Over and above the probable peaking of worldwide oil production as a current reality, the arrival of hard limits on all energy resources is very much nearer in the future than many people realize. The public discourse on Peak Oil and the associated arrival of hard limitson energy availability has attracted more than its share of brilliant and creative minds. In addition to scientific and technical analysts, thisgroup includes a fair number of generalists who have engaged in broader forms of (...) reflection upon the likely economic, social, political, and cultural effects of Peak Oil and other hard energy limits on the structure of current world civilization. In this paper, I select for examination three such generalists who are both especially talented and widely read by those having an interest in this topic: James Howard Kunstler, John Michael Greer, and Dmitri Orlov. My intention is to survey their central ideas in turn, with a view to forming a reasonably well-developed and concrete notion as to how the impending arrival of hard limits on energy consumption will affect the structure of built space in coming decades. I focus both on the macro-infrastructural level and on what one might term the micro-infrastructural level of the built space within which the denizens of contemporary industrial civilization live their daily lives. Theprincipal focus of the discussion will be on the situation in the United States, though many of the lines of argument presented may be applied much more broadly if suitably adjusted in light of locally prevailing conditions elsewhere. (shrink)

This article makes use of the thinking of both Max Scheler and Dietrich von Hildebrand in attempting properly to understand the nature of humility. The article examines how gratitude and truthfulness are both present, in an essentially integrated fashion, when a person exists in a humble state. Also addressed is the converse proposition, namely, that gratitude and truthfulness are absent in theperson who exists in a proud state and are replaced in that person by their respective opposites, ingratitude and mendacity. (...) The article begins with a discussion of Scheler’s view of humility as gratitude, then investigates von Hildebrand’s notion that humility is truth. In presenting their ideas, the article identifies three distinct ways in which von Hildebrand’s analysis of humility in terms of truthfulnesscomplements and expands upon Scheler’s analysis of humility in terms of gratitude. These three distinct yet complementary ways are, respectively, ontological, psychological, and ethical in nature. (shrink)

Historians and philosophers of science commonly ignore the epistemological disagreement about the theoretical limits of rationality that underlies the disputes over the absoluteness or relationality of time and the true nature of divine freedom in the Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence. Accordingly, I explore both the logical interconnectedness and the deeper philosophical roots of these disputes, with a view to evaluating the contrast in Leibniz’s and Clarke’s underlying notions of the limits of rationality. In tracing this contrast, I attempt to show first that (...) Clarke’s position can be used to demonstrate successfully that Leibniz’s concept of divine freedom, and his use of the Principle of Sufficient Reason to justify it, involves a contradiction. Second, I attempt to demonstrate that the concept of the limits of rationality underlying Clarke’s conception of divine freedom can be successfully defended against Leibniz’s attacks. (shrink)