Tag: Bewilderment

• February 11, 2014

  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…
• July 12, 2013

  Coming to an inquiring state of mind (Part 3)

  How can we get the hang of being surprised? In Part 1, I discuss the importance of being surprised, arguing that philosophical inquiring presents us with two kinds of surprises: perplexities and illuminations. In Part 2, I discuss the cultivation of lightness in the presence of surprise. Today, in the final part, I explore the difference…
• August 18, 2012

  The Art of Inquiry: Bewilderment and the virtues

  Excerpt from the end of Chapter 2 and the beginning of Chapter 3 of The Art of Inquiry. Enjoy. * 2.6. Bewilderment, Redux So far, our itinerary has taken us a good ways: from our basic commitments (alive to X, fraught about Y) to a confrontation with our thinking in general to a space of possibilities.…
• August 11, 2012

  The reductio adsurdum of being successful

  The reductio ad absurdum (the reduction to absurdity) of the desire for philosophical inquiry is that an individual or organization happens to be financially secure; has achieved success according to general consensus; has kept decent relations with others; has been socially responsible; but yet is still unsatisfied. The reductio is that this conception of a good life has…