Category: education
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Putting problems in their place
The major purpose of reigning in the use of the word ‘problem’ is to clear a path to the thesis that the world is good and, beyond this, beautiful. The minor purpose is to return the concept ‘problem’ to its proper linguistic settings. Certain concepts are ‘at home’ in certain linguistic contexts. Yet for social, historical, metaphysical, and political reasons, some…
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Inward Training (Nei-yeh): Our audiobook
Translated variously as ‘inward training,’ ‘self-cultivation,’ and ‘inner development,’ the Nei-yeh is an early Daoist work consisting, according to the translation we have followed, of 26 interconnected verses. Set out in these subtle, beautiful poems is a program concerned with aligning one’s posture, breathing, and mind with the Way of things. Some Daoist scholars, therefore,…
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How the ‘problematized world’ can never become a home
My last post rushed to this conclusion: ‘Thus, the problem-solver who tries to make the world into a home cannot do so.’ Let me try again, this time more slowly, in order to reach this conclusion. Recall that the kind of person we are describing believes that, in a basic sort of way, the world is full of problems and…
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The world problem-solver: Not a home, not free enough
The chief reason that one may spend one’s life trying to solve the world’s problems is that one believes that doing so is identical with the good life. To lead a good life is to solve the world’s problems. But this thesis cannot hold up under scrutiny. The world problem-solver, having taken the world not to be a home at the…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 