Category: ethics
-
Philosophy as confession
In his review of Stanley Cavell’s autobiography, “Philosophy as Confession,” John Cottingham seeks to show that Cavell’s way of doing philosophy is more humane than the desiccated way of doing philosophy in the academy. For a number of years, Cottingham has been trying to effect a rapprochement between philosophy, religion, and psychoanalysis. He finds a…
-
Toward an alternative business model for philosophical counseling
The following is the proposal of a paper I will be presenting at the APPA Annual Meeting at Columbia in June. I welcome your queries, comments, and suggestions. The paper is consistent with the conception of philosophical counseling I outline under the Philosophical Counseling tab. — Update: You can read a summary of my talk…
-
Forget college
Once in a while, I like to read Bob Herbert because he gets things wrong. But seeing how he gets things wrong helps me to see things more clearly. (One should always give credit where credit is due.) On March 4, he got higher education wrong. Herbert observes that students are not studying, they are…
-
‘Where have all the good men gone?’ On making sense of modern life
Yesterday I bumped into my friend Peter Foges at Cafe Regular du Nord and we got to talking about the time in which we’re living. Peter was saying that we’re living through the end of one thing, but we’re not sure what the next thing will be.* The end, occurring somewhere in 2010 or 2011…
-
Which comes first: freedom or goodness?
Does the good trump freedom, or is it the other way around? The question is raised, once again, by what the Wall Street Journal on March 3 dubbed a “classroom sex show.” During a class held the week of Feb. 21, a tenured Northwestern University professor, John Michael Bailey, arranged for a married couple to stage…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 