Alexander Pruss's Blog

Socrates famously held that a wrongdoer harms themselves more than they harm their victim. This is a correct rule of thumb, but I doubt tha...

A famous Socratic question is whether virtue can be taught. This argument may seem to settle the question: If vice can be taught, virtue c...

There is a popular picture of Socrates as someone inviting us to think for ourselves. I was just re-reading the Euthyphro , and realizing th...

Socrates thought it was important that if you didn't know something, you knew you didn't know it. And he thought that it was importa...

Here’s a curious phenomenon. Suppose I have enough justification for p that if p is in fact true, then I know p , but suppose also that my...

Suppose we had good empirical data that people who suffer serious physical pain are typically thereby led to significant on-balance gains in...

I’ve realized today that I read the Euthyphro dilemma differently from how some other people do. I think some people read it as meant to be...

On the one hand, Jesus tells us that it is more blessed to give than to receive. On the other hand, Socrates tells us in the Gorgias : And w...

Take seriously the Socratic idea that emotional awareness is a kind of perception of normative states of affairs: pain is a perception of ac...

According to Socrates the greatest goods and evils are moral ones. Call this the "Socratic thesis". On the Socratic thesis, ...

This argument for incompatibilism is inspired by an excellent paper by Patrick Todd that I just heard. I don't know if Patrick would e...

Suppose I end up at a concentration camp for a significant amount of time. Here are some possible moral development outcomes: b...

Ari: Consider this horrific theology: God forces Sally to sin, in a way that takes away her responsibility, and then he intentiona...

Consider Socrates' thesis: any amount of external evils (i.e., anything other than vice or loss of virtue) is worth suffering...

The standard desire version of the liar paradox is to consider a person whose only desire is to have no satisfied desires. But t...

There is a temptation for Catholics—also present for non-Catholic Christians but with different terminology—to settle for avoidin...

In experiencing a pleasure (or pain, but let's start with the nice side), one is aware. But what is one aware of in the pleas...