My short essay ‘A Constitution Should Help A Country Govern, Not Hobble It‘ is up at Aeon Magazine. Comments welcome. (Many thanks to Sam Haselby, my editor at Aeon, for all his help.)
Category Archives: Philosophy
Goethe On The Artist’s Supposed ‘Originality’
In Conversations with Goethe With Johann Peter Eckermann, Goethe says, People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us and goes on to the end. What can we call our own except energy, strength, and will? If I could give anContinue reading “Goethe On The Artist’s Supposed ‘Originality’”
A Rarely Realized Classroom Ideal
Last night, in my graduate seminar–which carries the snappy title ‘From Schopenhauer to Freud (Via Nietzsche): Depth Psychology and Philosophy‘–my students and I spent the entire two hours of our class meeting time reading and discussing Section 354 of Nietzsche‘s The Gay Science. We each had a copy of the section in front of us; IContinue reading “A Rarely Realized Classroom Ideal”
T. S. Eliot’s ‘Is That All There Is?’
In The Idea Of A Christian Society, T. S. Eliot wrote: Was our society, which had always been assured of its superiority and rectitude, so confident of its unexamined premises, assembled round anything more permanent than a congeries of banks, insurance companies and industries, and had it any beliefs more essential than a belief in compoundContinue reading “T. S. Eliot’s ‘Is That All There Is?’”
Philosophy As ‘Ways Of Seeing Things’
In Confessions of a Philosopher (Random House, 1997, pp. 399-400) Bryan Magee writes: [T]he most important things great philosophers have to give us are to be got at not by analysing the logic of their arguments or their use of concepts but by looking at reality in the light of what it is saying….”Is reality illuminated forContinue reading “Philosophy As ‘Ways Of Seeing Things’”
Rohin Kushwaha On The Writer’s Craft
A few days ago, I made note of the passing of my young nephew, Rohin Kushwaha, at the age of nineteen, mourning the tragic loss of a brilliant, young, and talented man to the ravages of a relentless disease. In that remembrance, I made note of Rohin’s writing talents: His intellectual ambition was vast, speakingContinue reading “Rohin Kushwaha On The Writer’s Craft”
Commodified Relationships And Friendship
When relationships are commodified, can friendship survive? This old, plaintive question has not lost any of its urgency. Once we meet and greet our fellow humans our interactions are quickly transformed into the transactional because that is the context within which they function. To be with our friends, to spend time with them, to engageContinue reading “Commodified Relationships And Friendship”
Haircuts And Mindfulness In The Barbershop
My patient wait over, I rise to take my turn, ready to exchange a few pleasantries and then sink into silence. It is time for my haircut. Very soon, I will close my eyes and let myself be taken over: by the sounds of battery-powered clippers that cut my hair down to the scalp, ofContinue reading “Haircuts And Mindfulness In The Barbershop”
Fear Of Death Is Fear Of Immortality
We philosophize because we anticipate death, fearfully. We seek out religious consolation because we anticipate death, fearfully. We seek in philosophical rumination and religious observance and faith some deliverance from our mortality, some way to ‘stay alive,’ to not be annihilated. One kind of introspection these forms of thought encourage is to look a littleContinue reading “Fear Of Death Is Fear Of Immortality”
Narnia’s Pevensies And Personal Identity
Readers of C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe will remember the novel’s dramatic ending: Peter, Lucy, Edmund, and Susan, now all grown up and ruling as noble and just kings and queens of the land of Narnia, set out to hunt a mysterious stag; their hunt leads them into the woods,Continue reading “Narnia’s Pevensies And Personal Identity”
Samir Chopra 