@brianleport.bsky.social
High School Philosophy and Religious Studies Teacher (in San Antonio, TX) with a Ph.D. in Religion and Theology
It’s interesting. He wrote it in the form of a Platonic dialogue, so it’s got that feel, and the goddess “Psyche” seems to be his mouthpiece.
02.08.2025 14:59 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Me: “I need a break from religion and theology. I’ll read some philosophy.”
The philosophy:
Insightful discussion about housing in America:
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...
A video introduction to the life and career of Philippa Foot:
youtu.be/K7KkXvHXtGM?...
“…everyone should be allowed freedom of judgement and the right to interpret the basic tenants of his faith as he sees fit, and that the moral value of a man’s creed should be judged only from his work.”
- Spinoza, “Theological-Political Treatise”
How is there not a true crime podcast dedicated to San Francisco? Or am I missing one?
20.07.2025 22:19 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
New history of California! So far, so good!
18.07.2025 23:26 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
What Christians can learn from John Stuart Mill:
brianleport.home.blog/2025/07/17/w...
“On the national and neighborhood level, people are being forced to move to places where housing in available and affordable, and those places are often the riskiest ones when it comes to extreme weather.”
youtu.be/7SOFoxXiLEQ?...
More on our desire to live in our reality:
open.substack.com/pub/brianlep...
Is the Bible “relevant” even if it isn’t the “inerrant Word of God”?
megaphone.link/ADL3010747337
Cool history of San Francisco’s Ferry Building;
youtu.be/Q01TgTHEiB4?...
Why do some people self-sabotage?
open.substack.com/pub/brianlep...
Studying Philosophy Does Make People Better Thinkers
This study “offers the strongest evidence to date that studying philosophy does indeed make people better thinkers.” www.cambridge.org/core/journal... (h/t @greggdcaruso.bsky.social) #philosophy #PhilSky
California pays about $78,000,000,000 more in federal taxes than it gets in federal spending and I doubt they're vacationing in Nebraska so ...
13.07.2025 21:48 — 👍 4669 🔁 777 💬 295 📌 42
The philosopher Simon Critchley says that we “are still drawn by the desire for asceticism” even when we reject its explicitly religious connotations:
brianleport.home.blog/2025/07/13/s...
What do you value? What do you do when your goals conflict? If you’ve wondered about these things, you’ll like this book:
open.substack.com/pub/brianlep...
“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.”
- John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty” (chapter 2)
If the Book of Job teaches us anything, it teaches us that at times like these, theologizing a disaster is precisely the worst thing you can do. Job’s friends were right for the first week when they just sat with him in silence. The mistake was opening their mouth and trying to speak for God.
07.07.2025 20:43 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0“God might be ineffable, but the mystics are constantly effing the ineffable, for as long as it effing takes.”
- Simon Critchley, “Mysticism,” p. 63.
The GOP’s budget cuts to NOAA are set to take effect at the start of fiscal year 2026, which begins on October 1, 2025.
Anyone making the deaths of the children in Texas about partisan politics is morally bankrupt. Please reflect.
06.07.2025 16:51 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
JUST IN: At least 67 people are dead following flooding that slammed central Texas over the weekend, while a desperate search for 11 missing girls continues.
06.07.2025 16:03 — 👍 694 🔁 266 💬 69 📌 59
03.07.2025 13:31 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
“The time, it is hoped, is gone by when any defence would be necessary for the ‘liberty of the press’ as one of the securities against corrupt tyrannical government.”
- John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty” (chapter 2)
John Stuart Mill’s three regions of human liberty:
1. “the inward domain of consciousness”
2. “liberty of tastes and pursuits”
3. “freedom to unite”
“No society in which these liberties are not, on the whole, respected, is free.”
- “On Liberty”
“Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from themselves; universal too is the shy concealment of this haste because everyone wants to seem content and would like to deceive more sharp-eyed observers as to the wretchedness he feels”.
- Nietzsche, “Untimely Meditations,” 5.
Crazy that the world population around the time of Jesus was only 170 million.
historyfacts.com/world-histor...
Svend Brinkman’s helpful distinction between two valuable forms of thinking: problem-solving & meaning-generating.
open.substack.com/pub/brianlep...
Machiavelli knew:
“…principalities are won by prowess or by fortune but are kept without the help of either. They are maintained, in fact, by religious institutions, so powerfully mature that, no matter how the ruler acts and lives, they safeguard his government.”
- The Prince, XI
