Tag: Contemplation

• November 28, 2013

  ‘Sweet breathing…’

  Words that came to me during morning meditation moments before a philosophical conversation recently: *
• September 23, 2013

  Lacking awe is disaster, having awe is reverence

  This series of reflections begins with the post entitled ‘The World does not Need Saving’ (September 17ff). * Either one learns to perceive the world as being good and beautiful, or one takes the world to be ugly and unjust. The first is the contemplative path, one that requires a lifetime of philosophizing in order…
• April 16, 2013

  Nagel on Aristotle on identifying with the ‘highest part of ourselves’

  What is the ergon of human beings, asks Thomas Nagel in his essay on Aristotle’s eudaimonia, for the answer to the question of how to live hangs on this. The ergon (function) of the hammer is to pound in nails; a poor hammer may be too heavy to wield, too flimsy, too poor at pound…
• April 20, 2012

  ‘Their philosophy is for others; I need one for myself’

  In Interview 139, the soft-spoken gentlemen at Philosophy Bites finally got around to asking professional philosophers what it is they do with their time. What, they queried, is philosophy? Some said that philosophy is the analysis of our concepts. Others said that philosophy is the examination of the presuppositions underlying what we normally take for…