In this article, I analyze how the Harry Potter novels bring to awareness two fundamental aspects of the human condition: the importance of one’s choices and the inevitability of one’s mortality. These are highlighted through the contrast of the characters of Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort.

Urging readers of the Harry Potter series to dig deeper than wizards, boggarts, and dementors, the authors of this unique guide collect the musings of seventeen ...

Darwinian Evolution and Classical Liberalism brings together a collection of new essays that examine the multifaceted ferment between Darwinian biology and classical liberalism.

This book examines influential conceptions of sport and then analyses the interplay of challenging borderline cases with the standard definitions of sport. It is meant to inspire more thought and debate on just what sport is, how it relates to other activities and human endeavors, and what we can learn about ourselves by studying sport.

In Steve Jobs and Philosophy, sixteen philosophers take a close look at the inspiring yet often baffling world of Steve Jobs. What can we learn about business ethics from the example of Jobs? What are the major virtues of a creative innovator? How could Jobs successfully defy and challenge conventional business practices? How did Jobs combine values and attitudes previously believed to be unmixable? What does it really mean to “think different”? Can entrepreneurs be made or are they just born? (...) If Jobs didn’t make any major inventions, just what was his contribution? How is Jobs’s life illuminated by Buddhism? How does a counter-culture transform mainstream culture? What does Jobs teach us about the notions of simplicity and functionality in design? How do Jobs’s achievements alter the way we think about technology in relation to human life? (shrink)

Classical Liberalism is a view that the only justifiable restraints on the actions and choices of individuals in political orders are ones necessary to preserve individual liberty. Central to this view of liberty is the individual being left free from coercive interference from other individuals and society as a whole. This view presumes the idea that the individual is, firstly, able to choose his ends and actions, and secondly, that the individual is the best judge of these. Thus, the individualism (...) of classical liberalism presupposes a view of human consciousness that is volitional: capable of engaging in choice and individual self-direction. If this view of human consciousness is in conflict with the physical casual and evolutionary accounts of the world, then classical liberalism would seem to have serious problem. Therefore, I argue that the correct conception of volitional consciousness is consistent with the physical causal and evolutionary accounts of the world. Presenting a conception of volitional consciousness that makes the best sense of our introspective experience and knowledge of the world, I then show how such a volitional consciousness is consistent with causality and biological evolution. (shrink)