Category Archives: Philosophy

Yesterday, talking with a friend about the current generation of youth’s terror of being awkward or inappropriate, I realized I’ve somehow managed to never write about the concept of lek on this blog, much less in connection with Buber’s social … Continue reading →

“We all have our philosophies, whether or not we are aware of this fact, and our philosophies are not worth very much. But the impact of our philosophies upon our actions and our lives is often devastating. This makes it … Continue reading →

This passage from Bruno Latour expresses a humility that I feel is disappearing from the world: “It is us, the social scientists, who lack knowledge of what they do, and not they who are missing the explanation of why they … Continue reading →

I had insomnia again last night and put on the audiobook of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. The best history is always disorienting, and this is premium disorientation, on the order of Inventing the Individual. According to Anderson, nations and nationalism … Continue reading →

Bruno Latour changes his vocabulary and framework in every book. This is both irritating and valuable. It is irritating because there is too little continuity and much conceptual sprawl. Each book feels slightly out of control, and his corpus feels … Continue reading →

What is it about the marketing mindset that makes it feel so familiar and so unfamiliar at the same time to my designer’s view of the world? Why do designers and marketers talk past one another if they aren’t very … Continue reading →

Rabbi Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi led Torah study yesterday. She focused on “the first thing Abraham did after becoming a Jew”: argue — and with God, no less, which she characterized as an essentially Jewish act. Then Adonai said, “The outrage … Continue reading →

At the boundary between physicality and symbol stands an object marking the line between the two: the pen. A pen can be seen as a herm, a Janus at the gate, a hand-mezuzah, by which thoughts become physical, and physical … Continue reading →

I haven’t tracked this alleged Hannah Arendt quote, so it probably isn’t her: “Every generation, civilization is invaded by barbarians — we call them ‘children’.” Barbarians, how? I would say half of the children enter the world as me-less I’s, … Continue reading →

First-person thought is perspectival, understood when it is inhabited, seen-from, felt-from, known-from, experienced from. Understanding first-person thought is about finding the from, from which the thought understands whatever is presented. It is “where you’re coming from” as hippies say. First-person … Continue reading →

This passage from Voegelin’s Anamnesis sparked the insight I diagram as an asterisk. In the illuminatory dimensions of past and future, one becomes aware not of empty spaces but of the structures of a finite process between birth and death. … Continue reading →

From The Gay Science: What makes one heroic? — Going out to meet at the same time one’s highest suffering and one’s highest hope. In what do you believe? — In this: that the weights of all things must be … Continue reading →