Category: philosophical counseling
-
Arrogance as a paradoxical moment in philosophical life
One common excess marks the character of most good philosophical friends and conversation partners. That excess is arrogance. The path of philosophical life is not desired by the ignoramus. And it cannot be disclosed to the self-loathing man. Nor to the complacent man. Only the arrogant man (1) relishes what is higher, (2) wants it for…
-
Contemptu Mundi and Unity-in-diversity
The Philosophical Path Awakening to–philosophical life. Contemptu mundi: the belief that the everyday world is no longer a home. Worse: Revulsion. Disgust. Flooding the senses: total ugliness. Loneliness amid or beyond the ordinary world. Despair. Three-fold queries. Where are my fellows, my friends of virtue? Where is my beautiful soul? (Am I not also contemptible…
-
Mythos, logos, and modernity
It is said that philosophy is born just when, for instance, the Homeric myths give way to the cosmological views espoused by the Presocratics. So John Burnet: ‘With Thales and his successors [i.e., the Presocratics] a new thing came into the world.’ This new thing was logos. Rational explanations–such as Thales’ that life is water…
-
Rewriting Wittgenstein’s opening ‘Remarks’
I have returned time and again to Wittgenstein’s opening statements on method from ‘Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough‘: One must start out in error and convert it into truth. That is, one must reveal the source of error, otherwise hearing the truth won’t do any good. The truth cannot force its way in when something else…
-
Proper appreciation for human embodiment
Not to be pulled apart by the urgings of the body yet not to swear off the corporeal pleasures unique to human experience. Neither to give into one’s appetitive cravings nor to practice world-denying asceticism. Neither vanity nor shame. Neither the wrong Yes nor the wrong No. How then? Listen: the warmth of the sun…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 