Category: ethics

• February 26, 2014

  Philosophical portraiture: The common ear

  The screen shot included below is an example of philosophical portraiture by Aleksandra Marcella Lauro. Philosophical portraiture is concerned with the project of self-cultivation–specifically, with how one comes into contact with what is higher. Here, the figure on the viewer’s left is wholesome, earnest, yet naive in the ways of the world. The figure on…
• February 24, 2014

  Why do those who care about others so rarely care for themselves?

  Here is the puzzle: I have philosophical conversations with those who work in the caring professions, with social entrepreneurs, with lawyers concerned with social justice, and with those who devote their lives to noble causes. These people care quite a lot for others, and many of them are universalists who believe that everyone should be…
• February 22, 2014

  Emily Dickinson on being in pain

  In ‘Pain Has an Element of Blank,’ the poet Emily Dickinson (1830-86) seeks to bring into sharper focus the unique quality of being in extraordinary pain. That quality is expressed in a particular experience of time. She writes, PAIN has an element of blank; It cannot recollect When it began, or if there were A…
• February 20, 2014

  ‘Why be gentle?’

  ‘Why be gentle?’ my philosophical friend asked me. ‘That is a good question,’ I said. * At the beginning of Theaetetus, Socrates asks Theodorus whether there are any good young men whom he knows. Theodorus replies, Yes, Socrates, I have become acquainted with one very remarkable Athenian youth, whom I commend to you as well worthy…
• February 19, 2014

  ‘Beauty is the splendor of the highest good’

  I read, ‘Beauty is the splendor of the highest good.’ Beauty is not the highest good itself but its shining forth. Anyone or anything at its best is therefore beautiful. Whatever has achieved its essence: this is beauty. That which fully actualizes its function: beautiful. A world at its best would have to be gloriously beautiful. Someone…