Duncan Mackenzie
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Articles by Duncan Mackenzie
February 03, 2010
Increasingly, we are living in a society that values empty dazzle over competence. The Competent Man and Woman (serious, earnest and hard-working), upon whose back the wealth of the western world was created, is now overlooked in favour of the comic who promises the Earth but delivers only dust. In this spirit, this article offers a semi-serious example: Scotty from Star Trek.
June 13, 2009
Justice and promise-keeping – the Scottish philosopher David Hume pondered both. They are fundamental to human society. But Hume concluded that they are artificial. Are we really obliged to keep to our promises? Hume says ´No´. What is justice? Hume says ´It´s not natural, it´s artificial´. Here, then, are his arguments, and my objections to them.
April 18, 2009
Very few own the land on which they live. In fact, private citizens don't. Governments and monarchs own land - all land. This article all too briefly highlights a few home truths about land ownership, taking in Locke, tribes, Cahill and California, revealing the real owner of Canada and pondering over who has the right to own their land.
April 15, 2009
Explore the fascinating world of the Gothic, as interpretated by Jane Austen and Mary Shelley.
March 18, 2009
A critical assessment of the sanctity of life. Does human life have value? Is a human being more valuable than one other animal? Should those who are a strain on society be eliminated? Is they life worth living?
March 18, 2009
Epicureanism is misunderstood. You hear the word and think of hedonism. But that is not Epicureanism. To example the reality of that philosophical creed, I ask a fundamental question: is it possible for an Epicurean to place the pleasures of someone else before their own?
March 16, 2009
Virgil's the Aeneid is a pillar of the western literary tradition, but look closer and you will see that it is also a work of propaganda in suppose of the Augustan regime.
March 16, 2009
Virgil's The Aeneid is one of the great pillars of the Western Literary tradition. But look closer and you will see that it is also a work of Augustan propaganda that, far from being timeless, is a product of it's time.
February 25, 2009
Believing something is not the same as knowing something. But what if you believe something that turns out to be true?