Tag: Death

• April 25, 2014

  Overcoming dying: On Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life

  This is the ninth set of reflections on Peter Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life: On Anthropotechnics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013). The first set of reflections can be read here. A summary of Stoterdijk’s principal theses is available here. * Here is the thrust of Stoterdijk’s argument: First, reinterpret human beings as training animals and then see what this reinterpretation ‘opens us.’ Second, reclaim a…
• February 3, 2014

  The salamander and the black-and-white bird

  Up to me came a  salamander to be warmed by the sun. The wind was cool and I felt chilled, so I sat down and began to climb. When I returned to be warmed by the sun, along came a little black-and-white bird hopping closer and closer to me. He was hopping along the low-lying…
• January 16, 2014

  ‘Were I to die first, would you grieve for me?’

  I am not satisfied with my understanding of the reasons we give when we are grieving. So I begin again, this time with an intimation. * We are speaking of our deaths. ‘Were I to die first, would you grieve for me?’ Aleksandra is speaking. ‘Yes,’ I reply. For a while, I say nothing. Then…
• November 9, 2013

  Either death is something for us, or else it is nothing for us…

  1. Either death is something for us, or else it is nothing for us. 2. If death is something for us, then we can either go along with it, or we can resist it. 2.1. If we resist it, then we will be filled with strife and ultimately we will lose. 2.2. If we go…
• November 28, 2012

  Neil Young and no sense of an ending

  Some old men resign themselves to death; others rock out, failing to convince. Philip Roth, age 79, has said that he plans to write no more books. Neil Young turned 67 this month and, to celebrate, reunited with “Crazy Horse” at Madison Square Garden last night. We were there for part of the evening. In…