Category: meditation
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How is willpower weakened and strengthened?
In his New York Times Book Review of Roy Baumeister and John Tierney’s book Willpower, “The Sugary Secret of Self-Control,” Steven Pinker says, And he [Baumeister] showed that self-control, though almost certainly heritable in part, can be toned up by exercising it. He enrolled students in regimens that required them to keep track of their eating,…
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Alasdair MacIntyre on the very idea of the university
Alasdair MacIntyre, “The Very Idea of a University: Aristotle, Newman, and Us,” British Journal of Educational Studies 57.4 (December 2009), 347-362. The following are notes taken on MacIntyre’s essay. I’ve sought to make my notes intelligible and worth your time. MacIntyre’s essay is worth reading in its own right as it casts an unfavorable light…
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Epicurus’ argument against the fear of death
Tonight when I was sitting on my roof reading my paperback copy of Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, I looked over at my neighbor’s garden. The trees were straight and leafy, the flowers were orange and contented. Yet who was looking after them? During all the time I’d spent up here not once had I…
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Wistfulness in these strange times…
My roaming personal essay, “Wistfulness in These Strange Times,” has just been published in Spike Magazine. The piece adduces the reasons we have for being wistful, and it describes the economic situation modern workers are going through. The essay begins, This morning I awoke in a wistful mood. The birdsong coming through my bedroom window reminded me…
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How is teaching possible?
The Novelty of the Question Richard Rorty says somewhere that great philosophers are great in virtue of their ability to invent novel questions. In so doing, they change the topic of conversation. The contemporary theologian Norman Wirzba asks a great question in his article on Emmanuel Levinas entitled “From Maieutics to Metanoia: Levinas’s Understanding of the…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 