Tag: Modernity
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Whatever Happened To Work, Friendship, & Family?
Charles Taylor argued quite convincingly in Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989) that one of the hallmarks of modernity is “the affirmation of ordinary life”: immanent goods like family, friends, and work are to be embraced. This marks the turn toward worldliness that is a fundamental feature still of the…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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.…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 