The Philosophy Discussion Forum

In Hinduism there is a spiritual path known as bhakti yoga. It was invented by a poet. He was passionately devoted to his wife, and his wife told him that if he loved God with the same intensity with which he loved her, he would become enlightened. The result was a devotional path in which the perso...

The main claim of the self-esteem movement is that if you feel good about yourself you will be a good person, and if you feel badly about yourself you will be a bad person. This claim is completely wrong. What you are as a person has nothing to do with how you feel about yourself. What you are as a ...

Erich Fromm’s influential criticism of capitalism and technology is that it disconnected people from their humanity and was incompatible with human happiness. I have an alternative view on the subject. Business does an important thing; but so does culture. Both constitute accomplishments. Both also ...

Many people have written both in favor of Marxism and against Marxism. As a child in the former Soviet Union, I adopted it as gospel. At this point I seek to refute Marxism once and for all. Marx used the concept of the dialectic, which he got from German philosopher Hegel. According to Hegel, a for...

The world consists of two things: nature and civilization. Both are amazing accomplishments. The first is either creation of God or product of billions of years of evolution, and the second owes to the hard work of billions of people. Both deserve to be treated with care and respect. Nature contains...

There are people in science and engineering who think that religion and spirituality is for the stupid. So they fail to avail themselves of a vast body of wisdom that is the religions and spiritual paths of the world. There are some in Christianity who think that anything that is not the Bible is of...

One of Christ's most famous statements is "remove the beam from your eye before removing a splinter from your brother's." The question I ask is, If it is in my eye, how can i see it enough to remove it? Of course I cannot see it myself. I need mirrors. I need to see my reflection in other ...

One claim frequently made about Christians is that they are bigots. Some are and some are not. There are people who are Christian because they were raised Christian, and many of these are bigots. There are others however who came to Christianity after following other paths, and these are not bigots ...

Some feminists have been claiming that beauty standards for women promote weakness. That may be the case with some places; but that is not the case with where I come from. Where I come from, beauty standards for women promote elegance. Elegance is strength done in a beautiful way. We see this with b...

There are many people who identify beauty with shallowness. While some people who are into beauty are in fact shallow, there are many others who are not shallow at all. Emily Dickinson wrote, "I died for beauty." She was not shallow. John Keats wrote, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty.&q...

Science has come up with findings both for absolute beauty and relative beauty. In a study by American scientist Judith Langlois, a face with certain proportions has been shown to transcend cultural relativism and be seen as beautiful by people all around the world. At the same time, in a study that...

Ayn Rand said that altruism is evil and that it leads to tyranny. She was confusing misuses of the value for the value itself. Anything that has appeal to people - and that includes things that carry moral appeal - stand to be used for wrong. That Stalin appealed to the legitimate value of altruism ...

Compassion and righteousness are both necessary for rightful action. Compassion, by itself, can be used for all sorts of wrongdoing. A person empathizes with another person without seeing where that person is wrong. So for example a person may feel compassion for the mafia and get used by the mafia ...

I have become convinced that the reason for rebellion against legitimate values is a result of these values being misused. Wrong things done for society discredit society. Wrong things done for family discredit family. Wrong things done for reason discredit reason. Wrong things done for beauty discr...

A major claim of feminism is that the Western cultural legacy is racist and patriarchal. There are problems with that claim. One is that these people have not produced anything that compares to Western cultural legacy. Probably the only feminist movie of merit that I have seen is the Bratz. Nothing ...