Tag: Meaning

• July 8, 2015

  ‘I Know the Most Beauty There is…’

  Love of another human being adds density, real heft, gristle, girth, to a human life, i.e., mine. A life without love is only “rather nice.” A few pennies in a drawer, a thought before bed about washing. The worst fate is not that of a loveless life, but it is the least beautiful and therefore the least…
• October 23, 2012

  Unstucking ‘stuckness’ (1)

  Near the end of our conversation yesterday, John Thackara, co-founder of Doors of Perception, used the word “stuck.” So had a man in Switzerland, students at Kaos Pilots, a woman in Berkeley… For nearly two years, “being stuck” or “feeling stuck” may be the phrase I hear most often to describe an individual’s or an…
• November 2, 2011

  Whither moral education?

  Abstract “In “Whither Moral Education?,” (World and I, November 2011), I argue that American education has for far too long set aside the questions of the good and the meaningful–or, what is the same thing, the moral and intellectual virtues. First I attempt to identify what factors gave rise to this phenomenon and then in the final pages to explore how…
• September 13, 2011

  Todd May on the meaningfulness of lives

  In his New York Times The Stone blog “On the Meaningfulness of Lives,” Todd May seeks to rescue the concept of meaning from Sartre’s pronouncement that in a godless universe the concept is unintelligible. A worthy endeavor. Here’s how the argument goes. 1. Distinctions. Meaningfulness is not morality (good or bad, good or evil). Meaningfulness is…