Category: meditation
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On Hadot’s ‘third way’ of doing philosophy
I read an essay by Pierre Hadot’s main translator Michael Chase about philosophy as a way of life (PWL). In “Observations on Pierre Hadot’s Conception of Philosophy as a Way of Life,” Chase proposes that PWL could be a ‘third way’ of doing philosophy that is neither analytic nor Continental. In my experience (which chimes, I would…
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The career in review: Why bother?
Changing Conceptions of Work This week I’ve been exploring our received understanding of the career. I’ve reflected some on what makes it desirable and on what’s the matter with desiring it. Philosophical considerations aside, the historical truth is that unemployment rates among young persons living in the developed world are astronomically high. Reporting on the…
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On technology’s noises and nature’s silence
At a pitstop en route to returning our rental car on Saturday, my love and I remarked that the automatic toilet flushers flushed before we were through. My manual flusher was also disconnected. I was thinking of these, perhaps, when I tried to get my weekend duffle–no large thing–into the plane’s overhead compartment and had…
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‘When you head into the country, it’s best to take your Thoreau along with you…’
When you head into the country, it’s best to take your Thoreau along with you. Marilynne Robinson calls the West “lonesome” and means it to be a virtue. I want so much for life to be quiet and wind-spoken. Thinking sounds–comes and sounds–like this. Like wind speaking. We’ll be in the mountains for almost a…
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‘[F]or a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone…’
At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 