Newsletter: May 2024

Socrates’ examined life is more adverb than verb. It’s not that the examining is the sole or dominant activity in a good life. It’s rather that all activities in a good life are undertaken examinedly.

Newsletter: February 2024

It’s not so much that we live in a world that’s lost faith in metaphysics. It’s rather that we live in a world that’s lost interest.

Newsletter: November 2023

Autumn, as a season of changes, is a fine time to reflect on impermanence, its sadness, and its beauty.

Newsletter: March 2023

Plato, Plotinus, and the rest saw philosophical argument and investigation as one part—granted, a central part—of a broader way of life that was essentially mystical and spiritual in its outlook.

Newsletter: January 2023

Starting with Plato, philosophy has systematically marginalized both literature and animals as beneath the dignity that philosophy has established for humankind.

Newsletter: March 2022

If you want to be a better person, the subject you should study is mathematics.

Newsletter: January 2022

It’s as if Plato were proposing a wholesale ban on Hollywood, Netflix, the publishing industry, and pop music—and that’s just for starters.

[Reflections] Irreverence is not the opposite of reverence; or why there are Buddhist punks

When false reverence is rampant, renewed calls to reverence risk exacerbating the problem. Sometimes what’s needed is for someone to step in boldly and take the piss.

Newsletter: April 2021

UNESCO has marked the third Thursday in November as World Philosophy Day but it might have been more apt to set it for April Fools’ Day.

Newsletter: February 2021

Are philosophers also good lovers? Plato, ever the booster for philosophy, claims that philosophers are really the only true lovers.