The Self-Loathing Man

“Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.”  ― Albert Camus PREFACE I want to begin this piece by leading the reader on a brief thought journey. This is a mental exercise that needs to be made honestly and earnestly within one’s own mind to better understand the topic at hand. Following that,...

The Future of Research in Public Administration

As with any field of study, there needs to be defined and uniform standards with which to research and expand the realm of knowledge of the field. The same is true for the field of public administration. But, it is often argued, that because public administration is in its infancy, it lacks a uniform standard...

What is the Enlightenment?

The following is an excerpt from my book Public Administration and Enlightenment Ethics  The Enlightenment was a philosophical revolution that grew out of Europe in the 16th century and spread to the Americas in the 17th and 18th century (Szalay, 2016). This movement, also referred to as the Age of Reason is often contrasted against...

Bounded Rationality and the Limits of Human Nature

This article was published in the PA Times Online January, 2020 and can be viewed here. “The central concern of administrative theory is with the boundary between the rational and the non rational aspects of human social behavior” - Herbert Simon in Administrative Behavior (1947) In his existential masterpiece The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus...

The Allegory of the Organization

A Quick Summary of The Allegory of the Cave by Plato in The Republic (BCE 517):Deep in an underground chamber of a cave there are prisoners chained to a wall in such a way as they cannot move their heads to look around - all they can see is the wall in front on them....

The Good Life – for the Individual and the Public Administrator

One of the age-old philosophical questions, what does it mean to live a good life, is one that has not been answered sufficiently. But with a continually advancing global and scientific community, people are closer than ever to answering what makes a good life. There have been many who claimed to have answered this question,...

The Experience Machine

The thought experiment referred to as “the experience machine” was first put forth by Robert Nozick in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia in an attempt to destroy the hedonistic and perhaps the utilitarian position that pleasure, happiness, and avoidance of bad is the only good. In this experiment, Nozick asks if given the...

Designer Babies: The Ethics of Gene Selection

In the dull, grey, squat building that housed the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, the World State processed and hatch people from preserved ovaries through what they describe as the Bokanovsky Process. “A bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly...

Hiding the Cure for Cancer

            To some of the more credulous and suspicious of our nation, the idea that someone would possess and hide the cure for cancer is not so far fetched. There have been conspiracies and whispers of such a misdeed on the internet dark web and even in popular social media sites claiming that Big Pharma,...

The Ethics of Reparations

“there was an original traceable offense - a taking, a theft, a rape, a dispossession, a confiscation [and] there isn't a thinking person who can say ‘no’ to that. The evidence is very clear and it mounts with every every chapter of historical inquiry” - he goes on to explain that there is “hardly one official brick piled on another that wasn't piled there by unpaid labor...and [the wealth from that labor is] piled, actually in the Treasury Department and the federal financial system who took that free labor in those dead souls and turned it into capital and it's back pay and it's owed and it's overdue”

The Case of Baby M and the Ethics of Surrogacy

THE FACTS OF THE CASE: Elizabeth Stern was not infertile, but had multiple sclerosis and she and her husband William Stern were worried about the potential health implications of pregnancy, including temporary paralysis, and transmitting genes that might put a child who shared them at risk of developing the same illness. The Sterns and Mary Beth...

The Queen vs. Dudley and Stephens

THE FACTS OF THE CASE: The English yacht Mignonette was a 52-foot cruiser built in 1867. In 1883, Australian lawyer John Henry Want paid a crew to sail it from England to Australia. Due to the nature of the journey, the yacht was not suited for the high seas, so a crew was hard to...

Protected: Letter to a Young Theist

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

At the Door: Deontology and Duty

When asked “what would you do?” when the Gestapo is at the door asking if you are harboring any Jews, the answer is actually a simple ethical answer to a simple ethical question (Paul and Elder, 25). Lie! Lie to the officer, slam the door and go enjoy some lekach with your new Jewish friends....

The Trolly Problem

The Trolley Problem is a (now) classic problem that forces people to make a serious moral decision. The general format of the problem is as follows:  You are alone at the controls of a runaway trolley barreling toward five people who would most certainly die. The brakes and controls (horn, doors, etc) do not work...

Brod’s Dilemma

It was Summer 1924, and Max Brod was in Franz Kafka’s office. Kafka died of tuberculosis in Austria leaving his dear friend, Brod, two written requests. Brod sat down at Kafka’s paper strewn desk, moving stacks of writings to make room. The first note, undated written in pen read:  Dearest Max, My last request: Everything...

The Beauty and Flaws in Metaphors, Similes, and Symbolism

An interesting part of human behavior is the way we learn and share stories or lessons. Taking this observation and applying it to the history of any people, one will find that metaphors, symbols, and similes are everywhere - ingrained into our language and culture. To define these terms in my own words, metaphors and...

The Social Contract – a Solution for Inequality

“Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains” Jean-Jacques Rousseau There are many issues plaguing modern society and, as throughout history, thinkers often ponder and debate solutions. They may treat each issue in isolation, but problems often have common roots in inequality which can be treated collectively with what Enlightenment philosophers call a...

Thomas Paine: The Original Emancipator

"There's no real memorial to him in his country of birth. There's no day that honors him. He's not taught in schools. There's no real memorial to him in his country of adoption tough he is really the unofficial founding father and, undoubtedly, the moral author of the Declaration of Independence" - Christopher Hitchens in...

The Lasting Legacy of our Founding Father’s Failure

The principles laid down in America’s founding was a product of the Enlightenment Era and focused on scientific inquiry, individuality, and of course liberty. But the failing in the application of the America’s founding principles of liberty did not grant minorities the same rights. Though the founding fathers understood the importance of individual liberty, they...