Category: meditation
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Nagel on Aristotle on identifying with the ‘highest part of ourselves’
What is the ergon of human beings, asks Thomas Nagel in his essay on Aristotle’s eudaimonia, for the answer to the question of how to live hangs on this. The ergon (function) of the hammer is to pound in nails; a poor hammer may be too heavy to wield, too flimsy, too poor at pound…
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Specify and inquire, you hear
You don’t know what’s going on, you don’t know what’s setting things off. Time was that things made sense but that was long ago. Vaguely long ago. Now, there’s something you’d like to figure out or find out about yourself, the world, life–something–but you don’t know what it is or how. How to do so.…
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Looking for the man you’ve never met… On specifying
Let’s suppose that you’re a detective and that you’re looking for a man you’ve never met before. Let’s suppose further that your initial specification–‘a man I’ve never met before’–is correct: namely, that you are looking for a man (not a woman, an animal, a child, a god, an angel, or a spirit) and that you’ve…
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The art of everyday eloquence; or, ordinary charisma
One of the arts I have been practicing over the past three years has been ‘the art of everyday eloquence.’ I believe I am chiefly alone in this, but I also believe that it is one of the most important arts to learn for individuals who seek to lead good and decent lives outside of…
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Do we desire what is good, or do we call good what we desire?
Socrates and Aristotle both say that we desire what is (or what we perceive to be) good. Spinoza and Nietzsche both believe that we call good what is it that we (already) desire. Who is right? David Wiggins suggests that we do not have to choose. Parsing Aristotle, he writes, ‘The good is the sort…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 