Category: education
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Distinguishing the active life from the contemplative life
It is not so easy to draw a meaningful distinction between the active life and the contemplative life. Too strict and a way of life becomes suffocating. Too broad and it seems no difficult thing to shuttle back and forth between one and the other when, in reality, it seems rare that an individual can lead both…
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The active life: Ways of life available to us in modernity
More reflections on my fall course at Kaos Pilots * Given the distinction between the good life and sustaining life and given also that the former furnishes us with a reason for being while the latter, on its own, can only answer the question of how to go on, it follows that someone will be…
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The contemplative life: Three ways of life available to us in modernity
The title of my fall course at Kaos Pilots is ‘The Good Life and Sustaining Life.’ I want to think further about the sorts of things I’ll be teaching. Five things can be said immediately about this relationship. First, each is sui generis: the good life is unto itself, sustaining life unto itself. Second, the good life is…
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The bullshitter vs. the philosopher
There are at least two kinds of considerations of truthfulness that a bullshitter categorically refuses to acknowledge: sincerity and accuracy. These are the virtues of truthfulness that Bernard Williams writes about in his last book Truth and Truthfulness. By ‘sincerity,’ Williams means the expression of a belief. By ‘accuracy,’ he means a concern with getting things right.…
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Pragmatist consulting: The art of bullshitting well
‘Once, when contemplating the apparently endless growth of administrative responsibilities in British academic departments, I came up with one possible vision of hell. Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at.’ –David Graeber, ‘On the Phenomenon…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 