Tag: Modernity
-
Where Are These Elders Of Which You Speak?
I’m currently reading Shannon Vallor’s fine book Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting (OUP, 2016). I’d like to pick up on a minor theme, one that frequently puzzled me when I’ve been reading certain kinds of academic books. It goes something like this: The theoretical discussion of the kind…
-
The Quotidian, The Heroic, Or The Heart Of Being?
Is It Possible To Justify The Quotidian? I recently read the Washington Post critic Michael Dirda’s fine review of Ellmann’s Joyce, a book written by Zachary Leader about Richard Ellmann’s biographical work on the novelist James Joyce. Key to this review is, of course, Joyce’s novel Ulysses. Dirda summarizes: “Ulysses” takes place during one day…
-
Two boo’s for ‘living in order to work’
I Call me puzzled. I can’t help but recall a wealthy man I used to tutor while I was living in New York City. He was an heir to a famous American dynasty and was doubtless so wealthy that none of his grandchildren would ever need to work. Despite this, he worked very long hours, founding and co-founding companies,…
-
Humble elitism: Making the vertical ascent
One who sets foot on the philosophical path may become bewildered when he begins to consider how it is possible not to be arrogant yet also how to ascend beyond the bounds of the ordinary. I have recently come to a better understanding of how this is possible. More: of how this is necessary. 1.…
-
Mythos, logos, and modernity
It is said that philosophy is born just when, for instance, the Homeric myths give way to the cosmological views espoused by the Presocratics. So John Burnet: ‘With Thales and his successors [i.e., the Presocratics] a new thing came into the world.’ This new thing was logos. Rational explanations–such as Thales’ that life is water…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 