In his recent book, Death and the Afterlife, Samuel Scheffler offer two imaginative thought experiments in an attempt to understand our attitudes toward death and meaning. Continue reading Summary of Samuel Scheffler’s, Death and the Afterlife
Monthly Archives: February 2017
How To Cope With This Stressful Presidency
What prepares men for the totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness … has become an everyday experience of the ever growing masses of our century. The merciless process into which totalitarianism drives and organizes the masses looks like a suicidal escape from this reality. Continue reading How To Cope With This Stressful Presidency
In Defense of Optimism
The Australian philosophers Michael and Caldwell make a pragmatic case for optimism in, “The Consolations of Optimism.” (This relates to my last post, “Hope: A Defense.”)They argue that the optimist and pessimist may agree on the facts, but not on their attitude toward those facts Continue reading In Defense of Optimism
A Defense of Hope
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope … is not the same as joy … but rather an ability to work for something because it is good. ~ Vaclav Havel Continue reading A Defense of Hope
Kazantzakis’ Epitaph: Rejecting Hope
Now that I have summarized some of the main ideas in Kazantzakis’ thinking, and have also written a detailed summary of his, The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises, I would like to consider further his idea of hope, Continue reading Kazantzakis’ Epitaph: Rejecting Hope