Happiness for us is thinkableonly in the air that we have breathed,among the people who have lived with us.In other words, there vibratesin the idea of happiness…the idea of salvation. …Our life it can be said,is a muscle strong enough to contract the whole of historical time. Or, to put it differently, the genuine…
I am reading an extended essay by Byung-chul Han entitled The crisis of narration. Han quotes often from Walter Benjamin. Here are a few lines from Han: Communicable experience based upon word of mouthis becoming increasingly rare.Nothing is passed down;nothing is narrated. Benjamin holds that the storyteller‘is a man who has counsel for his…
Homo Sapiens, the mammal that psychologically clothes itself with team colors, like every other fan at a soccer game. A coordinated style, moral attire that palate of team colors is instantly recognized by everyone in the room. What I mean – approved comportment, a manner of getting things done, of movement, of being, is…
Nothing is wasted! Even a heritage that one has taken measure of, reflected upon, then with effort to transition, to construct a more humane self, – that old wreckage in the rear-view-mirror is a resource for insight. Nietzsche states that holiness is nothing but a quest for purity. Saintliness is to insist upon unifying…
The National Convention of the Democratic Party begins today in downtown Chicago. As one would expect the event is conceived to produce maximally persuasive visuals for television, for electronic distribution. The convention as a whole, including various groups coming to Chicago to exercise the opportunity for free expression in the “public square” – will…
Thursday sunrise dawns with a clear sky. These are paradisiacal days. A friend’s dahlias are in full bloom, several are on display here at Starbucks. We shouldn’t be deceived though, everything is not well here in paradise. The New York Times published a report showing that upward mobility, the income of working class whites…
In fact, these philosophers [of the future] admit to taking pleasure in saying no, in dissecting, and in a certain level-headed cruelty that knows how to guide a knife with assurance and subtlety, even when the heart is bleeding. They will be more severe (and perhaps not always with themselves alone) than humane people…
Again, the circle of friends settled in at Barnes & Noble, provoked to consider, to attempt a response to several challenges to conventional thought. Since antiquity, here in Europe and lately in America we have relied upon the assumption that each of us has a defined, stable identity, a “self” which we aim to…
How much or how little danger there is to the community or to equality in an opinion, in a condition or affect, in a will, in a talent, this is now the moral perspective: and fear is once again the mother of morality. When the highest and strongest drives erupt in passion, driving…
The question of whether, with respect to the value of things, the instincts deserve more authority than reason (reason wants some ground or “what for?”, some purpose or utility behind our values and actions) – this is the same old moral problem that first emerged in the person of Socrates and divided opinions long…
