This is the second installment in my series of reading key philosophical texts. It seemed appropriate to follow the reading of Plato’s Republic with the Nicomachean Ethics. This text is an incredible place for intellectual training, for training of our attention. It is an exercise in the art of noticing what is relevant in a given judgment. My overview is an invitation for you to read this great work. If you decide to read it,…
Become a Patron! Two weeks ago I sat down and wrote a list of key philosophical texts that I believe I should read or re-read before I turn 40 (I’m now 37). I ended up with a list of 14 titles. I estimated that it should take me about one year to go through them if I devote to them at least one hour per day. Perhaps if I have the freedom, I will revisit…
It is, for understandable reasons, difficult to hear, ‘What you’re doing is not what you think/say it is.’ A message like this is not likely to evoke a friendly response; it is unlikely to be seen as a friendly remark. In essence, the message does not deny the activity—’Yes, you are doing something’—but rather denies the interpretation assigned to the activity. This is my attitude toward the cognitive/experimental psychology of culture, although I must admit…
I have written an essay for The Side View (TSV). You can read my full essay here. To give you a flavor of the essay, I am including two excerpts from it here. The first passage is about how our desire for information (about someone) has to be distinguished from connecting (to that someone). … in our desire to reconnect, we overestimate the role of impersonal knowledge. A contrived example can clarify this point. Imagine that after…
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), known by some as the only true genius in the history of psychology, is a vastly misunderstood and misrepresented thinker. He is misrepresented in popular media as much as he is misrepresented in university classrooms. He is simplified and caricatured on PowerPoint slides by people who never read a page written by him. I think it is important to return to Freud, to take him seriously, to read him directly, and I…