The pope’s encyclical on ecology addresses all individuals who want to live with integrity – and their ability to take personal actions on global problems.
The science behind an Italian doctor’s plans to give a man a whole new body might be advanced, but philosophers have been asking what makes a person for centuries.
In the first of our series, On Happiness, the question is whether unsustainable consumption and debt can ever bring us happiness. The global financial question was a chance to take stock, yet did we learn anything?
Under certain conditions, war may be morally permissible, or even necessary.
EPA/Said Yusuf Warsame
Political leaders frequently invoke Just War Theory to ground their explanations of why they are waging war against another state and how they plan to do so. What are the key components of this moral position?
There is precious little dignity available for those Australians who are in the last stages of their lives.
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The contrast between rights with dignity and rights without is increasingly apparent with regard to two groups of Australians: retirees and those in aged-care facilities.
I have always been interested in how we try to understand the world in which we live, and artworks provide us with a great stimulus for such discussions. My research focuses on aesthetics, ethics and education…
Socrates made people think, but he also made them rather irritated.
Jacques-Louis David/Wikimedia
Earlier this year, the ethicist Walter-Sinnot Armstrong asked whether philosophers were out of touch with, even contemptuous, of ordinary people and everyday life. The picture he paints isn’t flattering…
Former SS member Oskar Groening, 93, is on trial, charged with accessory in the murder of about 300,000 people at Auschwitz.
EPA/AXEL HEIMKEN / POOL
Oskar Groening has declared his moral guilt as an Auschwitz accountant. His trial, currently underway, points to difficult questions about the implications of our own participation in collective activities.
Should primates such as chimpanzees be given rights normally reserved for humans?
phil/Flickr
Though Kazuo Ishiguro makes us wonder whether remembering is really better than forgetting, he also makes it clear that the answer is irrelevant. Remembering is our fate.
Australia’s politicians were unable to save Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan from a firing squad in Indonesia.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
Australia’s politicians were unable to make the most persuasive argument for clemency for Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran because Australia is also a combatant in the misguided war on drugs.
Not the aisle for happiness.
consumer via www shutterstock com
A lifestyle based on aggressive consumption stresses the Earth’s resources and, beyond a certain point of comfort, does not actually foster human fulfillment or happiness.
The institute of marriage can only be made stronger by recognising all marriages.
Danielle
Little progress has been made on debates about marriage equality in Australia – even though a majority of the population is in favour of it. How might ethical frameworks help us better understand the issues?
The capacity for compassion is with us from birth, but as a community we have lost sight of the value of treating all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.
AAP/Julian Smith
A global movement aims to let compassion guide political and community life. This has obvious relevance for a competition-driven nation with a troubling capacity for harsh attitudes and policy.
The FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile is the sort of ‘lethal defensive weapon’ the US may consider supplying to Ukraine.
Wikimedia Commons/US Army
Barack Obama is considering supplying “lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine. But how meaningful is that description? There are simply “weapons”, all of which can be used for defence or for aggression.
The Allied bombing of Dresden, which killed 25,000 civilians, during the Second World War is but one example of state terrorism.
German Federal Archive
To overcome the kind of relativism captured by the cliché “one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter”, we need to define terrorism independently of who is employing it. Here is the definition…
The tragedies of ancient Greece underpin Nietzsche’s understanding of what it means to be an artist.
Hans Runge/Flickr
Love or loathe him, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) offered a unique way of considering creativity in his first major work, The Birth of Tragedy, published in 1872. Competing creative energies…
Australians don’t like the death penalty – we just don’t want the discomfort of having to care about the people it’s applied to.
EPA/Made Nagi
Barring some sort of last-minute miracle, two relatively young Australian men, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, are going to be killed by the Indonesian state. They will not be the first to die this way…