or the existence of evil.

A very nice presentation of the theodicy problem in its classical formulation.  One of the things to note (for my students who were working with me last year on Hume’s Dialogues where this formulation is also present) is the nature of the four options as exhausting the logical space of possibility.  This at least is the power of the formula…of course, trying to work out whether these options are the only options is going to push you to think about the nature of choice and the setting of options in the first place…and might have some resonance for the problem from which Kierkegaard begins in his Fear and Trembling…

enjoy

The new issue of the excellent journal (indeed perhaps the best philosophical journal around at the moment) out soon …

Urbanomic

The snoring man on the train, just behind and to our left, revolts us. Their noise is more penetrating – more cutting – even though it is lower in decibel than the irritating child a few seats in front with their high pitched and hyperactive voice testing the patience of the father figure accompanying them. The snoring man is filthy in his activity, that rasping breath, that grasping for life calling out to be silenced – and with its silence comes death. The sound of the breath is a broken tool that reveals its function, its equipmentality as Heidegger would call it, precisely by being heard. That filthy, contaminating breath, no gentle rythmn of life but a crushed, rushing in-out-in-out intimacy that brings the Other too close, too far within the experience of living together that repulses us within our modernity, repulses us because of its forced confinement amongst each other.
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