Category: philosophical counseling
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What Is God?
Dear D, When we think of God, we think of certain qualities like benevolence, mercy, wisdom, and justice. We think of all-goodness, all-powerfulness, all-seeingness. All right. But then what happens when we cease thinking of God’s qualities? We might then try to think of God. But can we think of God? Can we, for instance, think of infinity? We cannot. Can…
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NEW BOOK! The Art of Inquiry
Philosophy doesn’t begin in a seminar room. It begins when a question arrives that won’t let you go–when the life you’ve been living suddenly insists on being contemplated. The Art of Inquiry: Meditations on Living Wisdom, I trace the movement from existential confusion to living wisdom — from the moment philosophy arrives uninvited to the…
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The Witness Teaching In 5 Steps
S1: All observation (regardless of kind) requires an observer. For example, a thought–one sort of observation–requires an observer in order for that thought to be registered, indeed in order for it to appear in the first place. S2: Necessarily, the observer is different or separate from the observed. For example, a bodily sensation is different from the observer. Or a visual perception…
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The Spiritual Equivalent Of War
Gibson’s Heroics Kirk Gibson was supposed to be in the trainer’s room when millions of us saw him limp to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the ninth of Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, and the Dodgers down by a run. It’s a long, fierce at-bat against star closer Dennis…
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The Spiritual Equivalent Of War
Contesting Flabby Pacifism Imagine William James–now older and, it’ll turn out, just four years before death–delivering a public lecture at Stanford in which he’s telling fellow pacifists that their position isn’t philosophically defensible. In 1906, the feeling of war–with a long build-up to hostilities that will become WWI and the Boer War (1899-1901) not long…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 