The End of the Beginning by Douglas Penick
This essay marks the ending of the lavish storehouse of riches known as Berfrois...
Read MoreM. Munro: Autofiction
Recalling how Kafka’s tale ends, with the gatekeeper closing the door of the Law as the protagonist expires, roaring in his ear that all along it was meant for him alone...
Read MoreGreg Gerke on Gilles Deleuze
In reading bits and bobs of Deleuze, I came upon some pages in What is Philosophy? that cooly and accurately describe the artist’s experience...
Read MoreGolden State; Misplaced Dreams
Today, when I hear that fraudsters such as Robin DiAngelo are seeking to coerce employees of large corporations into joining “racial affinity groups”, my only thought is this: No thanks, lady. I’ve seen that trick before...
Read MoreNo One the Wiser
What is Socrates getting out of showing people that they don’t know what they take themselves to know?
Read MoreConsidering Cremation
Just a few steps away, my mind was buzzing like a bee: What the hell are you doing? You’re only fifty! People your age are starting new chapters in their lives, and you’re planning your death?
Read MoreThe Quest for Solitude and Silence
A practice ‘designed to demonstrate the transience of all material things’ has been co-opted in ‘service of the profit motive’...
Read MoreBooked Out
These books destined me to an unbalanced life, like a poorly packed U-Haul that leans too far to one side...
Read MoreChenxing Han in Yogyakarta
I miss many aspects of my chaplaincy training: the deep listening that can blossom in the most unexpected of circumstances, the twinning of action and reflection...
Read MoreConsequentialist and Deontological
To evaluate states of affairs we use the concepts of good and bad, better and worse. To evaluate actions we use in addition the concepts of right and wrong...
Read MoreDo puppets have free will?
Arguments against free will go back millennia, but the latest resurgence of scepticism has been driven by advances in neuroscience during the past few decades...
Read MoreAre we puppets of the gods?
The almost subconscious fear that we could be soulless machines manipulated by other powers poses a profound philosophical conundrum pondered since ancient times...
Read MoreRené Girard has many Silicon Valley disciples…
A student of René Girard’s while at Stanford in the late 1980s, Peter Thiel would go on to report that Girard is his greatest intellectual inspiration...
Read MoreWhy are the humanities worth saving?
The historical shift currently underway is massive. The ridiculous stories that the anti-woke hucksters and tabloids love to pick up and ridicule are in fact just the faintest epiphenomena of this massive shift...
Read MoreDouglas Penick: At Ease Together
Awareness joins inner and outer, near and far. It can also be referred to as compassion...
Read MoreWhat might José Ortega y Gasset say to us now?
Far from fitting the stereotypical image of a philosopher, sat in an ivory tower, Ortega y Gasset was engaged with his society and its troubles...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
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