Tag: Mystery

• August 12, 2015

  5 Puzzles About Courage

  In preparation for a fall course I am teaching at Kaos Pilots entitled “Time to Get Tough,” I am reading William Ian Miller’s interesting book The Mystery of Courage. In the “Introduction,” Miller writes, “The core of courage’s ancient tale is attack and defense against the Other, other men to be exact. The core is about the…
• August 11, 2012

  The reductio adsurdum of being successful

  The reductio ad absurdum (the reduction to absurdity) of the desire for philosophical inquiry is that an individual or organization happens to be financially secure; has achieved success according to general consensus; has kept decent relations with others; has been socially responsible; but yet is still unsatisfied. The reductio is that this conception of a good life has…
• May 2, 2012

  A Gothic afternoon

  For two days, the morning fog has blanketed the hillside rising above the cabin. It is, she is right, a bony, smoky shade. We were standing at the lookout when she said the last. We had hiked up a red clay path on a Gothic afternoon–gray sky, abandoned ruins, blasted trees–only to stop at the…
• February 2, 2012

  Bernini’s Pluto and Proserpina: Beauty, death, and eros

  The image you are looking at was not taken by a camera. Nor were the fingers pressed into the underside of the woman’s thigh. Nor the index finger–his left index finger–hooked onto her lower rib, marking it. Nor the veins on her butt beginning at the the top of her hip. Nor was the birthmark…
• January 24, 2012

  The mystery of the pigeons, the tranquility of the birdsong

  How many pigeons are there? I lose count every time. Each pigeon and every pigeon formation come, all come, as a surprise. I look and the formation has changed. Or I turn away, return, and–am I disappointed or reassured?–they have not changed. Or they have. My eye goes back to the places where they were,…