Month: March 2014

• March 22, 2014

  ‘The way is available yet inaccessible’

  The way is available yet inaccessible. Disclosing ever to the attuned; inaudible otherwise. ‘The five tones deafen the ears.’ Listing unlistening. Attuned, one hears for the first time. Not tone deaf, without excited tongue: subtle feeling for sound. According oneself. So comes the way.
• March 21, 2014

  Kissing a ‘thing which is human’

  1 At bedtime, I lie on my side, facing her. Her hand is so warm, rough from climbing. 2 After I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I lie back down and listen. There: her breath. 3 Epicetus says, ‘If you kiss your wife, say you only kiss a thing which is human.…
• March 19, 2014

  A philosophical surprise and a philosopher by surprise

  A philosophical surprise has the following structure: While I was on the road to my destination, something happened that stopped me and held me in amazement. Unpacking this statement: 1.) ‘While I was on the road to my destination’: I was proceeding absentmindedly, and I was bent on getting somewhere in particular. I may have…
• March 18, 2014

  Retreating from the genre of deliberation

  I’ve been thinking from time to time about the genre of deliberative inquiry. When one thinks of the genre of deliberation, one is inclined to take the first question to be: ‘Well, what is to be done?’ Or: ‘What shall we do?’ Over the years, I’ve become disenchanted with this question; it is rarely the right…
• March 17, 2014

  Withdrawing from Ultimate Tests

  Dear Philosophical Friend, I thought my claim about the impossibility of ultimate tests was too rushed and unclear. Let me try again here. Let P be an Ultimate Test for some question Q. Let question Q be, e.g.: ‘Is Smith truly, ultimately trustworthy?’ There are three ways that P can go awry: 1.) P can be so overly…