Rachel Maria
What is the connection between friendship and citizenship? Since the topic of the year is friendship as model for a new citizenship, this is an important question.
There are probably many answers to the question, which we can discuss in other posts, but the simplest comes down to the relationship between man and humanity. Continue reading
Marcus Otte
This is the winning piece in The Search magazine’s “What’s the difference?” writing contest. Congratulations to Marcus Otte on this thought-provoking, creative look at government and the common good.
The many good things which people value can be sorted into two types: first, there are some goods that are instrumental – they are valuable as means to an end. Money is an obvious example, as is technology.
Other goods, however, are rightly valued for their own sake. Though they may also have instrumental value, such goods are inherently good even if one were to subtract instrumental considerations. Among the classic instances of intrinsic goods we could include: speculative knowledge, happiness, and friendship. These things do not stand in need of justifying ends. They can appropriately be ends in themselves.
The Search 