Category: philosophical counseling
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Friends as fellow travelers; or, the art of saying farewell
The following is a spiritual exercise (ascesis) in the art of saying farewell. The former friend whom I’m addressing in the letter has an extensive background in music, physics, and philosophy, has a prestigious academic pedigree, and is currently pursuing a doctorate in philosophy. We first met only days after I moved to NYC, a…
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‘Therefore, I tried the hammer…’: On how not to receive a gift
The impetus for the following letter was a guffaw. Last week I ordered a copy of Hubert Dreyfus’s Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time and, by mistake, had had it shipped to my conversation partner’s residence. Here: a non-gift for you! Thanks! In his turn, he had mailed the book to me. On Monday,…
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Gift economy explained, justified, and defended
Gift Economy Explained 1. Suppose A gives B a gift wholeheartedly. (By “wholeheartedly,” I mean without reserve or hesitation, without holding back or misgivings. Positively, I mean: “giving forth freely or receiving plentifully.”) 2. Then B receives the gift wholeheartedly. 3. It follows that B is goodly indebted to A. The debt is lighter, not…
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On a good friend being a good introducer
One of my friends, Dougald Hine, told me once that a good friend is someone who senses when to introduce who to whom. (I take him to be talking about action, not about grammatical constructions.) Let’s parse this statement. First of all, an introduction is not a recommendation, i.e., not a “should” statement, but a…
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Now think fast!: Brief reflections on the making of ‘Despatches from the Invisible Revolution’
The very idea of the book is undergoing a paradigm shift before our eyes. For the life of me, I can’t tell exactly what a book is, what it is supposed to do, how it is meant to loop into or out of our cultural moment, or what purpose it will likely serve in the…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 