Reflections
Reflections for Spring 2011
There is no accounting for desire.
Reflections for Fall 2010
In contemporary Continental philosophy there is far too much talk about the distance of the 'other.' Do these authors
not take to heart Heidegger's analysis of Miteinandersein--our being-with-one-another?
Reflections for Fall 2009
To live wisely and well, we need not the certainty of Abraham, nor the willfulness of Zarathustra, but the discernment of Odysseus.
Reflections for Spring 2009
Heidegger makes more complex--but does not mock--our understanding of the phenomenon of "truth."
The thinking that qualifies as wisdom gathers and does not seize. Consider more carefully what Heidegger means: thinking is thanking .
Reflections for Fall 2008
Let all things come to be and cease to be, including ourselves.
Care for other beings, but give them leeway, too.
Life teaches us that the subject of consciousness is not the self.
Is it that the artist dwells more in the imaginary than the thinker? And yet both disclose what is.
Reflections for Academic Year 2007-2008
Why traditionally was there such philosophical resistance to our temporal existence?
Simple things give us hope.
The Greeks understood that limit is necessary for happiness.
Allow for what cannot be changed--but in a creative way.
All too often today, philosophy wields the hammer of thought to tear down rather than to build up.
Reflections for Academic Year 2006-2007
Some change is better than no change at all.
"It is fitting for a man, even if he is wise, often to learn things . . . . It is also good to learn from those who give good counsel." Sophocles, Antigone
A wise man wears knowledge lightly.
Education should liberate our individuality, not smother it; it should make us bold to imagine change and progress for ourselves and for others; it should lead us beyond competence to creativity; and it should touch us and stir us in some profound way.
Why did so many philosophers miss the decisive importance of our mortality?
Summer 2007
Eros builds in time.
Completion, not perfection, is our goal.
Living when the sky is high requires as much wisdom as when the sky hangs heavy with snow.