Derek Parfit 1942-2017

A reader asked me to clarify Derek Parfit’s distinction—made in my last post—between a local and a cosmic possibility. Here are Parfit’s exact words on the distinction: Continue reading Derek Parfit on Why The World Exists →

Jim Holt’s book, Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story, tackles the question that Martin Heidegger characterized as the greatest in all philosophy and William James called the darkest in all philosophy—why is there something rather than nothing? Continue reading Why Does the World Exist? →

A Harvard study followed 268 undergraduates from the classes of 1938-1940 for 75 years, regularly collecting data on various aspects of their lives. The findings were reported in a recent book by the Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant: Continue reading Summary of the Harvard Grant Study →

When I was about 18 years old I read the following words by the Lebanese artist, poet, and author Kahlil Gibran in a short collection of his writing entitled The Voice of the Master.

Life is an island in an ocean of loneliness, an island whose rocks are hopes, whose trees are dreams, whose flowers are solitude, and whose brooks are thirst. Continue reading Gibran – “Life is an island …” →