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18Flowers and honeybees: a study of morality in nature / by Christopher KetchamBrill Rodopi. 2020.Can we discover morality in nature? Flowers and Honeybees extends the considerable scientific knowledge of flowers and honeybees through a philosophical discussion of the origins of morality in nature. Flowering plants and honeybees form a social group where each requires the other. They do not intentionally harm each other, both reason, and they do not compete for commonly required resources. They also could not be more different. Flowering plants are rooted in the ground and have no brains. Mo…Read more
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16The Invisible OtherMarcel Studies 3 (1): 17-39. 2018.This paper brings Gabriel Marcel and Emmanuel Levinas into dialogue through a consideration of the notion of the spirit of abstraction in Marcel and the notion of the infinitely different other in Levinas. We abstract meaning from Mona Lisa‘s smile from her physical portrait. It is appropriate to abstract from the baby‘s sound whether he or she seems to be happy or sad, but it is when we begin to abstract humans from their humanity that the spirit of abstraction is engaged. My thesis is that the…Read more
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403Towards a Biological Explanation of Sin in Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s “A Canticle for Leibowitz”Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy 3 1-25. 2020.Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s 1959 novel A Canticle for Leibowitz is on one level a theological reflection on the human propensity to sin. Not coincidentally, the story is located in an Albertinian abbey in the former American southwest six hundred years after a nuclear holocaust, recounting three separate historical periods over the following twelve hundred years: a dark age, a scientific renaissance, and finally a time of technological achievement where a second nuclear holocaust is imminent. Miller…Read more
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9Flowers and Honeybees: A Study of Morality in NatureBrill | Rodopi. 2020.The journey towards morality in nature can be seen through the million-year-old relationship of the flowering plant and honeybee social group. _Flowers and Honeybees_ brings what science has learned into a dialog with the philosophy of morality.
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9The Philosophy of Forgiveness is multi-dimensional and complex. As recent scholarly philosophical works on forgiveness illustrate, incorporating personal, relational, political, ethical, psychological, and religious dimensions into one consistent conception of “forgiveness” is difficult. As part of Vernon Press’s series on the Philosophy of Forgiveness, Explorations of Forgiveness: Personal, Relational, and Religious begins the task of creating a consistent multidimensional account of forgivenes…Read more
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78Schopenhauer and Buddhism: Soulless ContinuityJournal of Animal Ethics 8 (1): 12-25. 2018.Arthur Schopenhauer did not believe in soul. However, he explained that every living thing is possessed by a will. Will is universal. Suffering is universal. Even so, he thought it ethically wrong to cause undue suffering to any person or animal. As a student of Buddhism, Schopenhauer was intrigued by the Buddhist belief in rebirth. I will explore how both Schopenhauer’s idea of the ever-present will and Buddhist rebirth are similar in their concern with and for continuity. For Schopenhauer,…Read more
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53Meaning without EgoJournal of Philosophy of Life 5 (3): 112-133. 2015.Thaddeus Metz in Meaning in Life centers his research within western philosophical thought. I will engage early Buddhism to see whether its thinking about meaning is compatible with Metz’s fundamentality theory of what makes life meaningful. My thesis is: Early Buddhist thinking generally supports a fundamentality reading of meaning but in the ethical state of nibbāna (nirvana) the Arahant (enlightened one) is in a state that has access to the pure potentiality for meaning.
Christopher Ketcham
University of Houston Downtown
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University of Houston DowntownLecturer
Garnet Valley, PA, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Asian Philosophy |
Continental Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Asian Philosophy |
Continental Philosophy |