Month: October 2012

• October 31, 2012

  Prospective, hypothetical inquiry

  Most of the work in my philosophy practice is focused on making sense of what has happened to someone where this “making sense of what has happened” involves fitting this event into a conceptual framework. Elsewhere, I have called this ‘philosophical holism’–a part is only intelligible in relation to a whole–and the insight into how…
• October 30, 2012

  ‘One feels wonderment upon witnessing a life transformed…’

  One feels wonderment upon witnessing a life transformed. What is expected is that life will stay the same in its essence or get worse with age. We get used to the idea of our burdens, are counseled to ‘manage’ or ‘cope’ with them. Sameness is our ailment, our life affliction once we have come of…
• October 29, 2012

  Some reflections on the Dyson NYRB review and on the place of philosophy in public life

  The physicist Freeman Dyson has written a book review (“What Can You Really Know?,” NYRB) that, at least in professional philosophical circles, has proved to be controversial. Near the end of the review he asks, “[W]hy did philosophy lose its bite?” and attributes the answer, in large measure, to modern science’s recent usurpation of philosophy as…
• October 26, 2012

  Metanoia and radiance: A morning meditatio

  We are speaking again, as if for the first time or final day, about the puzzle of self-transformation. We say that self-transformation is final yet ongoing. We say also that it has an aim yet that its aim is not external but rather internal to the practice of philosophy. This makes self-transformation out to be…
• October 25, 2012

  The puzzle of self-transformation (metanoia)

  Self-transformation (metanoia) is something of a puzzle. On the one hand, self-transformation is ‘final,’ final in that it carries us into a completely new state of being. From this vantage point, we are different persons, more whole and more fulfilled. On the other hand, self-transformation is ongoing, not quite reached, always underway. Thus, philosophizing is…