Category: meditation

• June 17, 2014

  If the world is broken, then one is bound to worry

  Recall that I have just begun to call into question one of the reigning theses of our modern moral metaphysic. This is that the world, being broken, is in need of fixing. In the last post, I spoke of those who work (as it were) on the front end, believing that the world’s being broken means…
• June 16, 2014

  ‘All things could potentially go wrong’

  I have returned from Banff and now take up again the arguments that make up our modern moral metaphysic. They are: 1.) Because the world is lost and fallen, it needs to be changed or ultimately saved. 2.) Because the world is broken or out-of-order, it needs to be fixed or restored. 3.) Constituted by problems,…
• June 5, 2014

  Testing whether someone is cheerfully ready to inquire with me

  When I want to determine whether someone is cheerfully ready to inquire with me, I ask him five questions. Each question is to be assented to wholeheartedly. 1.) Can you let yourself be led? This question helps to rule out the skeptic, the insincere person, and the coward. How so? The skeptic wants to begin…
• June 3, 2014

  Cheerfulness, tightrope walking, and an amorous rendezvous

  To draw the character of the cheerfully ready person more vividly, I return to Nietzsche’s description of the tightrope walker and the ‘worthy gentleman.’ In one aphorism, Nietzsche distinguishes between non-tightrope walking and tightrope walking situations: ‘To get into only those situations in which illusory virtues are of no use, but in which, like the tightrope-walker…
• June 2, 2014

  Cheerful readiness: A proper response to being surprised

  I will be heading to Banff in about a week. I will not know the participants; I will not know what we will do exactly; I will not know what will happen; I will have never worked with my friend Ian nor taught before with another person. I know only that it will be a…