Category: education

• February 2, 2013

  Philosophical improv no. 1: Manifestation Thesis

  In this short YouTube video, I explore the way in which radiance manifests itself. In my forthcoming book, Radiance: An Essay for Unsettled Time, I discuss the important connection between goodness and beauty.
• January 29, 2013

  ‘Luckiness is not getting what you want…’

  Luckiness is not getting what you want but realizing that it wasn’t worth wanting after all. This is called adulthood. Unluckiness is getting what you want, only to grow thoughtlessly into old age. This is called childhood. Also: prose.
• January 21, 2013

  Self-sufficiency in rural Appalachia

  In rural Appalachia (the penultimate syllable pronounced like the ‘a’ in ‘apple’, not like the ‘a’ in ‘staple’), self-sufficiency is not an essential characteristic of Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, the divine unmoved around which everything else moves. Nor is it the intrinsic property of Spinoza’s substance, that which is ontologically independent for its existence. For generation…
• January 20, 2013

  Iago’s power exposes powerlessness

  A mountain storm ill-prepares one for its sublime power. Within hours, the power flicks on and off and is out. Night has long fallen, and the mountain–a Iago–shows another, more fearsome side of itself. Its power exposes our powerlessness. Days without power and without adequate supplies reveal how little one who has acquired an excellent…
• January 17, 2013

  Searching is not search

  Nicholas Carr begins his blog post, ‘The Searchers,’ as follows, When we talk about “searching” these days, we’re almost always talking about using Google to find something online. That’s quite a twist for a word that has long carried existential connotations, that has been bound up in our sense of what it means to be conscious…