In 1910, Harvard philosopher William James tried to justify his pacifism with an essay called “The Moral Equivalent of War.” Horrified by the destructiveness of war, James nonetheless recognized that there were strengths to be found in a military environment. Dedication, strength of purpose, the feeling of being bound together into a common effort greater [...]
Much of this site’s content centers around the attempt to put together reasonable arguments in support of one position or another. We haven’t really spent much time exploring what ‘reasonable argument’ are, however, and one of the quickest ways to end a potentially constructive conversation is to let basic terms go unexamined. It might seem [...]