Not sure why the subscriber count jumped, but my thanks to all involved. It’s fun to be read.
I realize this site is a mess in terms of organization. I also realize that I have quite a few entries which rant and make no sense. This blog is a continual work in progress.
A few posts I’m pretty proud of, with quotes from them:
- Skyrim and Political Philosophy – Like all political philosophy, the divide between political things and cosmology is problematic to say the least. The political things point to ever higher orders: underneath all the dogma is genuine wonder about what man himself is, where he belongs. But that doesn’t mean there’s any logical link between political things and cosmology.
- Maimonides, “Letter to Obadiah the Proselyte” – Milton speculated that at the end of time, there would not be any facing God, since God would be “all in all.”
- Nietzsche, “Thus Spake Zarathustra: On the New Idol” – With method, there is no such thing as theory in the older sense. There are only theories which have immediate practical use.
- Leo Strauss, “Memorial Remarks for Jason Aronson” – Socratic self-knowledge: Socrates knows exactly when he is to die (cf. Crito).
- Emily Dickinson, “I dwell in Possibility” – Possibility means choice – when you make a choice, other possibilities are closed to you.
- Xenophon, “Agesilaus” – It is true Xenophon describes philosophy in martial terms in some places: the boar in On Hunting is Being, and must be hunted with friends willing to shed both its and their own blood.
I do realize some of you might be here because you’ve seen my poetry. I’m a bit hesitant to link to that – that is very much a work in progress. “Enfolding” is the only one I share often without cringing. If you want to see my prose entirely on its own, divorced from a specific text, there’s a story about a trip I took to Iowa with choir to sing a wedding.
I’ll have a round-up of last year’s philosophy posts up soon.
Nice selections of posts. I read your post about the Emily Dickinson poem and really like the quote you selected.