Tag: Virtues

• April 29, 2015

  The Post-Martial Orientation: Cultivating Toughness

  Long the pride of place among the educated, compassion, empathy, and presentness are giving way to a completely different order of supreme virtues. This is because, at a more general level, the post-religious outlook is being supplanted by a post-martial outlook. It has to be so, since history is uncompromising. This is what I see. The post-martial…
• July 24, 2014

  The virtues corresponding to our economic relationships

  I have been discussing three ways of making a living, which correspond also to three kinds of economic relationships. Cast as maxims, these ways are: I. Use what you’ve got. II. Exchange what’s in hand. III. Offer what you can. I. ‘Using what you’ve got’ is a territorial as well as a (for lack of…
• July 3, 2014

  The bullshitter vs. the philosopher

  There are at least two kinds of considerations of truthfulness that a bullshitter categorically refuses to acknowledge: sincerity and accuracy. These are the virtues of truthfulness that Bernard Williams writes about in his last book Truth and Truthfulness. By ‘sincerity,’ Williams means the expression of a belief. By ‘accuracy,’ he means a concern with getting things right.…
• June 30, 2014

  Philosophical Portraiture: Courage and Nobility

  About a month ago, Aleksandra completed a philosophical portrait of a woman who is seeking to live the life of a modern mystic (below). In her work on philosophical portraiture, the claim Aleksandra wants to make is that she is not rendering the subject in a too literal form of mimesis as if the photograph of…
• May 1, 2014

  Philosophical portraiture: ‘What the eyes cannot see’

  In Aleksandra’s recently completed philosophical portrait (visible below), the man exhibits soft concentration while the woman exudes a soft composure attained through experience and contemplative practice. Both appear to be thinking together about the non-discursive. The allusion in the title is to an early Daoist text called Inward Training. In Verse 4, the authors write, As for the Way: It…