Voice Post

Alexander Pruss is a philosopher at Baylor University and maintains a philosophy blog at alexanderpruss.blogspot.com. He is a Christian philosopher, and he recently wrote a blog about his theories on the idea of “Limbo” in Christianity. This blog post provides many examples of the author’s creation of a sense of voice as well as a philosophical Christian perspective that is unfamiliar to me. It is interesting to read about Christian ideas presented in a philosophical context without the conversation being centered on theism vs. atheism. The sense of voice that the Pruss creates is one of a knowledgeable academic who is also creative and thoughtful in his examples and explanations.

In his most recent blog post, Pruss writes, “The theory of limbo holds that some people--those who die in infancy are often given as an example--have not had the kind of life of faith that is required for heaven but nonetheless have done nothing to deserve hell. They are, thus, in limbo: a happy state that, nonetheless, falls short of heaven.” This is written in a very scholarly manner, with the assumption that everything that is being said is certainly true, despite the fact that the entire concept is actually a manner of faith. This choice of words is done to appeal to the readers that frequent this blog, so that the author that they are reading is speaking in a voice most similar to their own. They are not reading this blog to debate their religion because they are already certain about that, rather, they are reading these posts to further their own beliefs.

At the end of the same post, Pruss writes “What I don't like about this theory is this: I have the intuition that God shouldn't force people to love him. But perhaps I should simply say: it is better to love freely, but loving unfreely is still good?” This is an important example with regards to the author’s voice because it shows that despite seeming completely knowledgeable about this subject, he is still humble and willing to admit that there are some answers that he is unsure of. His choice to conclude with a question solidifies this point.

In another post discussing morality, Pruss used the example of a mob boss ordering the murder of a person if they didn’t accept a bribe. Pruss writes, “…the depravity in giving the order is tantamount to murder, plus an additional dollop of depravity in corrupting public officials.” The usage of the word “dollop” develops the author’s playful and casual voice, because it is a seemingly casual word to be using in such a grave example. In the end of this post, Pruss simplifies moral depravity in willing an action morally reprehensible action to happen to a mathematical formula, that is, the level of moral depravity of an action is A+pB, where A is the immorality of willing the act to occur, B is the immorality of the act itself, and p is the probability of the act actually occurring. It is very interesting that this philosopher would try to reduce something as complicated as morality into something as logical as mathematics, yet that itself contributes to the voice of the author. To ascribe a mathematical formula to an abstract and subjective idea such as morality conveys a lot of confidence. This shows that the author has a sturdy set of beliefs about what morality is, which is unlike philosophers who are not Christian.

This post can be found at http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2015/10/russian-roulette.html

Profile Post

The philosophy blog with the highest Alexa rank, according to blogmetrics.org, is an interesting political commentary blog called Sanjeev Sabhlok’s revolutionary blog. Sabhlok is a man from India who writes passionate political opinion pieces promoting good government policy in India. According to his autobiography on his page, he served in an elite branch of the Indian Government before resigning in 2001. Since then, he has spent his time “managing public policy projects and large organizations on behalf of governments in India, and by providing public policy advice and managing rather smallish public policy projects in Australia.” Now he is a political philosopher and Indian politician. 

His most recent post, from March 16^th, discusses the issues of censorship and free speech in India. The post advocates the Swarna Bharat Party, which according to him is “India’s only liberal party, committed to defending liberty and promoting prosperity.” This is an interesting post that highlights how different Indian culture is from the West. Mr. Sabhlok, having spent a lot of time working and living in Australia, and being a highly educated person, is aware of the differences and writes many blog posts to spread awareness. This particular posts starts out with a dark joke (“Please share widely IF YOU CARE FOR YOUR FREEDOM AND PROSPERITY. (If you are committed to your own slavery and poverty, please do nothing.)”) which, in addition to catching the attention of the reader, shows the passion that Sabhlok has for these issues and the weight that these issues carry. Sabhlok asserts that the Indian Censor Board, the government organization responsible for censoring movies and literature deemed too violent or obscene, is oppressive of the free will of the Indian people, and that it is an insult which supposes that the Indian people cannot think for themselves. 

Other posts by Mr. Sabhlok cover issues of unnecessary police violence and corruption. On March 12^th he wrote a blog about the death of a woman in who he claims was in police custody at the time of her death. She had been arrested under suspicion of terrorism, and, according to Sabhlok, after “eight hours of research and analysis” he determined that she must have been in police custody at the time of her death and that police staged the incident that was reported as a cover up. The post is very long, detailing the research that Sabhlok had done to reach his conclusion. Aside from the specifics of this particular incident, the message of this post is that police have no right to kill anyone that they have detained regardless of what that person in charged for, and that it is a terrible crime to deny a person his right to prove his own innocence. This post shows the amount that Sabhlok values fairness, honesty, and equality under the law. 

Mr. Sabhlok posts a few times a week on all sorts of social/political topics from defending GMOs to attacking socialism. His blog is called sabhlokcity.com. WARNING: graphic images of deceased bodies on the March 16^th post.