Category: Free Will
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
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October 9, 2015
“there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”
Our modern calender lists two basic reference points: BCE and AD. If we were to create a new calendar for the modern era, perhaps we could write it as before and after Shakespeare. A playwright whose works influenced every author for centuries, Shakespearean language has seeped into our daily habits and rhetoric.
July 24, 2015
July’s Quarterly Discussion focused on Immanuel Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals. Reading Kant can be very challenging. One has to learn and understand his terminology and then be able to trace a single thread of an argument for pages and pages. For some reason, this seems more difficult in a language like Kant’s than in, say, a novel. Kant was thorough and scientific. Admittedly, the Metaphysics of Morals was a daunting,
May 8, 2015
There is a fascinating scene in The Matrix Revolutions when Neo (Keanu Reeves) bursts into the Oracle’s (Gloria Foster) kitchen. The Oracle and a little girl, Sati, are making cookies. The Oracle says, “Oh, I was hoping to have these done before you got here.” Why is this fascinating? Well, so much can be read into the Oracle’s words because she is, in part, able to foretell the events that will come.
May 1, 2015
At the end of Book III in Paradise Lost, Satan tricks Uriel into letting him pass through the gates which protect the world from the demons. A disguised Satan brags about the brilliance of God’s ways and Uriel agrees with him. Uriel says, “Faire Angel, thy desire which tends to know/ The works of God, thereby to glorifie/ The great Work-Maister, leads to no excess/ That reaches blame,
» Read more about: Paradise Lost, Part I, The Finer Things »
April 24, 2015
April’s Quarterly Discussion arose from the idea of Free Will. HMU doctoral candidate, Peter Ponzio, and HMU Tutor, Alissa Simon, both created the discussion format and questions. It is possible that the conversation could have run nearly endlessly. One thing is clear however, to be among friends discussing such deep-seated issues is a delightful way to spend a couple of hours! What follows is an introduction to the discussion that our groups created.