Category: meditation
-
‘Beauty of soul, according to nature’: A short course at Schumacher College
I have been invited by Schumacher College, which offers “transformative courses for sustainable living,” to teach a short course in November 2013. The following is my first attempt to make out what the course will be about. Philosophical Background Ancient philosophers held that a good life was one lived according to nature. Notably, ‘according to’…
-
On 3 moments of freedom
Let’s examine a few different conceptions of freedom in hopes of arriving, in the end, at where we began. In his famous essay, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” the contemporary philosopher Harry Frankfurt states, “According to one familiar philosophical tradition, being free is fundamentally a matter of doing what one wants…
-
Of tree climbing and tree-hugging
In this corner of rural Pennsylvania, there are no rocks to climb. But there are trees to sit near the top of. Beyond prospects and horizons, tree climbing presents feels. A lot of back stepping, open hands, heel hooks, and mantling. Some lines of bark running in north-south pinches. Some textures like dried coral. You go…
-
Philosophical reflections on industrial design
Yesterday I had the good fortune, thanks to faculty members Mike McAllister and Tony Guido, to observe the Junior critiques of the University of the Arts Industrial Design program students. For their fall semester projects, Juniors were invited to think about how they could improve the lives of persons with disabilities who wanted better access…
-
On sex, clumsiness, and adverbs
Typically, we associate awkwardness, clumsiness, inelegance, and gracelessness with poor aesthetic performances alone, but could aesthetic considerations have any connection to ethical considerations? Could there be a point at which clumsiness cancelled out a good deed entirely? Sometimes we may think that what makes a good deed good is that the individual has the right…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 