Category: education

• June 20, 2012

  Beauty in human frailty

  There is beauty in human frailty if only we look closely. Beauty in human frailty because life is so many things at so many times in so many ways. And there are fathers and mothers and there are lovers and friends. And then there is enmity and tragedy: the shards and stains and yoke torrents…
• June 18, 2012

  Toward a better understanding of the art of inquiry

  Dear C, You ask what is the difference between friends and conversation partners. That is a very good question. The truth is that I have a hard time distinguishing between the two except by saying that the latter contribute to philosophical life within a gift economy whereas the former quite naturally would not think to…
• June 14, 2012

  Riverdance

  I was slow about it. First I took off my boots and set them aside. Then my woolen socks whose bands I rolled over once. Then my long, white shirt which caught up my long hair as it came off slowly. Finally my pants which were tied once round my waist with twine. My underwear…
• June 13, 2012

  Unphilosophical and philosophical eternity

  The Phenomenology of Exhaustion 1. Can one describe the lack or loss of eros? Of course. The experience would be felt as burdensome, pain-laden, leaden, tiresome, exhausted, a sense of separateness, of cleaving, of infinite matterlessness. Eros and Temporality 2. The distinction between eros and its lack may come down to that between two differing conceptions…
• June 12, 2012

  The corporeal experience of a good philosophical conversation

  Let us define eros as an experience of nearness and extraordinary aliveness. Then we can begin to describe the experience of eros for an adept in philosophical life. My experience anyway. As a good philosophical conversation unfolds, I sense eros like so (though the ‘feel’ of each event is different, unique, fine-grained): my lungs grow…