Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), at a major crossroad in his life in 1896, wrote a letter to a friend expressing his desire to become a philosopher: "As a young man I longed for nothing else than philosophical knowledge, and I am now on the way to satisfy that longing by passing from medicine to psychology." In one sense, his philosophy was simple and [...]
It was 1870 and the Franco-Prussian War had just begun. A 25-year-old philologist, on his way to the front, observed a cavalry battalion exhibiting impressive clatter and pomp as it passed through the town of Frankfort. Taken by the spectacle, the young scholar had a vision, out of which was to grow his entire philosophy: "I felt for the first time that [...]
Philosophy was born the moment it was discovered that there is a critical difference between appearance and reality. The way things really are is not simply the way they appear to us. The surface of a table appears solid and static to us. Yet, according to physics, it is highly porous and charged with electrical particles. It has been said that philosophy [...]
Whenever a politician delivers an address, his audience simply assumes that his message is going to be political. So deeply entrenched is this assumption that it prevails even on the relatively rare occasion when a politician delivers an address that is essentially ethical. It is like assuming that your lottery number is never going to be a winner and not noticing, on [...]
Subjectivists prefer to avoid facing the possibility they may be complicit in wrongdoing Conscience, like most important concepts in the contemporary world, is widely misunderstood. In fact, its more popular usage is the perfect antithesis of what it really means. The world, being skeptical and not believing that one can know what is true, has disconnected conscience from the realm of the [...]
Life is a Blessing: A Biography of Jérôme Lejeune by Clara Lejeune (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), tr. by Michael J. Miller from the original French, La Vie est un bonheur: Jérôme Lejeune, mon père, 156 pp. $12 USD, $18 CAD, ISBN 2-7413-0163-8. The name Jérôme Lejeune is well known to Canadian pro-lifers. The distinguished geneticist crossed the Atlantic several times to [...]
It did not happen. But it could have happened. It is a matter of historical record that Plato was born in ancient Greece, Aquinas in the Middle Ages, and Jean-Paul Sartre in the Twentieth Century. Yet it was not impossible, in the lottery of life, for all three of these talented thinkers to have been conceived by the same woman and, to [...]
Women who sell or donate their eggs and giving away a whole lot more Donating motherhood "Is this egg worth $50,000?" is the provocative title of an article in Self magazine (Nov. 2000) that takes a close look at the new world of "egg donation." According to its author, Sheila Weller, close to 4,500 American women "donate" their eggs every year. Receiving $50,000 [...]
The new liberalism cut itself off from universal principles and focused on choice itself Once upon a time, there was a parsimonious parson who, to save money, tried to brighten the exterior of his place of worship with watered down paint. After he finished his job and saw the paint cascading down the chapel walls, he called upon God for guidance. According [...]
Stephen Leacock, Canada's most honoured humourist, once proclaimed: "When I state that my lectures were followed almost immediately by the union of South Africa, the banana riots in Trinidad and the Turco-Italian war, I think the reader can form some opinion of their importance." Leacock, of course, was being facetious. But his audience could not have been receptive of his humour if [...]
The 1973 science-fiction film, Soylent Green, horrified audiences when they realized just what went into the manufacture of the food product from which the film gets its name. In the story, food has become so scarce in the year 2022 that the government decided to feed its citizenry re-processed human corpses. The protagonist, played by Charlton Heston, discovered what this curious food was [...]
Even as far back as the 1970s, leading Roman Catholics had pronounced Pope Paul VI's Humanae vitae a "dead letter." Truth, however, has a way of burying its undertakers—and Fate, if not Divine Providence itself, has an ingenious capacity for dramatizing Truth's triumphant return. n July 29, 1998, exactly 30 years after the appearance of the famous document restating the Church's opposition [...]
The French pharmaceutical giant Roussel-Uclaf produces RU-486, a steroid whose sole purpose is to bring about an abortion. It does so by destroying the lining of the uterus, thereby dislodging the already attached fetus (baby) who dies and is then expelled. In the summer of 1990, the French government sold its 40 per cent share of Roussel-Uclaf to Rhone-Poulenc, a leading French [...]
Professor William E. May, moral theologian at the Catholic University of America has written a lucid and important article on the controversial subject of withdrawing or withholding medical treatment (Linacre, August 1990). Moralists Professor May takes strong issue with two highly influential Catholic moralists, Richard McCormick, S.J. (see below) and Kevin O’Rourke, O.P. He regards their position on the withdrawal or withholding [...]
The British Medical Journal reports that "More patients have probably been harmed than helped so far" by the treatment of Parkinson's disease that involves the transplanting of cells, including cells taken from aborted fetuses. In an article dated August 11, 1990, Adrian Williams, Professor of Clinical Neurology at the University of Birmingham thinks the treatment is still experimental. Technical problems When cells [...]