Category: education

• October 19, 2011

  On what I learned from fasting

  Removing the inessentials is not a form of punishment; it is an act of joy. “He who knows that he has enough–is rich” (Tao te Ching). “The highest goodness is like water” (Peter France, Hermits: The Insights of Solitude). My defects have been pride and prejudice. I grew up with an overvaluation of my own…
• October 18, 2011

  10 word bios

  Individual: So what do you do? Me: I’m a philosopher. I put lives in order. — Institution: So what do you do? Me: I’m a philosopher. I bring lives to order. — Him: So where are you from? Me: The Midwest. Him: And why’d you move? Me: I set out to make life work. — Her:…
• October 16, 2011

  On birthdays as last days

  Here’s my short essay on public philosophy, education, and our spiritual predicament at Butterflies and Wheels. — I’m spending my birthday tomorrow fasting and meditating. The following is an excerpt from Pierre Hadot, The Present Alone is Our Happiness; Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson, translated by Marc Djaballah, Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2009, 162-6. — Jeannie…
• October 15, 2011

  New universities for these unsettled times?

  Unsettled Times We are living through unsettled times. Old ideas of education are no longer working; new ideas have yet to take hold. In the interregnum, we must think seriously in hopes of building new institutions aimed at fulfilling our basic needs and our higher ends. Weekend Events Later today, I’m heading to The Mycelium…
• October 12, 2011

  DIY Wednesday: premeditatio malorum

  I was frightened this morning, and as I write the fear is not all gone. This morning my computer would not boot; it would only go round and round in an loop in which the opening screen would flash, pause, grow dark, get light, and flash again. I was frightened, I say. It has returned…