Yesterday I began to write a response to Martin Heidegger’s, What Is Metaphysics? lecture delivered in 1929. I am quite taken by Heidegger’s words. They strike me as revolutionary, as transgressive in this 21st century as they were when they were uttered. Who thinks and writes about metaphysics anymore? The metaphysical flame reduced to…
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Excerpt from The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) I have no words. There is nothing more to say.
Yesterday we celebrated our 48th year of marriage. Seems like a long journey, when I think of it that way. We purchased greeting cards for each other, with verses that expressed our affection for the other. She purchased a Wendell Berry book of essays for me. We celebrated by enjoying the Friday evening fish…
I cannot imagine the headlines, if they should have had such a thing as a newspaper. More to the point the “news” was conveyed by word of mouth over the commercial sea lanes of the Mediterranean basin: Troy has fallen. After ten years of war, Priam’s great city is sacked by the Achaeans. That…
The old Roman distrusted individuality and genius. He had none of the charm, vivacity, the unstable fluency, of the Attic Greek. He admired character and will as the Greek admired freedom and intellect. Organization was his forte. He lacked imagination even to make a mythology of his own. He could with some effort love…
A man who is of “sound mind” keeps his inner madman under lock and key. —Paul Valery A man of sound mind would not be the individual who occupies the White House. He takes delight in unleashing his inner madman at will on twitter. And I would include a majority in congress and many…
Found this superb video of The Who performing their magnificent anthem of resistance. The Who are performing live at Kilburn in 1977. They are in their prime. The issue comes down to what we will do with the “life force.” Will we individually and collectively utilize the energy, our heritage of elan from Nature,…
Where many machines are used in monastic work (and it is right that they should be used), there can be a deadening of the spirit and of sensibility, a blunting of perception, a loss of awareness, a lowering of tone, a general fatigue and lassitude, a proneness to unrest and guilt which we might…
The Ohio River is big. From the deck of a boat, one can appreciate the scale of the bridges required to convey vehicles from Kentucky to Indiana, across the Ohio river. It is not hard to imagine the immense challenge of constructing the first bridge across this muscular flowing expanse of water. Then came…
Our philosophy discussion group has convened for many years. Gary and I have had a long standing difference of view regarding a particular staple thought-experiment. The philosophical conundrum goes thusly: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it fall, does the falling tree make a sound? Gary’s…
