Category: philosophical counseling

• November 9, 2012

  Plotinus on beauty (an exhortation)

  In “On Beauty” (Ennead 1.6), Plotinus invites us to consider “what it is that attracts the gaze of those who look at something, and turns and draws them to it and makes them enjoy the sight.” He thinks this is a particularly good question into what makes something beautiful when it is so called (his answer will…
• November 8, 2012

  Lines composed the morning after the Noreaster (Plotinus, Ennead 1.6)

  Lovers love the beautiful. Plotinus inquires what about the beautiful makes it so. Early on in Ennead 1, he says (pace the Stoics) that it is not the mere proportions of the thing that make whatever the thing is beautiful, hence not the proper relations of part to whole. For cannot a line be beautiful and cannot a…
• November 7, 2012

  To the country to be full-time cultivars of the spirit

  I now have the warm socks, the woolen ones; they came in the mail yesterday. I’m told the wood is stacked up in the shed, ready in case the power goes out. We’re supposed to pick up an axe (the old one looked a shame, even to a novice such as myself) as well as…
• November 6, 2012

  On abstention from voting

  What reasons might one have for not voting? Ineligibility: it could be that someone would like to vote but, for whatever reason, does not qualify as a voter. Physical incapacity: someone may want to vote but be unable to get to a voting booth or fill out his ballot, etc. Mental incapacity: one may be…
• November 5, 2012

  Recitation as dishonesty, improv as honesty

  My initial response to both talks was that both spoke in smooth tongues. Their words flowed freely and were put together grammatically. Their styles were pleasing to the ear even if their voices–hers especially: Nussbaum’s–were tinny. For a few minutes, I listened to his lecture on Neoplatonism and to hers–Nussbaum’s–on Not for Profit. Her impromptu opening…