A Dialogue Between The Philosopher and Abraham Lincoln
Exploring Duty, Moral Responsibility, and National Unity
This short philosophical narrative presents an imagined conversation between The Philosopher and President Abraham Lincoln.
Rather than focusing on politics, the dialogue examines the more profound ethical questions Lincoln faced during the Civil War: the tension between personal conviction and constitutional duty, the nature of unity, and the moral weight of leadership when every choice carries profound consequences.
The piece is intended as a demonstration of critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and historical reflection, showing how
philosophy can illuminate even the most difficult decisions. Readers are invited to consider not only what Lincoln chose, but why he chose it — and how moral clarity often requires patience, restraint, and structure.
You may download the full dialogue below.
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A Dialogue Between The Philosopher and President Harry S. Truman
Exploring Moral Burden, Ethical Ambiguity, and the Weight of Irreversible Decisions
This short philosophical narrative presents an imagined conversation between The Philosopher and President Harry S. Truman at the pivotal moment when he carried the grave responsibility of ending World War II.
Rather than focusing on political interpretations of Truman’s presidency, the dialogue examines the deeper ethical tensions he confronted: the dilemma between military necessity and humanitarian cost, the struggle between preserving countless future lives and the immediate devastation of atomic warfare, and the profound loneliness of leadership when no option is without irreversible moral consequence.
The piece is intended as a demonstration of critical thinking, ethical analysis, and historical reflection — showing how philosophy can illuminate even the most agonizing decisions. Readers are invited to consider not only what Truman decided, but why he believed he must decide it, and how genuine moral clarity often emerges only through confronting paradox, restraint, and the limits of human foresight.
You may download the full dialogue below.
Important note
The character called "The Philosopher" is a figure composed of the beliefs and values of the writer L.R.Caldwell
A Dialogue Between The Philosopher and Thomas Aquinas
I. Setting the Encounter
There is no sense of arrival.
The space is already quiet, already prepared for reflection. It resembles a cloister only in its stillness, not in its architecture. Nothing presses forward; nothing withdraws.
The atmosphere is not empty, but attentive, as though thought itself were permitted to unfold without urgency.
Aquinas stands at ease, not as one interrupted, but as one long accustomed to reflection.
His composure bears the marks of careful distinction and intellectual patience.
He does not hold himself as an authority demanding assent, nor as a disputant prepared for contest. He appears instead as one ready to listen.
Opposite him stands the Philosopher. His posture carries no challenge, no performance.
His attention is steady, unhurried, and free of ambition. There is no sense that he seeks to guide the exchange toward a conclusion. He waits, as though truth itself were something that must be allowed to present itself.
The silence between them is not empty. It clears the ground.
When the Philosopher finally speaks, it is not to assert a claim, but to acknowledge a shared orientation: that truth is not seized, but approached with restraint.
Aquinas simply responds that recognizing its limits does not weaken reason; it clarifies it.
They begin without assertion, and without hierarchy.
II. Being, Existence, and Intelligibility
The first question concerns intelligibility. The world appears structured—open to understanding rather than resistant to it. But is that structure intrinsic to reality, or imposed by the mind that seeks to understand it?
Intelligibility, Aquinas replies, belongs to being as such. If something is, it is not sheer indeterminacy. It has a nature, a form—some principle by which it is what it is rather than something else. That is why it can be known at all.
Yet understanding remains partial. Minds disagree, hesitate, and revise. The Philosopher asks whether this instability suggests that intelligibility is not fully present in things themselves.
The limitation, Aquinas explains, lies not in being but in the knower. The intellect receives what is there; it does not supply the measure.
Yet it receives according to its own mode. Finite intellects move through concepts, distinctions, and judgments. Error arises not because it is withheld intelligibility, but because intellect grasps it incompletely.
The Philosopher asks whether the intellect functions more like a lamp illuminating reality or an eye receiving light already present.
Aquinas favors the latter.
The intellect is ordered toward truth, not as its origin, but as its recipient. That ordering accounts for both the possibility of knowledge and the danger of overconfidence.
Attention then turns to the distinction between essence and existence. Essence answers what a thing is; existence answers that it is. Essence can be understood through definition. Existence is affirmed through judgment—through recognizing that a given nature is instantiated rather than merely conceivable.
