Or as Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, in Physiologie du Gout, ou Meditations de Gastronomie Transcendante, 1826: Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es Food is quite possibly the first area where practicality began to develop into philosophy. As we got past the most basic, I must eat to survive, and began…
Tag: Philosophy
Haiku: The Ultimate Wordsmithing
A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words. -Robert Frost, Letter to Louis Untermeyer (1 January 1916). It’s been a rough month; kids coming home for holidays, kids leaving for good, getting ready to move to New York, and getting the house downsized and ready for…
The Problem with No Face
The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, 1096.a5 As election day approaches it’s been easy to see some of the ugly problems facing the United States…
The Illusionary Value of Gold
Poor is the man who can boast of nothing more that gold. -William Scott Downey, Proverbs Ch 1, #11 (1858) In the article, The Shared Delusion of Money, I discussed some of the delusions surrounding the “value” of money. The other day I overheard someone talking about how they wanted gold and diamonds for the…
Crazy People, I Salute You
Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy. -Sigmund Freud, The Complete Works Change is in the air, and not just because it’s autumn. Governments and cultures all over the world are being called upon to change. This desire for change is occurring because social structures are not working well for the…
Philosophy is Not a Single Player Game
While I’ve been sitting here for a couple of hours trying to write my next philosophical article for the blog, I came to realize that philosophy is a team sport not a single player game. There is a reason Socrates and Plato had people around. In a group it was easier to work on expanding…
The Meaning of Life
What is the meaning of life?
What a Piece of Work is Man
how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension, how like a god! – Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2 When you look up at the Milky Way you see millions of stars. Then think about how you are one person…
