Category: education

• December 10, 2011

  Synoptic views of the problem of free will

  The question of free will becomes a problem for modern philosophy after the epochal shift in worldview brought about by natural science’s “mechanization” of nature. If the entirety of nature could be explicable in terms of invariant physical laws, then what room, if any, was left in this picture of the universe for an account…
• December 9, 2011

  The alien and the American discuss modern work life (P.S. It’s a joke)

  So the alien has scheduled an appointment with the American in order to compare notes about work life on their respective planets. This is what they said. Alien: On my planet, we have ‘companies’ that occupy physical spaces known as ‘office buildings.’ American: Yeah, we have those too. Alien: Also. On my planet, we have…
• December 7, 2011

  On the art of translation and a sense of a style

  On the Art of Translation. Of David Bellos’s Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything (New York: Faber & Faber, 2011), a reviewer at The New Yorker observes, “In the English-speaking world, translation is mostly understood as [here quoting Bellos] ‘the transfer of meaning from one language to another,’ a sense derived…
• December 6, 2011

  Letter writing as spiritual exercise

  Aperitif the First: Yesterday around noon I was running in Central Park. It was unseasonably warm–mid-50s I want to say. I was rounding Lasker Rink and Pool when I caught something out of the corner of my eye and belatedly, unpoetically jumped out of the way. I looked down and began to laugh. It was a…
• December 5, 2011

  The starting point of philosophical self-reflection

  Philosophical thinking begins in severance, in cleavage, in destruction and loss. Something once as familiar as morning light has fled, and its return is in doubt. Our feet, once paddles, have morphed into trunks. Severance begets pain, pain shuddering, and shuddering puts forth philosophical words: self-reflective words, ungainly words, coarse concepts, bedraggled thoughts. Oh but…