Philosophy and Everyday Life

What Are Words Worth?

  'Ilunga’ means a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time. That’s a word I’ve just imported into English from Tshiluba.  A bunch of linguists voted it the world’s hardest word to translate. Then they gave us a translation.  I’m so happy to have this word.  It allows me to think thoughts that I couldn’t think before.  I wonder if Obama is basically an ilunga.  My wife is definitely not an ilunga.  She’s all over me after my first abuse.

Atheism and the Well-Lived Life

  An atheist is someone who not only doesn't believe in God, but believes, with some confidence, that there isn’t a God.  But ambiguity remains.  Does that simply mean rejecting the classical Judeo-Christian all-perfect God?  Or does it mean rejecting Hume’s much weaker criterion: that the world was created by some thing or things bearing some remote analogy to human intelligence?

Lincoln as a Philosopher

Lincoln is revered as our greatest President; he is virtually an American Saint. The Second Inaugural Address --- the one that’s carved on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial --- is really quite chilling. Especially if you think it really represents the philosophy of someone who has just pursued a path that led to the death of half a million people.