Category: philosophical counseling

• March 18, 2016

  ‘Mattering Matters’

  We can’t pursue a human life unless we believe that we matter. So argues Rebecca Goldstein on The Edge and in Free Inquiry. Some 30 years ago, she says, she was inspired by a view offered by the protagonist of her novel The Mind-Body Problem. There seem to be at least three claims she wishes to make.…
• March 12, 2016

  Splitting Open Reality

  The most apparently ordinary occurrences can make us shudder and fill us with dread or awe. When asked about his weekend, a man replies that he had taken mushrooms and discovered the plentitude of becoming. A woman doesn’t know why she feels her home is uncanny to her, treating it like a train depot, yet uncanny it remains. A man…
• March 8, 2016

  The Tedious Thoughtlessness of Political Discussions

  There comes a time when a question loses its force, becoming rather tired-sounding in our mouths. The fundamental question of the left has for some time been: “Who is getting screwed over, by whom, and what ‘infrastructure’ can be built to right this wrong?” It’s not the case, surely not, that people have ceased getting…
• March 1, 2016

  A Zen Reading of the Book of Job

  There is an easy way and a number of dense and difficult ways of reading the Book of Job, a book that foregrounds the question of unjust suffering. I’m going for the easy way. Recall the main premise: that Job is an “upright and blameless” man who ends up losing his children, his wealth, his…
• February 24, 2016

  A Whimsical Reading of ‘Turn the Other Cheek’

  I come back time and again to Jesus’s paradoxical claims in the Gospel. I want to distinguish between a hermeneutically responsible reading based on the text, an understanding of the historical context, and a grasp of theology and a whimsical reading that is literary in nature. I’m not asking, “What did Jesus (truly) mean?” but rather “How…