Month: November 2012

• November 21, 2012

  Coming to earnestness

  The slow youth are dim, dim-witted, and droll; they remain there and get decent jobs. The clever ones are boundlessly sarcastic, for they have discovered how to stretch and bend their voices and twist their faces. They can say one thing, mean the opposite, and make themselves ugly in the bargain. But sarcasm is only…
• November 20, 2012

  The relationship between direct speech and philosophical inquiry

  Direct Speech and Philosophical Inquiry I believe we creatures of habit, we too-clever beings have learned all forms of indirect speech. To overcome indirectness, I have sought to teach direct speech. Indeed, I have insisted that a philosophical conversation cannot begun unless the philosophical guide and the conversation partner engage exclusively in direct speech. In…
• November 19, 2012

  Giving an honest self-inventory; or, how to be post-ironic

  The literary scholar Christy Wampole has called ours an “ironic age” in which “directness has become unbearable to us,” and in “How to Live Without Irony,” her New York Times Stone essay that appeared in this Sunday’s Review, she provides some clues for how we could live in a post-ironic manner.  These clues include saying what…
• November 16, 2012

  Responsibility as a child of time

  The Pythagoreans were the first, perhaps, to insist so doggedly that one give an account of oneself at the end of each day as if it were one’s final hour. What is responsibility for the entirety of one’s self but taking this thought to heart not at some late date but in each of one’s…
• November 15, 2012

  The end of the university: Udacity’s mounting case

  We’ve been considering the case of Udacity, the larger case that it is mounting. In my mind’s eye, I’ve been imagining a bee hive cracked into, with bees and flowers and unimaginable things fluttering out. Now, any serious threat to the status quo may do more than show that it presents a novel solution. More importantly,…