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January 13, 2020

Cephalus On Ageing

Cephalus, in answer to Socrates’ question of whether life is harder towards the end, “For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many.” (3) Plato, Trans. Benjamin Continue reading

Arts and Leisure, Catch-All

aging, Cephalus, free, freedom, old age, passions, Plato
January 9, 2020

Sweet Revenge.

It is very sweet to do a just action which is disagreeable to those we do not like. Victor Hugo. By Order of the King. (Or, The Man Who Laughs.) The Valjean Edition of the Novels of Victor Hugo. New York: P.F. Collier & Son. (1912?) The Waif Knows Its Course, p 391. Continue reading

Catch-All

By Order of the King, quote, revenge, sweet, The Man Who Laughs, Victor Hugo
November 7, 2019

The Art of Rhetoric: Working through the challenges and disagreements that arise from our shared lives. Series 4.3.

In my previous post, I suggest Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow and Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion are complementary reads. Why? Because a study of Haidt’s moral theory alongside Kahneman’s work on our cognitive/perceptual errors and biases might well make the barriers to both offering and receiving criticism Continue reading

Political Rhetoric

artistotle, communication, discussion, epistemology, negotiation, Philosophy, rhetoric, social, social epistemology
October 27, 2019

Thinking, Fast and Slow. (And 2 worries.)Series 4.2.

Some of my books have well-worn pages, others are falling apart from use. The books I use heavily are usually those I think worth giving others. And so I do. I peruse used-book shops and thrift stores to stock my library with multiple copies. This way, I often have a book on hand to share. If Continue reading

Political Rhetoric

books, correction, Daniel Kahneman, decision, epistemology, errors, fast, Hume, judgment, Philosophy, psychology, read, slow, social, social epistemology, Thinking
October 24, 2019

The Righteous Mind. Series 4.1.

My husband, Paul, and I host a weekly reading group. We read one book in the fall, another in the spring. This past spring we read Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind which, week after week, generated the best discussions we’ve had to date. (Note that I’m not doing a comprehensive book review here.) Haidt notes that Continue reading

Political Rhetoric

epistemology, Haidt, indignation, kitten, moral, outrage, patience, Philosophy, puppy, self-righteous, social, social epistemology
October 22, 2019

Thoreau Quote with Photo, On Evil

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve. — Continue reading

Arts and Leisure

moral, moral myopia, myopia, myopic, Philosophy, Thoreau, Walden
October 15, 2019

It’s for these moments…

Some people think I miss the world by viewing it through my camera lens. I disagree. Rather, through my lens I become very intimate with the world. And I capture wonderful moments as in the photo below. Continue reading

Arts and Leisure

art, camera, cat, dog, embroidery, life, needlepoint, notice, opportunity, painting, photo
September 4, 2019

Hobbes on Consensus

If ‘x’ is true, then ‘x’ is true independently of whether one man [sic] or all men believe ‘x’ is true. But no one man’s reason, or the reason of any one number of men makes the certainty, no more than an account is therefore well cast up, because a great many men have unanimously Continue reading

Philosophy, Thoughtlets

consensus, controversy, Hobbes
August 16, 2019

Introducing Theodicy. What on earth is a Theodicy?!

Loosely speaking, a theodicy is an attempt to explain why God allows evil in the world. More particularly, it’s an attempt to answer The Problem of Evil; that is, to give an account of how the existence of God and of evil are not incompatible. So the problem is just this: 1) God is omnipotent Continue reading

Philosophy

abrahamic, Best of All Possible Worlds, Christian, Descartes, easy, evil, Free Will, Hick, human authored, introduction, Jewish, Liebniz, Mackie, natural, pain, Philosophy, Plantinga, primer, problem of evil, religion, solidarity, Soul-Making, suffering, theodicy, theology
July 25, 2019

Views from a Narrowboat

I took these photos whilst pointing my lens out the window of a narrowboat on an English canal, first one way and then the other. (You can see the change in direction of the wake.) We’d travelled a short distance between shots, but even so the difference in colour from one direction to the other Continue reading

Arts and Leisure

blue, boat, canal, England, green, narrow, narrow boat, narrowboat, photo, photography, sky, water