Category: education

• May 6, 2013

  A philosopher is neither a teller nor a listener

  The brash, young, wealthy aristocrat approaches Socrates and says to him, ‘Can you tell me, Socrates, can virtue be taught? Or is it not teachable but the result of practice, or is it neither of these, but men possess it by nature or in some other way?’ (Meno 70a). Meno wants to be told, perhaps he even…
• May 3, 2013

  How the art of philosophical inquiry leads to self-knowledge: A schema

  A philosophical inquiry aims at a desideratum. That desideratum is announced or implied in the statement: ‘This is it!’ The ‘this is it’ is the conclusion of the inquiry and the end of the philosophical conversation. The diagram below seeks to shed some light on this moment of self-knowledge. What distinguishes self-knowledge from other modes…
• May 2, 2013

  Spiritual Exercise – 4. Measure

  Measured speech is neither pithy (witticism) nor voluminous (garrulity). Measured speech is the expression of, or accompaniment to, the virtue of temperance. Let us transform ourselves. Ask yourself, Do I tend to blurt things out? Why is that? Why can’t I seem to hold my tongue? I think I have to ‘say my piece,’ but do…
• May 1, 2013

  Cultivating discipline: A forthcoming manual

  I’m beginning to think about the contents of a short guide, Cultivating Discipline, which I’ll likely be using in some upcoming educational workshops. One chapter, I believe, will be on spiritual exercises, which I plan to arrange according to categories. Pierre Hadot suggests that a spiritual exercise is a meditation aimed less at informing the pupil about…
• April 29, 2013

  The rigor of meditation practice

  There is a rigor involved in meditating regularly that calls me back to meditate well before dawn in spite of the passing desire to stop or the urges to make an exception today. The rigor of a meditation practice emerges only for the one who, like the Pyrrhonian skeptic, would not live according to dogma.…