Last month, I considered the surprising popularity of the KonMari method of organizing our homes, and argued that the attractiveness of this approach to decluttering results, at least in part, from our recognition of our disordered relationship with our stuff, and that this disordered relationship negatively affects our lives. WhatRead...

Like many North Americans, I recently binge-watched the Netflix show Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. For readers who have been living under a rock and are consequently unfamiliar with this show, it features the Japanese tidying guru Kondo and her (eventually) grateful clients. I found myself watching the show somewhatRead More

Rachel Haliburton, the Spectator’s Ethicist, who has written frequently about the necessity of taxes, asked this question of federal candidates in Cape Breton-Canso and Sydney Victoria: Given deficits are rising and healthcare in trouble, would you (or your party) consider raising the GST back to where it was before formerRead More

Earlier this week, as of this writing, I lost a very dear friend and her death has made me reflect on the ethical dimensions of friendship. Most contemporary moral philosophers agree that there are three major ethical approaches in the Western philosophical tradition, utilitarianism, Kantianism and virtue ethics. Surprisingly, itRead More

I am sitting in a board game café as I write this month’s column. I have my phone on the table in front of me, and I am surrounded by young people, most of whom are using computers and/or are holding phones in their hands. Our phones and our computersRead More

Politics today is strikingly polarized in both Canada and the United States (and, of course, in other parts of the world). People who call themselves “conservative” and those who call themselves “liberal” or “progressive” not only disagree with one another about almost everything, they seem to be inhabiting such differentRead More

Several columns ago, I considered the difficulties a number of students seem to be experiencing, and noted that, when I discuss their situation with my colleagues, they have identified many of the same issues with their own students. The two most marked features of stress some of my students displayRead More

Last month, I considered the anxiety and other forms of emotional distress that many students seem to be experiencing at North American universities. I also suggested that I think it would be wrong to attribute these mental and emotional health issues to simple inadequacy or weakness on the part ofRead More

Over the last few decades, universities — or, at least, many university administrators, working in tandem with ministries of education —  have increasingly embraced the idea that the role of the university is to prepare students for jobs that already exist in the marketplace. This has left many traditional universityRead More

I have been thinking a lot about John Rawls’ theory of justice, in part because I am working with a fourth-year student on her honor’s thesis, but also because I’ve been watching the college admissions scandal unfolding in the United States (a scandal I find at once fascinating and appalling).Read More