Virtues at the Movies
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A New Look at a Classic from a Virtues Science Perspective Dear reader, today we will explore virtues through the lens of well-known media. We begin with Aladdin, the iconic animated film and not the original tale. Let us first agree together we should cast aside all that is false and glittering, which is to…
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Deception’s Slavery Consider fleeting smiles in the shadows which cling to the feet of the most deceptive. Aladdin, as he dons his false identity, demands enslavement of all who are won by the deception. He is proud of this arrangement, of being the deceiver. He reveals the profound sickness of disdain, an apathy rooted in…
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A Christian Philosopher Watches The Godfather There exists a profound confusion in this age of noise regarding greatness. We tend to equate importance with stature: a towering building, a commanding voice, or an unquestioned position. Something within each of us admires the one who sits highest upon the mountain, yet they more often remain blinded…
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A Christian Philosopher’s Take on Batman Versus Joker In the sprawling metropolis of Gotham, teetering on the brink of chaos, we find ourselves confronted with a moral conundrum as old as humanity itself. The Dark Knight is a philosophy film cloaked in the garb of cartoonish comic book heroism. It invites us to ponder the…
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The Weight of Inaction: Cowardice as the Most Foundational Sin and the Last to be Conquered in Materiality Hamlet, whatever version you wish to watch, is a clear mirror held to the human soul’s deepest struggles, revealing how the sin of Cowardice, rooted in the Fear moment of the Confusion aspect, paralyses action and distorts…
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The Tyranny of Certainty: How Absolutism Distorts the Soul’s Path to Justice The 1950 film Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa, is a masterful exploration of the human soul’s deepest contradictions. I’ve been a big fan of Kurosawa since discovering his work as a teenager, however this is one which took time and experience to fully…
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Procrastination as Thief of Justice: A Structural Virtues Theory Review I would like to preface this review by saying I thought the filmmakers could have done parts of this film differently and much classier. Due to its crudeness, I cannot recommend watching this movie with anyone, especially someone sensitive, impressionable, or young. In the shadow…
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Silent Machinery of Control Through Sin: A Structural Virtues Theory Exploration of Spotlight (2015)
How Corruption Binds Us Who can see through the veil of power maintenance, and its delayed Justice? Spotlight, the 2015 film portraying the heart-wrenching true story of institutionalised child abuse, is a chronicle of just such heroics; it is a mirror held up to the rotting corpse of these institutions that abuse the name of…
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Greed, Dependence, and Envy Aborting Rather Than Prudence and Ethics Birthing Truth In the first domain of RS, Kratos, societies define themselves through the acceptance or rejection of rules, and the powers these rules have, especially when it comes to balance in the other proceeding domains. In There Will Be Blood (2007), this is embodied…
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Greed, Dependence, and the Quest for Meaning in a World of Illusions In the first domain of Resurrexit Spiritus (RS), Kratos, societies and individuals define themselves through the acceptance or rejection of rules. In Rain Man (1988), this is figured in Charlie Babbitt and his practice of manipulating systems, a system of rules exploiting rules…