Attention is Not a Resource: It’s a Way of Being Alive to the World

‘We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.’ Those were the words of the American biologist E O Wilson at the turn of the century.

Unphilosophical Americans: Overdosed on Politics & Starved for Wisdom

What is American “philosophy” nowadays? Does our culture end at commercialism, video games, Netflix and the NFL? In a recent article – “What Happened to Philosophy in America?” – Michael Sutherland seems to think so. He claims philosophical thinking is in short supply in the land of the free (land of the distracted is more like it).

Poem by Edna St Vincent Millay: “The Philosopher”

The Philosopher And what are you that, wanting you, I should be kept awake As many nights as there are days With weeping for your sake?   And what are you that, missing you, As many days as crawl I should be listening to the wind And looking at the wall?   I know a …

Quote: Chinese Philosophy on Ritual

Only through training do we become able to respond well . . . At the beginning [of our lives] one responds through emotions; at the end, one responds through propriety [learned through ritual]. —Anonymous (Fourth Century BCE) Nature that Emerges from the Decree

A Rule to Live By: Know Thyself, Help Thyself

"Know Thyself. Delphic Oracle."  This famous call to the examined life that Socrates answered and passed on to the world is reprinted on the title page of The Rule of Life, a forgotten but extraordinary book published in 1834. The book reminds us that a genre of popular literature, collections of moral maxims, helped keep alive the Socratic tradition of the examined life.