Category: ethics

• June 25, 2012

  There is no ‘double life’ in philosophical life

  One concern has been raised many times by many conversation partners in many quarters. It is that philosophical friendships and erotic lovers are rare. Yet if most of our lives are spent in the world among those of a non-philosophical persuasion, how are we to make sense of this “double life,” a life both apart from the…
• June 23, 2012

  Good marriages can’t be thrown away

  Imagine that a marriage is falling apart and that the disaffected demands of the other, “How can you throw away what we’ve worked so long and hard for–how after all these years together, and for what?” Suppose that these questions are not simply expressions of sorrow and imminent grief. Suppose that the questions are asked…
• June 21, 2012

  Old Whitman and me just singing

  Recently old Walt Whitman spoke to me. He said of himself, singing a Song of Myself: Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,  For me those that have been boys and that love women, For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,…
• June 20, 2012

  Beauty in human frailty

  There is beauty in human frailty if only we look closely. Beauty in human frailty because life is so many things at so many times in so many ways. And there are fathers and mothers and there are lovers and friends. And then there is enmity and tragedy: the shards and stains and yoke torrents…
• June 18, 2012

  Toward a better understanding of the art of inquiry

  Dear C, You ask what is the difference between friends and conversation partners. That is a very good question. The truth is that I have a hard time distinguishing between the two except by saying that the latter contribute to philosophical life within a gift economy whereas the former quite naturally would not think to…