I will publish a number of new posts in few days. I wanted a vacation from thinking and writing but—after almost 50 years since my higher education—your work becomes such a part of you that it is hard to disengage. I will continue to intersperse some previous posts too but there is too much happening in my mind and in the world to quit writing new posts. Hopefully, some may benefit from my musings.
Pyrrho of Elis is credited as being the first Greek skeptic philosopher.
(This essay first appeared at 3 Quarks Daily on July 13, 2020. Reprinted with permission.)
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Skepticism is the view that knowledge is unattainable. It comes in varying strengths. In the strongest version, it is a thesis about all knowledge, the global denial that anyone has ever known anything. Continue reading The Democratic Virtues Of Skepticism
Watching and listening to so many politicians, clergy, evangelists, television blowhards, and ordinary citizens in my country today reminds me of one of my favorite passages in all of world literature. Continue reading Make the Angels Weep
In my previous post, I reflected on Philip Larkin‘s poem “An Arundel Tomb,” especially it’s haunting last line, “What will survive of us is love.” It reminded me of another great 20th century English poet, W. H. Auden, who also wrote a poignant line about love and death, “We must love one another or die.” Continue reading We Must Love One Another or Die
Pictured above is the 14th-century tomb effigy in Chichester Cathedral that inspired Philip Larkin’s poem “An Arundel Tomb.” It is the tomb of Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel (1306-1376), and his wife, Eleanor of Lancaster, Countess of Arundel (1311- 1372). Continue reading Philip Larkin: “An Arundel Tomb”