Month: October 2013

• October 16, 2013

  Perceptive Sensemaking: Coalescing into the Many Things

  My love Aleksandra Lauro has been thinking carefully about her consultancy, Perceptive Sensemaking. By ‘perceptive sensemaking,’ she means the ability to draw and reorient the viewer’s attention to an excellent way of life: to an exemplar of the contemplative life; to the qualia–that is, the inner feel, the grainy look, the general mood–of a beautiful place; to…
• October 15, 2013

  Philosophical horror: Making the world anew

  Perceiving political disorder, religious strife, social unrest, or economic collapse, philosophers have not infrequently regarded themselves as saviors who could, from out of the resources of the mind itself, create the world anew. This, argues Stephen Toulmin in Cosmopolis, is what occurred to Descartes who, upon witnessing the Thirty Years’ War, believed that he could…
• October 11, 2013

  Sageliness within or kingliness without

  I am reading Yu-Lan Fang’s A Short History of Chinese Philosophy alongside Plato’s Republic. According to Fang, the leitmotif of Chinese philosophy is that of ‘sageliness within’ and ‘kingliness without.’ Plato speaks similarly of the Philosopher-King as being the one who, just because he has wisdom, is also fit to rule. Years ago, I believed that the philosopher…
• October 8, 2013

  Prefab lives? Prefab’s lost question

  After the housing crisis, prefab homes have been making a reappearance. ‘Prefab lives!,’ Allison Arieff proclaims jubilantly. For green builders, the venture is to see whether the best of industrial design and manufacturing can be put in service of a sustainable mission. Questions soon turn technical: how to cut costs; how to use green materials;…
• October 5, 2013

  Addendum: Sweetness of temper

  Thus I wrote yesterday evening to my Aleksandra: In the opening of Book I of his Meditations, Marcus gives thanks to his grandfather first and then to the biological father he never knew. In his grandfather, he sees an example of ‘sweetness of temper.’ In the father he never knew, that of modesty and manliness. Combine these three in…