Category: ethics

• January 20, 2014

  A non-solopsistic account of grieving

  In order to understand one’s reasons for grieving, let us return to this scene: We are speaking of our deaths. ‘Were I to die first, would you grieve for me?’ Aleksandra is speaking. ‘Yes,’ I reply. For a while, I say nothing. Then I go on: ‘I would have to figure out why I was still living.’…
• January 19, 2014

  Preparation for having a philosophical conversation

  The following post is addressed to new conversation partners as well as to philosophical friends. This worksheet (if that is what it is) is the result of a few years of conversing with conversation partners and philosophical friends over Skype. It should be considered a work in progress. That is, it is open to adjustments, reconsiderations, and…
• January 16, 2014

  ‘Were I to die first, would you grieve for me?’

  I am not satisfied with my understanding of the reasons we give when we are grieving. So I begin again, this time with an intimation. * We are speaking of our deaths. ‘Were I to die first, would you grieve for me?’ Aleksandra is speaking. ‘Yes,’ I reply. For a while, I say nothing. Then…
• January 14, 2014

  Website transformed: Radiance Pianissimo (Winter 2014)

  Dear Reader, Each season Aleksandra and I make changes to the main website–andrewjamestaggart.com–so that it accords with the changing rhythms of nature. Our theme for winter 2014 is ‘Radiance Pianissimo.’ This winter, though, we took things much, much further: we reworked the main website from the ground up. We wanted 1.) to show more and…
• January 13, 2014

  Sustaining life is not the good life

  I write this post after spending time this morning contemplating the nature of things. This post is not a ‘product’ of that contemplation. * In Sources of the Self, Charles Taylor has some remarkable things to say about the disappearance of the higher forms of the good life during the passage to modernity. He argues that…