Piety and Politics:

The Piety of Escape

This paper examines two seemingly contradictory views of piety found in Plato’s Euthyphro and Crito. Using the Socratic dialogues for evidence of what Socrates actually believed and to piece together a Socratic account of piety, it seems that his argument in favor of remaining in prison is inconsistent with his own beliefs. The paper concludes that Socrates ought not to have thought it was impi...

Sacred Space and Sublime Sacramental Piety

Filial Piety in Early Buddhism

Buddhist scholars like Kenneth Ch’en thought that filial piety was a special feature of Chinese Buddhism. Later, John Strong employed “popular Buddhist stories” to show that filial piety was also important in Indian Buddhism, but he asserted that it was “a Buddhist compromise with the Brāhmanical ethics of filiality operating at the popular level.” On the other hand, Gregory Schopen, who mainly...

Intentionality, Politics, And Religion

The idea that intentionality is the distinctive mark of the mental or that only mental phenomena have intentionality emerged in the philosophical tradition after Franz Brentano. Much of contemporary philosophy is dedicated to a rejection of the view that mental phenomena have original intentionality. In other words, main strands of contemporary philosophy seek to naturalize intentionality of th...

Pigs and Piety: A Theocentric Perspective on Food Animals

Theological discussions can be abstract and hard to apply, but I do not want this one to be. The reason is that I want to convince you to adopt a specific stance toward food animals. The best way for me to do this is by telling you my story. I am a Mennonite, and we, typically, are rural folk. I do not know whether every other Christian sect or denomination has more farmers per capita than we d...