Browsed by
Tag: happiness

Nietzsche and the Slaves of American Culture

Nietzsche and the Slaves of American Culture

Comments 0 Comment

A rough sketch, particularly one that exaggerates certain features, can be more useful than a finely proportioned, subtle, and detailed drawing. This may be the case, for example, when one wants to highlight certain features that otherwise may be missed if they are buried in detail and perfect lines. With this in mind, I want to discuss a disturbing aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy in order to foreground an even more disturbing aspect of American culture. At one point at least,…

Read More Read More

How Not to Regret Your Hindsight Judgments

How Not to Regret Your Hindsight Judgments

Comments 0 Comment

As anyone who knows me or who is familiar with this blog likely knows, suffering and death are preoccupations of mine. And, so, when I saw on Facebook this morning an article—one I think I’ve seen before—on The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware, I shared it without looking at it again—something I do far too often, i.e., share without really looking, simply based on the headline and blurb. A friend and former colleague, Joshua Miller, commented…

Read More Read More

Nihilism, Hell, and Self-Interest

Nihilism, Hell, and Self-Interest

Comments 2 comments

Often when people fear hell, they fear it in the sense of an afterlife of eternal torment, or, perhaps more sophisticatedly, eternal separation from God. As others have noted, though, hell exists on earth in a variety of forms. For example, you can read Sartre’s “No Exit” as making the case that “hell is other people.” As an introvert, I find that line of thinking attractive, but I think a more pressing form of hell on earth is putting one’s…

Read More Read More

You are Right and I have my Peace—On the Pursuit of Truth and a Meaningful Life

You are Right and I have my Peace—On the Pursuit of Truth and a Meaningful Life

Comments 0 Comment

What am I after in pursuing philosophy? A ready answer is: the Truth. The truth about whatever philosophical topic I might be interested in. But this answer is problematic for a number of important reasons. One is that philosophy is extremely difficult and I’d have to be a fool or full of hubris to think that I will figure out any significant truths, truths that greater minds than my own failed to see. Another is revealed in the following passage…

Read More Read More

Some Thoughts on Greatness

Some Thoughts on Greatness

Comments 0 Comment

Nietzsche and Wittgenstein are not ends. They are variously fodder, grist, ports in the storm, and storms to be sailed into. The same for epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, logic—for philosophy. Living well is an end, a goal, though it is not a final point. It is more like a buoy in the open ocean—it can perhaps be reached, but vast openness, danger, and uncertainty lie beyond. Greatness means overflowing with a multitude. One must, for example, have a multitude of projects,…

Read More Read More

The Role of Beauty in Living Well

The Role of Beauty in Living Well

Comments 1 comment

“That is beautiful!” is easy to say and easy to ignore, as it has become platitudinous. This is certainly regrettable, for beauty ought not be identified with the trite and such associations can cloud our thinking about beauty. Such clouding can also result from the mistaken association of “beauty” with beauty pageants and fashion models. All of this can make us neglect an important question: What is the role of beauty in human well-being? Following Daniel M. Haybron’s classification scheme…

Read More Read More