The Markus Gabriel Group Ethics Blog

The Daily Stormer & the Limits of “Free Speech.” The recent display of hatred and violence at Charlottesville’s protest was truly shocking. It left one woman dead, Heather Heyer, killed and many injured when a White Supremacist, James Alex Field ran his car into the crowd. The dramatic events at Charlottesville were very well documented in Who HBO-Vice’s “Race& Terror .” GoDaddy, Inc. the web-hosting company decided to ban the Daily Stormer’s site after it posted an article ridiculing  Heather, the victim. Ben Butler, a director at GoDaddy said: “While we detest the sentiment of such sites, we support a free and open internet and, align along the principles of free speech, that sometimes means allowing such tasteless, ignorant content. He added, however:  “In instances where a site goes beyond the mere exercise of these freedoms, however, and crosses over to promoting, encouraging, or otherwise engaging in violence against any person, ...

Grenfell Tower Courtesy Express.co.uk The Grenfell Tower Tragedy The tragic, senseless death of 79 people in the burning of the Grenfell Tower could have been avoided. Last Sunday’s front page of New York Times article , An Accident Waiting to Happen makes it clear. Accidents are defined as “unforeseen and unplanned events or circumstances  (Webster.) This was no accident. As Justin Davidson wrote in NewYork Magazine “There is no such thing as an accident when a high-rise building fails. If gas leaks, wires spark, or a wall crumbles, those are not acts of fate, but the preventable consequence of people not doing their jobs. ” As in most catastrophes, there were warnings that were willfully ignored for cost consideration. Glyndon Evans, a fire safety advisor to the fire fighters’ union had testified in parliament about the risk that the cladding that made up the façade of the tower could combust. He said: “If the cladding cannot resist the s...

Defining and Defending Truth The issue of being truthful or not has repeatedly been in the national  news  over these past few months and that is a good thing. It brings to our attention the importance of some fundamental values in our society such as honesty, integrity and truthfulness. The national discussion also gives us a vertiginous glimpse of the abyss we would fall into if we abandoned those values. However, defining the concept of truth is difficult. Scholars, philosophers, and theologians have struggle with its meaning for ages. The concept has been explored in literature and the arts. The German 20th century philosopher Martin Heidegger believed that the ancient Greek word for truth simply meant “the revealing of something that was previously concealed.” Another German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas believed that truth is whatever is agreed upon (the Consensus Theory.) The poet John Keats made the connection between truth and beauty. He wrote in  Ode on...