Category: ethics
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‘When you head into the country, it’s best to take your Thoreau along with you…’
When you head into the country, it’s best to take your Thoreau along with you. Marilynne Robinson calls the West “lonesome” and means it to be a virtue. I want so much for life to be quiet and wind-spoken. Thinking sounds–comes and sounds–like this. Like wind speaking. We’ll be in the mountains for almost a…
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On ‘urban supremicism’ and the end of opportunity cost
I have been following Greek citizens’ response to the collapse of their economy and their likely exit from the Eurozone. Some, doing the hard work of their forbears, have returned to the land. Others, like Gregoris Skouros (see “As Economics of Everyday Life Erode, Some Greeks See Little Hope” [New York Times, Sept. 19, 2012]),…
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On the very idea of philosophy as a way of life
I have been corresponding with Michael McGhee via email. McGhee, an Honorary Research Fellow in philosophy at the University of Liverpool, said that the MA program in Philosophy as a Way of Life at the University of Liverpool folded a few years ago, not long after it began and around the time that he retired.…
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Openness: The 5th virtue of philosophical life
There’s a certain sense of being open to what may come to pass that seems indispensable for living today. In The Guidebook to Philosophical Life, I had written only of four virtues–namely, of courage, patience, humility, and compassion. I had neglected the virtue of openness. Openness–the scourge of routine, an antidote to stubbornness, a lighthearted laughter…
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Musings on a mountain home
Are you alone, dear philosopher, there on that northern rock, bordered by ocean on one side and by sea on the other? Long ago, Philoctetes was–was alone, that is, was homeless, atopos, unmoored and unmanned… Feel free to look around at the blank walls, at the one-woman fashion show, at the small piles of Yes’s and…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 