Tag Archives: philosophy
Reflections of a Philosophy Major (JVP)
I’m a philosophy major, which means that I like having things spelled out for me. Case in point: my first day of philosophy class, wherein it was explained to me why thinking is important. “Thinkin’? Important?” Whodathunkit?! Simon Blackburn thunks so … Continue reading
Filed under old writing
Oh, you mean “Humanism”?
Spring of 2011. I was doing research for my philosophy honors thesis. I was looking into books on “needs”. As in, “I need this.” You might think, “Oh, were you doing a paper on how to distinguish between ‘wants’ and … Continue reading
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People as a Need
I recently read an essay by philosopher Len Doyal called A Theory of Human Need. For Doyal, needs are what, “must be satisfied to some degree before people can effectively participate in their form of life to achieve any other … Continue reading
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The Cat Thing
The rule is: if you’re trying to turn left at a four-way intersection, you have to wait for all the cars to pass. Not everyone knows this rule, apparently, because I’ve been honked at for not driving into oncoming traffic. … Continue reading
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A Conversation with Noah Cicero
I first discovered Noah Cicero in June of 2007. Discovered isn’t the right word, of course, since Noah Cicero had been Noah Cicero for quite some time by that point, but, at the time, Noah was brand new to me. And while it might be the case that, since then, I’ve read every single one of his blog posts and all the books of his I could get my hands on, Noah still remains new to me every time I read something of his. Consistently, over the years, he’s continued to produce inventive and insightful content that’s kept me both a fan and an ardent promoter. Continue reading
Filed under Blog, Interviews
State of the Blog Address
I’ve been mulling over the solution oriented journalism route that I had envisioned for myself and have decided against it. In the course of conducting research, I’ve realized, first off, that there’s plenty of people besides myself that are not … Continue reading
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Laughable Truth Identification!
For a while, I was seemingly unable to make jokes. It’s as though something were missing and I’d forgotten what made things funny. It took a lot of thinkin’ for me to figure it out, but eventually I got it: … Continue reading
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Justice and Blame
If there are so many elements that constitute any given event, then, I would say, responsibility is spread too thin to pin blame on any one individual. After all, if any given state of affairs cannot be without the historic … Continue reading
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Do you care about other people?
Of course you do! You don’t even have a choice whether you care or not because being a person entails necessarily being concerned with others since it’s only because of and with others that one is a person at all. There’s the biological element, the practical element (you do stuff with, for, and around people), but there’s also the metaphysical element. And before you start thinking this’ll take a long time to explain, no worries; it takes only one sentence. Because language is necessarily shared and it is only with language that you can conceptualize and, as a result, know yourself and change yourself, you cannot be a person without others. BOOM! Continue reading
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The Shape of Blogs to Come
Greetings all! I have to figure out how to refer to my collective audience. Marc Maron calls the WTF audience a number of things: Whatthefuckers, Whatthefuckanauts, etc. But it’d be absurd if I called you Kharakhers, Kharakhanauts, Kharakhaphiles, Kharakhnicks, Kharakhaviches, Kharakhers, … Continue reading
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