Month: April 2011
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Ethics and aesthetics are one (house sitting in Brooklyn)
The curtains are pulled back, and the magnolia stands in full bloom, its petals like painted seashells collecting below. It takes up the bedroom window, only softly. In the yard off to the right, bikes, baskets, handle bars lean against a chainlink-wooden fence. A pumpkin, small and orange, sits half-submerged in the spring marsh. Through…
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On my provisional conception of philosophical counseling
I think I’ve got the hang of philosophical counseling. Through philosophical conversation, we clarify the model for living that you hitherto, and often unconsciously, adopted. In the act of clarifying, we also discover the intrinsic structural unsoundness of this form of life: we honor the ways it can satisfy some of your desires while alighting on…
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John Armstrong on the life blood of civilization
J.E. Lendon favorably reviews John Armstrong’s In Search of Civilization. The upshot of Armstrong’s book, Lendon means to show, is that economic liberty entails artistic liberty. Here are a few highlights from the review: The two imps of the ancient mind, that wealth is either irrelevant to the good life or its bane, still rule…
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Managing chronic pain
In a recent blog, the Buddhist physician Alex Lickerman suggests 3 ways for managing chronic pain: Holding (my reference to D.W. Winnicott): the one staying with the other, committing himself to the face-to-face. Distracting: the self learning spiritual exercises for turning away from pain’s aversiveness? Meditating: the focused attention on thoughts rather than on affects.
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Kathryn Schulz on being wrong
— I’d like to clarify Schulz’s otherwise fine lecture on the virtue of fallibility (I err, therefore I am). First, let’s distinguish between being wrong and going wrong. Being wrong entails self-loathing whereas going wrong suggests an error or lapse in judgment. The same goes for being right and heading in the right direction. The former is self-righteousness,…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 