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…
Category: Philosophy
Why Read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
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…
Untying Knots: Nietzsche’s Dance
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…
Alain Badiou
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…
Out of Service
Here is a sentence by Alva Noë (2015) which hints at the distinction between philosophy and practical problem-solving. … if there is a pornographic art, whatever else is true of it, it will not be good for masturbating. (from Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, p. 116) The “function” of art, similar to the “function” of philosophy, involves being anti-functional, as it moves us against the…