Philosophy – Page 3 – Davood Gozli

Another Thing Altogether

By Davood Gozli | 23/06/202123/06/2021 by Davood Gozli

The following passage is about professional philosophy and its relation to human experience, but it applies equally well to academic psychology. Don’t we learned, similar to the student James talks about in this passage, to expect an absence of relationship between psychological science and our personal realities? [The student] began by saying that he had always taken for granted that when you entered a philosophic class-room you had to open relations with a universe entirely…

Embodiment of Truth

By Davood Gozli | 15/09/202016/09/2020 by Davood Gozli

I am writing this after going through Books VI and VII of the Confessions of St. Augustine. I think various parts of the Confessions could be understood and connected in light of understanding what it means for a truth to be embodied or personified. The parts I have in mind include (a) several episodes where other people make an impression on Augustine and (b) Augustine’s appeal to Christ (toward the end of Book VII) as…

book review Education Philosophy

Why Read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

By Davood Gozli | 24/06/202004/09/2020 by Davood Gozli

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,…

Culture Education metaphysics Philosophy

Untying Knots: Nietzsche’s Dance

By Davood Gozli | 05/03/202005/03/2020 by Davood Gozli

I recommend reading Pam Weintraub’s article on Nietzsche and Dance. What is crucial about this perspective is that it views dancing not as doing, as much as undoing, unraveling, untying. Here is, to me, the most significant passage: … those who dance are not burdened by ressentiment, or need for revenge. They have the sensory discernment needed to resist pernicious applications of the ascetic ideal. In Twilight of the Idols (1889) and The Antichrist (1895), dance appears as a discipline for…

Phenomenology Philosophy

Alain Badiou

By Davood Gozli | 17/10/201929/05/2023 by Davood Gozli

The most profound philosophical concepts tell us something like this: ‘If you want your life to have some meaning, you must accept the event, you must remain at a distance from power, and you must be firm in your decision.’ This is the story that philosophy is always telling us, under many different guises: to be in the exception, in the sense of the event, to keep one’s distance from power, and to accept the…