Category: ethics

• March 26, 2011

  On spiritual exercise

  1 One of my fondest childhood memories is of my father playing catch with me. In my mind’s eye, I can see him showing me how to rotate my glove through a sundial of positions. A basket catch won’t always do. You don’t stab at the ball with pinchers; you let it in. A good…
• March 25, 2011

  On moral guidance, moral expertise, and philosophical counseling

  As a philosophical counselor and moral philosopher, I believe our culture is conceptually muddled about the idea and prospect of self-improvement. On the one hand, we all hunger to be better, more fulfilled, happier persons. The self-help industry feeds this hunger without making us full. (The “Chinese food take-out” problem as Jay Bernstein once put…
• March 24, 2011

  What should schools look like in the 21st C.?

  What does it mean to educate young persons? 1. It means to equip them with the technical and procedural skills they need in order to maximize their rational self-interest in the increasingly global marketplace. (Technical skills–Vocation–Market Society ethos) 2. It means to open up spaces and provide them with opportunities for realizing their capacity as…
• March 23, 2011

  Philosophical counseling and the language of trying things out

  Preface There is a beautiful line in the late philosopher Robert Nozick’s book The Examined Life about taking a position. Nozick confesses that when he was younger he believed, like any good analytic philosopher, that he had to take a position on everything. As he got older, he realized that “position-taking”–the presumed need to make…
• March 22, 2011

  Ivan Illich on ascesis

  ASCESIS. Introduction, etymology and bibliography 1989.-Ivan Illich The following is a brief excerpt.  The article can be read in its entirety here. NB: Pierre Hadot has written extensively about ascesis in What is Ancient Philosophy? and in Philosophy as a Way of Life. — I want to cultivate the capacity for second thoughts, by which…