Author: Andrew Taggart
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Discerning ‘when it’s time’
No one can tell you ‘when it’s time,’ but you must become discerning. Pick up clues. Amass them. Clues are not grains of sand. Discern when they amount to something and when to nothing. Then–go to!–change yourself or change course. Make haste lest you slink into retreat. You think I am telling you ‘when it’s…
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Nagel on Aristotle on identifying with the ‘highest part of ourselves’
What is the ergon of human beings, asks Thomas Nagel in his essay on Aristotle’s eudaimonia, for the answer to the question of how to live hangs on this. The ergon (function) of the hammer is to pound in nails; a poor hammer may be too heavy to wield, too flimsy, too poor at pound…
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The magical coat room
You hand the man your ticket but either the ticket, which looks pretty ratty, coincides with some other performance, or else its matching partner to this performance is nowhere to be found. Either way, your coat is gone and the coat check man has no recollection of having seen the coat you describe. Try as…
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Finding your lost coat, finding a better life
Here’s a thought experiment for you: suppose you gave your coat to the man working at coat check and the man gave you a ticket. Upon returning from the performance, you go to hand the worker your ticket, only to realize that it is nowhere to be found. The man asks you to describe the…
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Specify and inquire, you hear
You don’t know what’s going on, you don’t know what’s setting things off. Time was that things made sense but that was long ago. Vaguely long ago. Now, there’s something you’d like to figure out or find out about yourself, the world, life–something–but you don’t know what it is or how. How to do so.…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 