One of the most common prejudices we historians of philosophy encounter is the notion that philosophy is somehow incompatible with religious belief. Religion is based on faith, philosophy on reason; religion is rigorously imposed doctrine, philosophy is open-ended inquiry; religion is about believing what you’re told, philosophy about figuring things out for yourself. A moment’s reflection will show you that it must be a little more complicated than that. After all, nearly all philosophers in history — famous and obscure, ancient and modern, Western and non-Western, male and female — have been religious believers. No surprise there, given that nearly all humans in recorded history have been religious believers. So to believe in a fundamental opposition between religion and philosophy, or faith and reason, is to assume that nearly the entire history of philosophy has consisted of people rising above or setting aside their own deeply held spiritual convictions.
When you’re lying face down for 20 minutes in a steaming pile of elk droppings, having to remain breathlessly still because the herd may have just spotted your hunting party, you find odd ways to distract yourself. I pondered a simple but vexing question: How can hunters claim to care deeply about the animals they kill?
At that point in our weeklong trek in eastern Oregon across the 33,000-acre Zumwalt Prairie Preserve, the six of us in the group had been belly-crawling, tightly single file, for a quarter-mile. Wearing heavy backpacks, we looked like overgrown turtles as we awkwardly tried to sneak up on our prey. But elk spook easily and for two long days they evaded us, always managing to see, smell or hear us from what seemed to be impossible distances, well before Chelsea Cassens, our group’s permitted hunter, could get within the 200 yards she needed to make an “ethical” kill shot.
As a storyteller, Ribon knows her way around a modern Disney princess, having worked for about two years on the hit “Moana.” And she says her gift for crafting the dialogue of strong, funny female characters had helped her become a writer on Disney’s “Ralph Breaks the Internet” (opening Wednesday), the sequel to Rich Moore’s Oscar-nominated 2012 smash “Wreck-It Ralph.”
So it was with a taste for the satiric that Ribon began to muse: What if, at one point in the film, I surrounded Vanellope Von Schweetz, the “Ralph” franchise’s endearingly daring video-game racer (voiced by Sarah Silverman), with enough Disney princesses that it resembled a sorority reunion — and then teasingly lampooned their tropes?
"I am not angry. If anything, I am tired," Korede says, faced with yet another bloody crime scene to scour, yet another body to dump. The first few times, her beautiful sister Ayoola's self-defense claims seemed plausible, but the bodies have added up. And Korede Googled it: Three murders makes you a serial killer.
My Sister, the Serial Killer, the wry debut novel by Nigerian writer Oyinkan Braithwaite, tests the bonds of family, when family comes armed. The title says it all: Ayoola likes to kill her boyfriends. Korede can't quite bear to see her get caught: "Ayoola needs me; she needs me more than I need untainted hands." So, the gloves come on and the bleach comes out.