Month: December 2012
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Philosophical reflections on industrial design
Yesterday I had the good fortune, thanks to faculty members Mike McAllister and Tony Guido, to observe the Junior critiques of the University of the Arts Industrial Design program students. For their fall semester projects, Juniors were invited to think about how they could improve the lives of persons with disabilities who wanted better access…
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On sex, clumsiness, and adverbs
Typically, we associate awkwardness, clumsiness, inelegance, and gracelessness with poor aesthetic performances alone, but could aesthetic considerations have any connection to ethical considerations? Could there be a point at which clumsiness cancelled out a good deed entirely? Sometimes we may think that what makes a good deed good is that the individual has the right…
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Simplicity, silence, natural eloquence
Porphyry relates this anecdote about his spiritual guide Plotinus: One day, when Origen came into his class, Plotinus blushed from head to toe, and made as if to stand up and put an end to the class. When Origen urged him to continue, Plotinus said, “One’s desire to talk is reduced when one knows that…
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Rehearsing a line of thought
Rehearsing a line of thought has its place in philosophical life. Saying this seems, however, to present us with a puzzle. If a philosophical inquiry is “an unrehearsed genre whose principal aims are, first, to reveal to us what we don’t know but thought we did and, second, to bring us a greater sense of…
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The 3 basic conditions of a gift economy: generosity, onus, wholeheartedness
Welcoming a number of new conversation partners into my philosophy practice has enabled me to rethink the basic conditions of my gift economy. I’ve been urged to find better ways of saying what a gift economy is (and, in conversation, to explore why it matters). All this has involved learning to speak more clearly, more…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 
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