Category: education
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On improv and philosophy
Before I met Alex Fradera yesterday afternoon, I tweeted my friend Dougald, “@dougald, journeyman on pilgrimage. I’m seeing Alex in NYC tomorrow. Shall I send your best to him?” He replied, “@andrewjtaggart Wonderful! Please do – and give him a big hug from me.” I did. Alex finished his Ph.D. in psychology and for six…
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Philosophical friendships: A gentle refutation
A few days ago I tried to meet an objection to leading a philosophical life that ran something like this: “Andrew, it is all well and good for a philosopher to surround himself entirely with philosophical friends, but the rest of us live, and have to live, more ‘in the world,’ where living ‘in the…
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There is no ‘double life’ in philosophical life
One concern has been raised many times by many conversation partners in many quarters. It is that philosophical friendships and erotic lovers are rare. Yet if most of our lives are spent in the world among those of a non-philosophical persuasion, how are we to make sense of this “double life,” a life both apart from the…
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Good marriages can’t be thrown away
Imagine that a marriage is falling apart and that the disaffected demands of the other, “How can you throw away what we’ve worked so long and hard for–how after all these years together, and for what?” Suppose that these questions are not simply expressions of sorrow and imminent grief. Suppose that the questions are asked…
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Old Whitman and me just singing
Recently old Walt Whitman spoke to me. He said of himself, singing a Song of Myself: Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female, For me those that have been boys and that love women, For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 