Month: April 2014
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On a category mistake: ‘Human beings are weak’
Here are three questions that fascinate me: 1.) How did we go from being creatures who above all ‘desire to know’ (Aristotle, Metaphysics I)–let us say: to understand our place in the world–to being creatures who want most of all to be helped (modernity)? 2.) How did the accidental property of weakness (e.g., feeling weak on Tuesday)…
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Against empathy
Consider a commonplace yet erroneous metaphysical assumption about (modern) human beings made by most people today (especially those in the caring profession): In virtue of our being inherently weak and prone to suffering, we human beings yearn to be helped. * Two brief anecdotes that tell against this picture: One philosophical friend suggested, ‘There is nothing more…
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If human beings are not weak, suffering creatures, then…
Consider a commonplace metaphysical assumption about (modern) human beings made by most people today (especially those in the caring profession): In virtue of our being inherently weak and prone to suffering, we human beings yearn to be helped. This argument leads to the corollary that we are all, potentially or actually, victims. Let us reject the claim that…
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A training program in transformation: Implications of Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life
This is the tenth and final set of reflections on Peter Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life: On Anthropotechnics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013). The first set of reflections can be read here. A summary of Sloterdijk’s principal theses is available here. An overview of my posts (what I term ‘the thrust of his argument’) can be found here. * Let us recall that Sloterdijk has…
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Overcoming dying: On Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life
This is the ninth set of reflections on Peter Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life: On Anthropotechnics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013). The first set of reflections can be read here. A summary of Stoterdijk’s principal theses is available here. * Here is the thrust of Stoterdijk’s argument: First, reinterpret human beings as training animals and then see what this reinterpretation ‘opens us.’ Second, reclaim a…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 