[Reflections] I didn’t choose to write this blog post
When I try to picture what the determinist is telling me, I see myself in something like an x-ray view, a shadowy skull balanced on a skeleton, wiggling its jaw or moving about, but with the “person” absent.
Newsletter: August 2022
Better to drop your grand ambitions and just take things as they come, says Zhuangzi. Don’t fuss so much over life and life won’t stir up a fuss for you.
[Starting Points] Do We Have Free Will?
The position that I have free will seems untenable for anyone less mighty than God. The position that I don’t have free will seems so far from being right that it isn’t even wrong.
Newsletter: June 2022
Which stories we tell, and how we tell them, goes a long way toward articulating who we are and how we understand ourselves.
Newsletter: April 2022
The Indian dramatist crafts distinctive emotional effects that allow the audience to savour those emotions; those emotional flavours, or rasas, culminate in a savouring of tranquility; and savouring tranquility offers a foretaste of the spiritual liberation that is our ultimate goal. Not at all bad for a night out at the theatre.
[Starting Points] Aristotle on the Greatest Human Good
Suppose you could remove all the obstacles to a free and happy life: what would you do then? This is the question Aristotle wants to focus us on.