Month: July 2014
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The active life: Ways of life available to us in modernity
More reflections on my fall course at Kaos Pilots * Given the distinction between the good life and sustaining life and given also that the former furnishes us with a reason for being while the latter, on its own, can only answer the question of how to go on, it follows that someone will be…
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The contemplative life: Three ways of life available to us in modernity
The title of my fall course at Kaos Pilots is ‘The Good Life and Sustaining Life.’ I want to think further about the sorts of things I’ll be teaching. Five things can be said immediately about this relationship. First, each is sui generis: the good life is unto itself, sustaining life unto itself. Second, the good life is…
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The bullshitter vs. the philosopher
There are at least two kinds of considerations of truthfulness that a bullshitter categorically refuses to acknowledge: sincerity and accuracy. These are the virtues of truthfulness that Bernard Williams writes about in his last book Truth and Truthfulness. By ‘sincerity,’ Williams means the expression of a belief. By ‘accuracy,’ he means a concern with getting things right.…
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What’s so revolting about bullshitting?
Rereading Harry Frankfurt’s essay ‘On Bullshit,’ which was originally published in 1986, only to become a surprise bestseller when it came out in book form in 2005, leaves one with the impression that Frankfurt has put his finger on a phenomenon that has, since then, grown uncomfortably, grotesquely large. When he writes that ‘bullshit is a greater enemy…
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Pragmatist consulting: The art of bullshitting well
‘Once, when contemplating the apparently endless growth of administrative responsibilities in British academic departments, I came up with one possible vision of hell. Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at.’ –David Graeber, ‘On the Phenomenon…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 