Tag: Reasoning

• August 6, 2012

  What makes the right question right? (II)

  I have been writing about the art of inquiry with a view to understanding, in a preliminary fashion, how any philosophical inquiry of the kind I have in mind can ever get underway. The implicit aim in this endeavor is to show that philosophical inquiry is ‘self-transformative’: that it is the kind of activity that,…
• April 10, 2012

  ‘Philosophy is not suited to the classroom’: An essay on ascesis

  Today I begin with a remarkable meditation from Pierre Hadot on philosophical life. I then discuss the supreme value of ascesis: the style of reasoning that is aimed less at informing and more at forming and re-forming the self. This symbol, [ ], denotes my own additions. This symbol, […], denotes my editorial decision to…
• February 29, 2012

  ‘Therefore, I tried the hammer…’: On how not to receive a gift

  The impetus for the following letter was a guffaw. Last week I ordered a copy of Hubert Dreyfus’s Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time and, by mistake, had had it shipped to my conversation partner’s residence.  Here: a non-gift for you! Thanks! In his turn, he had mailed the book to me. On Monday,…