In created things, essence does not include existence. It is not part of what a thing is that it must be. Existence is received. This reception implies dependence, not merely at an origin point, but continuously. Dependence is not exhausted by temporal beginning. If something does not contain within itself the reason for its being, it stands in dependence, whether that dependence is visible or concealed.
The familiar question arises: why is there something rather than nothing?
Aquinas resists rhetorical flourish. Nothing explains nothing; it offers no account of being. But the deeper question is not merely that something exists—it is that what exists appears ordered. Even doubt presupposes coherence in order to be expressed.
The Philosopher asks whether this order is discovered or projected. Aquinas answers that the intellect’s appetite for truth is itself revealing. Natural appetites correspond to realities: hunger to food, thirst to water.
The intellect’s orientation toward intelligibility suggests that intelligibility is encountered rather than invented. Yet appetite indicates direction, not completion.
It does not justify premature certainty.
Intelligibility, then, is real but not exhaustive. It invites inquiry while resisting possession. On this point, both agree.
III. The Five Ways — Demonstration or Clarification
When the Five Ways enter the exchange, they do so without polemic. The question is not whether they defeat skeptics, but what kind of philosophical work they perform.
If proof means compulsion regardless of intellectual disposition, Aquinas says, then few philosophical arguments qualify.
But if proof means showing that certain features of experience imply deeper principles, then the Five Ways serve precisely that function.
They do not disclose the divine essence. They indicate that reason, when it reflects carefully on motion, causality, contingency, gradation, and order, is led beyond what is immediately given.
Motion is considered first—not merely physical motion, but change as such: the reduction of potency to act. Potency cannot actualize itself. This is not an empirical observation but a metaphysical insight. If potency could actualize itself, it would already be act in the relevant respect.
The issue is not whether an infinite temporal series is possible, but whether an essentially ordered series can explain present actuality. A chain in which each member acts only insofar as it is moved cannot explain itself without a first that acts without being moved in that respect.
Efficient causality follows the same structure. Causes that transmit activity only by receiving it cannot account for the actuality they convey unless there is a source that does not receive causality in the same way.
Contingency sharpens the issue. Contingent beings do not contain within themselves the sufficient reason for their being. Multiplication does not remove dependence. A totality composed entirely of beings that receive existence still lacks explanation, a point Aquinas articulates in his Third Way and deepens through his distinction between essence and esse. If existence is always received, there must be a source from which it is received—not as one being among others, but as existing in a different mode.
The argument from degrees is approached cautiously. It is not a ranking of preferences, but an argument about perfections—truth, goodness, nobility—understood analogically. To speak meaningfully of more and less presupposes a maximum in the relevant order, which Aquinas treats not merely as a limit but as the source and measure of such perfections. Aquinas insists on restraint here, acknowledging the subtlety of analogical predication.
Order and governance follow. Directedness is observable even where awareness is absent. Things act toward ends without knowing those ends. This does not settle every question, but it undermines the claim that intelligibility is imposed from without.
Taken together, the Five Ways are not weapons. They are pathways. They clarify without coercing, and they guard reason against both despair and excess.
IV. Knowledge of God and Human Access
The discussion turns from demonstration to access. Must awareness of God always come through argument?
Natural reason proceeds from effects to cause. This is not a flaw, but the condition of finite intellect. One may know that God exists without knowing what God is. Affirmation does not entail comprehension.
Argument alone can produce confidence without depth. One may hold correct propositions while remaining shallow in understanding. Aquinas distinguishes intellectual clarity from moral and epistemic posture. The will can aid or obstruct the intellect. Dishonesty, impatience, and pride distort vision; discipline and restraint sharpen it.
The suggestion arises that understanding may sometimes follow participation—that one comes to see more clearly by living toward truth rather than merely asserting it. Aquinas distinguishes carefully. The intellect is ordered to truth, the will to the good, but they are not isolated. Reason prepares the ground; it does not consummate what lies beyond its reach.
V. Limits, Humility, and the Search for Truth
As the exchange slows, neither seeks a final synthesis. Ignorance, it is agreed, is less dangerous than certainty beyond warrant. Error often arises not from lack of reasoning, but from overextension.
Overconfidence is frequently disguised as zeal for truth. Yet truth does not require haste. Sound conclusions endure patient scrutiny; unsound ones grow louder under pressure.
When the subject is ultimate, the proper ending is often a boundary. Silence, when it follows clarity, is not evasion. It is accuracy.
The dialogue ends where it began—not with possession, but with orientation.
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