Sublime

Unlike most defenders of despotic government, Hobbes holds that all men are naturally equal. In a state of nature, before there is any government, every man desires to preserve his own liberty, but to acquire dominion over others; both these desires are dictated by the impulse to self-preservation. From their conflict arises a war of all against al

For Lee Kuan Yew,26 the aspirational ideal was to become, as Confucius urged more than two thousand years ago, a junzi, which has been variously translated as an “exemplary person,” or “gentleman.” This was someone who is27 “loyal to his father and mother,” “faithful to his wife,” “brings up his children well,” and is a “loyal citizen of his empero

The secular argument for human freedom, launched almost three centuries ago under the rubric of “natural rights,” has often been reduced to a calculation of probabilities: democracy and the personal freedoms it protects are good not because they have an inherent moral superiority over other forms of organizing society, but because they are the leas

Belano, I said, the heart of the matter is knowing whether evil (or sin or crime or whatever you want to call it) is random or purposeful. If it’s purposeful, we can fight it, it’s hard to defeat, but we have a chance, like two boxers in the same weight class, more or less. If it’s random, on the other hand, we’re fucked, and we’ll just have to hop

IBRAHIM OTHMAN

Edmund Burke once said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” I would also add, “and being incapable of doing something.” Interestingly enough, simply knowing how to be violent in the right circumstances may keep a situation from escalating altogether.

The cold divisive logic of the RCO impoverishes us, all of us, and brings us closer to that primitive state that the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes called “the war of every man against every man.”

these essays on Bonhoeffer’s social thought are motivated by an anthropological concern: When we consider the rapid scientific advances of genetics and globally recurring human atrocities, does it not become apparent that human dignity requires a transcendent reference point?