Category: meditation
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‘Why not me? Why not now’: On the collective loss of ethical life
My good friend Jennifer has shared with me her philosophically rich personal essay, “Attention” (forthcoming). In “Attention,” she relates that she is traveling by train from Detroit to Chicago. Not far into the trip, the train stops abruptly. The passengers are informed that a man has stepped in front of the train that had been…
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‘Philosophy is not suited to the classroom’: An essay on ascesis
Today I begin with a remarkable meditation from Pierre Hadot on philosophical life. I then discuss the supreme value of ascesis: the style of reasoning that is aimed less at informing and more at forming and re-forming the self. This symbol, [ ], denotes my own additions. This symbol, […], denotes my editorial decision to…
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All the present alone
1 I believe that, for him [Plotinus], if philosophical life in fact prepares one for an eventual mystical experience, this philosophical life has value in itself. All things considered, Plotinus’ mystical experiences were extremely rare. Poryphyry [Plotinus’s student] tells us that the rest of the time–that is, almost all the time–he tried “to be present…
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‘What was most essential for us could not be expressed’
In this remarkable excerpt from the opening pages of The Present Alone is Our Happiness: Conversations with Jeannie Carlier and Arnold I. Davidson, translated by Marc Djaballah, Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2009, 5-7, Pierre Hadot speaks about the boyhood mystical experiences that led him, many years later, to embrace philosophical inquiry. “What was most essential for us,”…
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On the art of longing for a radiant way of being
The truth of metaphysics is revealed in the question, “Can this [way of life] be all?” (Adorno, Negative Dialectics). My longing is a longing for another way of life beyond the one I inhabit. The truth of the perdurance of the soul is that of a being that leaves behind one way of life but…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 
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