Category: philosophical counseling

• July 6, 2015

  Philosophy ‘Puts Everything in Danger’

  A commentator on Sun Tzu’s The Art of War writes, “Everyone likes security and dislikes danger; everyone wants to live and fears death.” Nietzsche in Ecce Homo describes the philosopher — and here he is thinking of himself, of the Dionysian philosopher par excellence — as “a terrible explosive which puts everything in danger.” There are hindrances to entering…
• July 2, 2015

  ‘How We Become who We are’: Part 3

  Remember our guiding intuition, so basic as to be almost a second skin? It is that you and I want to make something of ourselves. We also say–and mean the same thing–that we want to do something with ourselves. An astonishing intuition! Last time, I wrote about one assumption that rests quietly beneath this intuition. It…
• June 30, 2015

  Having Lives to Lead: Part 2

  In the last post, I began with a simple yet unshakable intuition, which was that you and I want to make something of ourselves, to do something with our lives. I went on to suggest that two assumptions about leading our lives and realizing ourselves are at the root of this intuition. What does this…
• June 29, 2015

  Making Something of Ourselves, Doing Something with Our Lives: Part 1

  There is an intuition that you and I both have. We want to make something of ourselves; we want to do something with our lives. It is an intuition that we cannot shake or deny without ceasing to be human beings or, at the very least, modern human beings. The intuition is based on two assumptions: one being that…
• June 27, 2015

  The Eastern View of Selfhood: Metaphysical Premises and Puzzles

  There are three basic views regarding what animates all of reality. The Eastern view insists that I = the Absolute. The Greek view avers that the human self seeks to live at its peak within the bounds of finitude. The Christian view holds that there is a transcendent being which, animating all of reality, is…