Sublime

reductionism versus emergence would appear too limited a way of looking at the world.

The very critical thinking that Bacon and Descartes unleashed has shown that observation requires a vast, preexisting conceptual structure, and even reason’s most obvious assumptions (Descartes’s “clear and distinct ideas”) can be mistaken.

How can we believe in rights? The notion of intrinsic human rights comes up often in philosophic discussion, and it exercises considerable sway in the world more broadly, including in international law. But within philosophical circles, the foundations upon which the concept of rights rest are often viewed as shaky. Even when a notion of intrinsic

Open-minded people are more curious about why there is disagreement.

no such thing as a common good. Thus each individual rights-bearing person is free to pursue his private view of the good. To the extent that the term common good still has any use in such a scheme, it is nothing more than the accumulation of individual goods attained by autonomous rights-bearers as they not only seek their own good, but define the