Buddhist radicalism is on the rise in countries like Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Buddhist anti-Muslim rhetoric, violence against Muslim minorities and hate speech against UN officials are now global media sensations. Less known is the growing number of religious peace initiatives, by both Muslims and Buddhists, to address...
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December 27, 2017 nullifidian
Religion
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One of the problems for the traditional ‘Rationalists and Empiricists’ story of early modern philosophy is that it is surprisingly difficult to define ‘rationalism’ and ’empiricism’ appropriately (see here for a previous discussion). One traditional way of drawing the distinction, derived from Locke, is over the existence of innate ideas....
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December 20, 2017 nullifidian
Rationalism
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Leibniz’s philosophical system The System reflects an overarching commitment to the idea that there is a rational order to the universe that can be grasped by human minds. This commitment is manifest both in his more general epistemological and metaphysical views on display in works like the Monadology and in...
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November 19, 2017 nullifidian
Rationalism
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Yet histories and encyclopaedias of world religions with a few exceptions fail to mention Jainism as a religion. There are pervasive misconceptions about the origin of Jainism, its relation with the Brahmanic, Vedic so-called- Hinduism, about Mahavira being the founder of Jainism, about its being an offshoot of...
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November 16, 2017 nullifidian
Religion
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1. The crucial importance of reason. In 1957, when Atlas Shrugged was published, it was still radical to argue that the economy is moved forward by inventors and thinkers and people with ideas, rather than the brute muscle of unionized factory workers (which is basically the Marxist view). Today,...
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October 15, 2017 nullifidian
Rationalism
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