Category: meditation
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Tell that to Quine! (& other miscellany)
1 “That philosophers should be professors is an accident, and almost an anomaly. Free reflection about everything is a habit to be imitated, but not a subject to expound; and an original system, if the philosopher has one, is something dark, perilous, untested, and not ripe to be taught, nor is there much danger anyone…
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‘In the beginning was the relation’: On becoming less strange
We are strangers to each other despite our seeming transparencies, our open confessions, our public language. We use the same words and mean different things. We use different words and mean something else. We stand inside the clatter and the grind and say our public sayings. Some spend our mornings prizing apart concepts. But to…
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The discourse of choice is the burden we carry
We are strangers to each other. Our moral incoherences go stated but unremarked. “Who are you to say?” “That’s just your opinion.” “Well, let’s just agree to disagree.” “Because I said so.” “That’s my choice, not yours.” We have even forgotten the question: What general beliefs confer rational authority upon a set of social practices?…
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To become pessimistic or to let a hundred flowers bloom
It’s one of those mornings when I read scores of sour stories about a world headed downhill. In an effort to make playgrounds safer, parents, legislators, and lawyers have made our children more risk-averse and less thick-skinned. Meanwhile, the debt crisis in Greece rages on in the eurozone: no quick fixes, no easy solutions. On…
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On history and premodernity: A clue to the peasant’s life
So certain stormy conquests looked at retrospectively, through the eyes of men today, seem like episodes, whatever their duration. They are achieved quickly or slowly. Then, one fine day, they collapse like stage sets. (102) Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism, 1500-1800. Volume 1. * * * If history is only…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 