Category: meditation
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On the very idea of philosophy as a way of life
I have been corresponding with Michael McGhee via email. McGhee, an Honorary Research Fellow in philosophy at the University of Liverpool, said that the MA program in Philosophy as a Way of Life at the University of Liverpool folded a few years ago, not long after it began and around the time that he retired.…
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On civility and peak oil
In his book on the American South, the writer Jeremiah Sullivan recalls sitting in a rental car that is in a long line of cars idly queueing up for gas. They are backed up onto the highway, near New Orleans; it is not long after Katrina. Most gas stations are not working properly and this…
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Openness: The 5th virtue of philosophical life
There’s a certain sense of being open to what may come to pass that seems indispensable for living today. In The Guidebook to Philosophical Life, I had written only of four virtues–namely, of courage, patience, humility, and compassion. I had neglected the virtue of openness. Openness–the scourge of routine, an antidote to stubbornness, a lighthearted laughter…
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Musings on a mountain home
Are you alone, dear philosopher, there on that northern rock, bordered by ocean on one side and by sea on the other? Long ago, Philoctetes was–was alone, that is, was homeless, atopos, unmoored and unmanned… Feel free to look around at the blank walls, at the one-woman fashion show, at the small piles of Yes’s and…
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‘A radiant life, being good, expresses beauty…’
I am reading The Guidebook to Philosophical Life for the first time. I had written it without reading it through. Even now, I only read and mumble lines and phrases and stray poetic turns. I had written it but hadn’t realized the beauty of lines such as these. I have been reading them aloud this morning.…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 