Category: meditation
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The problematization of the world
I also write about the problematization of the world in a recent Quartz piece. * You might have thought that food is an activity of cultivating and partaking and communing with others and that death is an event that calls upon us to make sense of our earthly lives, but it turns out that, like most things…
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‘Full of problems, the world requires solutions’
My thesis is that there is a reigning conception of the world that is held, consciously or not, by ecologists, political activists, designers, entrepreneurs, academics, NGO workers, as well as by those in the caring professions. And it is made explicit in the following set of assumptions, conceptions, and conclusions: 1.) Because the world is…
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Some very awkward truths about empathy
In the last handful of posts, I have sought to demonstrate some rather uncomfortable and infelicitous things about our near-universal celebration of empathy. One is that it is based on a false metaphysical picture of human beings as weak, suffering creatures. Another is that it has been raised from a ‘local virtue’ into an ascetic ideal, with the…
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Being virtuous without being empathetic
So far, I have argued (1) that the ascetic ideal of empathy has sprung forth from a false metaphysical picture of human beings as weak, suffering creatures and (2) that it leads to the conclusion that when we speak, we not do often lodge claims that can be examined with a view to changing our basic conceptions…
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Empathy as an ascetic ideal
Why would empathy not be a supreme virtue? By ’empathy,’ I mean what most laypersons mean: either feeling what another is badly feeling or acknowledging what the other is badly feeling. By ‘supreme virtue,’ I mean the virtue of virtues, one that is ripped free of context and raised to a principle. That principle would…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 