aporia, because it is an experience no one can assume for us, but we talk as if it were an impersonal experience that always happens to other people. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I illuminate the modern notion of identity politics through a description of Hegel’s parable of the master and the slave. This parable is about how consciousness views itself as a transparent measure of all things, only to be relativized in the encounter with the “other,” that is, another consciousness. I tie in this encounter with the other with identity politics, which is perpetually seeking outliers to the dominant cultural narrative. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode, I discuss again the death of God theology. I root this movement in the rational religion of Kant, which sought to remove the doctrines of historical religions and make them subordinate to an ahistorical and universal moral law. I then describe Nietzsche’s character, Zarathustra, and how he sees the “meaning of the earth” in the transcendence of the human in the Ubermensch. I finally discuss Heidegger’s notion of anxiety and how it reveals the contingency of all meaning and the inner emptiness of the world. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this podcast, I discuss how postmodernism represents a radicalization of the Enlightenment. Not only is faith abandoned, but human reason’s ability to develop objective knowledge is challenged. Postmodernism entered theology in the death of God theology. This theology seeks to rethink the idea of God to conform to a more secular and worldly culture. Check out the 1966 Time magazine article, “Is God Dead?”, at Time-Is-God-dead.pdf(valleybeitmidrash.org). --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this podcast, I go over Kant’s great work, The Critique of the Power of Judgment. I discuss the difference between the beautiful and the sublime. I discuss what Kant means by free play, in the interaction between the imagination and the understanding. I also discuss how reflecting judgement attempts to find a universal in what is particular. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app