The Tech Question Concerns Us All

In a letter dated 6 January to Monsignor Paglia for this month’s 25th anniversary of the Pontifical Academy for Life (which was founded in 1994), Pope Francis noted: “Relying on results obtained from physics, genetics and neuroscience, as well as on increasingly powerful computing capabilities, profound interventions on living organisms are now possible . . . Even […]

Moral laziness, vegetarianism, and government intervention

This month Thomas Wells, a philosophy professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, offered a plea for more active government intervention in our lives. He couches his request in the language of ethics: particularly his own moral laziness. He writes: Some years ago, for instance, I worked through the arguments around animal rights and decided […]

When Nature Devours Civilization

Last night I watched Wind River, director Taylor Sheridan’s intense film about the disappearance and murder of a Native American woman, Natalie Hanson. The ambience is extraordinary, the motives for violence primal. The movie, whose protagonists are a hunter deeply embedded in the Native American community (Jeremy Renner) and a well-meaning but unprepared FBI agent (Elizabeth […]

Love Versus Principle

Master Jingzong; English translation by Foying, edited by Fojin Love rules in a family, whereas legal principles rule in a court of law. Love is the name of the game for people who are fond of each other. But those who are in conflict resort to principles. A society will not be harmonious unless love […]