Year: 2012

• April 26, 2012

  On Ajax’s becoming mad

  Overcome by rage, Ajax would have his revenge. He would steal upon the Greek camp, would bleed Odysseus alongside the other men who had had a hand in the scheme. Achilles had died and his armor was rightfully his–for who greater than he, what warrior more mighty and more deserving, what man nobler? Odysseus was…
• April 24, 2012

  The ground is for giving: A reverie

  Two days of steady rain have left the city sodden. I am feeling the effects of slumped shoulders and the vertebrae in my lower back have been gabbing more than usual. I look to my right at the brooding Lake Geneva, compare it with the graying of the sky. On cue, someone, perchance looking down…
• April 23, 2012

  To be is to be touched

  I can remember the presentations that guest speakers used to give to us second- and third-graders. The subject was the distinction between “good” and “bad” touches. By my recollection, there would have been red slashes over pictures of “inappropriate” touches–a man’s hand, say, en route to a young woman’s crotch–and circles around “good” touches like…
• April 21, 2012

  ‘I can’t believe it’: Awakening to philosophical life

  Yesterday evening amid the falling coolness–yesterday only a week shy of the time we’d first met two months prior, yesterday also only one week before her 30th birthday, yesterday of the stern stalked tulips with their playful, velvety heads, yesterday therefore so close to death–we were walking out of the Conservancy Garden when she told…
• April 20, 2012

  ‘Their philosophy is for others; I need one for myself’

  In Interview 139, the soft-spoken gentlemen at Philosophy Bites finally got around to asking professional philosophers what it is they do with their time. What, they queried, is philosophy? Some said that philosophy is the analysis of our concepts. Others said that philosophy is the examination of the presuppositions underlying what we normally take for…