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Did FitzGerald turn Khayyam into an Epicurean, or was he one already?
Everyone's grandfather here can recite some Khayyam. In English, everyone's grandfather could recite FitzGerald, which is not quite the same thing. FitzGerald's version (fifth edition, stanza XXIV; both the first and fifth editions are on Project Gutenberg) reads like a Roman poem:…
Started by Reza Tehrani2 replies -
Abusua dɔ funu, “the family loves the corpse”: who are our expensive funerals really for?
We buried my mother's cousin in September. The funeral cost more than our household makes from the farm in a good year, and the family will be paying it off past the next harvest. There were printed cloths with her face on…
Started by Akosua Mensah2 replies -
Dussel and Levinas on the stranger at the door: does “the Other comes first” tell a host country anything concrete?
Over the last decade millions of Venezuelans have crossed into Colombia. In 2021 the government offered most of those already here ten years of temporary protection. The decision was praised abroad and argued about at home, and still is. I have been…
Started by Andrés ZuluagaReply first (no replies yet) -
Lashon hara forbids true gossip. Does that make sense in the age of the screenshot?
Our Tuesday group has been working through the laws of speech. The striking thing about lashon hara, "the evil tongue", is that it concerns true statements. Lies are a separate and graver matter. Lashon hara is saying something accurate and damaging about…
Started by Eliana Halpern1 reply -
Pascal said we cannot sit quietly in a room. Did phones prove him right, or change the problem?
Fragment 139 of the Pensées, in the old translation on Project Gutenberg, says that "all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact": that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber. (Editions number the fragments differently; in Lafuma's it is…
Started by Derek HollisReply first (no replies yet) -
Is rest something you have to earn? Aristotle, the Gita and the Sabbath give three answers
I've had some months away from work, and the strangest part is not the free time. It's the feeling that I owe someone an explanation for it. Rest feels like a loan. Three texts I keep carrying around, which seem to disagree:…
Started by Rohan DesaiReply first (no replies yet) -
Protecting believers or protecting beliefs? Where offence to the sacred stops being the law’s business
Every few months the same argument breaks out somewhere: a cartoon, a novel, a burned book, a comedian. One side says nothing is sacred in law. The other says that mocking what people hold holiest is a wound, not an opinion. I…
Started by Hamza Qureshi3 replies -
The rectification of names, from a translator’s desk: when words and things drift apart
In Analects 13.3 a disciple asks Confucius what he would do first if he were given charge of government. "Rectify names," he says. The disciple thinks this is impractical, and Confucius explains, in a famous chain: if names are not correct, speech…
Started by Vũ Quốc Bảo1 reply -
Autumn and mono no aware: an emotion, or a trained way of seeing?
The maples in the hills north of Osaka are only starting to turn, and I'm drawing autumn pages for a children's book. My editor wants "the feeling of autumn", and I keep reaching for mono no aware, which is usually translated as…
Started by Rin Matsuda2 replies -
I’ve stopped translating qi as “energy”, and Zhang Zai is the reason
In our taiji group in the park, the younger members say qi means "energy". It sounds scientific and it is easy to say. I used to say it too. After a winter with Zhang Zai, I have stopped. Zhang Zai, in the…
Started by Liu MingqiaoReply first (no replies yet) -
How would you tell a wise elder from a well-stocked memory? Odera Oruka’s problem, revisited
Odera Oruka went out to rural Kenya to talk with elders and recorded their answers to questions about God, justice, death and the good life. He drew a line between folk sages, who voice the received wisdom of their community well, and…
Started by Wanjiru Njenga3 replies -
Thanksgiving Monday: can gratitude be owed, or does owing it spoil it?
It's Thanksgiving Monday here in Canada, and I'm writing this with leftover turkey and a mild headache from yesterday's family dinner, where my aunt kept a running total of who had thanked whom for what. My cousin hadn't thanked her for a…
Started by Harpreet Kaur Grewal3 replies -
Freire’s “banking” model, seen from inside a capoeira roda
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire describes "banking" education: the teacher deposits knowledge, the students receive, file and store it. Against it he sets problem-posing education, where teacher and students investigate together, and the teacher is also taught. In capoeira Angola…
Started by Jorge Bonfim4 replies -
The Cost of Being Understood: Why We Cannot Spend Our Whole Life Explaining Ourselves
To be understood is a human desire—not a human entitlement Human beings do not merely want to speak. We want what we say to arrive intact in another mind. We want our reasons to be seen in the proportion in which we…
Started by Syed Raheel ShahzadReply first (no replies yet) -
“But what if it was you?” Trying Hare’s universalisability test on my children
My two children are eight and eleven, and they argue about fairness constantly, mostly over the last piece of anything. Last week I read about R. M. Hare's prescriptivism in an introductory book, and I decided to try it at home. As…
Started by Thamarai RamanReply first (no replies yet) -
Zhuangzi and Huizi on the bridge: doubt about other minds, or a joke?
Every morning after taiji I sit by the river in the park, and this story comes back to me. It is in the "Autumn Floods" chapter of the Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi and his friend Huizi are strolling on a bridge over the Hao…
Started by Liu MingqiaoReply first (no replies yet) -
Zeno’s arrow and what my students made of it
Zeno's arrow came up in class today. At any instant, the arrow occupies a space exactly its own size, so at that instant it is at rest. Time is made of instants. So the arrow is always at rest and never moves.…
Started by Giulia Ferrante1 reply -
Mill’s harm principle: where does it actually draw the line?
Mill's On Liberty (1859) proposes one simple principle: the only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilised community, against their will, is to prevent harm to others. A person's own good is not a sufficient…
Started by Deepa KarthaReply first (no replies yet) -
Is human dignity a religious idea that secular law borrowed?
Article 1 of the German Basic Law (1949) declares human dignity inviolable. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) begins by recognising the inherent dignity of all members of the human family. Many constitutions since then have done the same. Kant gave…
Started by Hamza Qureshi1 reply -
Was plate tectonics a Kuhnian revolution? Geology as a test case
In discussions of Kuhn, the examples are nearly always from physics and astronomy. I wanted to test his picture on an earth-science revolution I know something about. Alfred Wegener proposed continental drift in the 1910s. He had real evidence: the fit of…
Started by Anand KurupReply first (no replies yet) -
Moral dumbfounding at a debate tournament: Haidt’s elephant and its rider
Most weekends I watch teenagers at debate tournaments decide what they believe in the first ten seconds and then spend forty minutes building reasons for it. Jonathan Haidt would not be surprised. His social intuitionist model, first set out in "The Emotional…
Started by Sam ElleryReply first (no replies yet) -
Davidson said there are no untranslatable conceptual schemes. A working translator is not so sure
A colleague recently sent me Donald Davidson's essay “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” (1974), with the note: “He proves your job is always possible.” As I understand it, Davidson attacks the idea that different languages or cultures might organise…
Started by Claire DuboisReply first (no replies yet) -
Diogenes was doing stand-up: the Cynic method as performance
I've just read the Diogenes stories in Diogenes Laertius, and I'm convinced the man was doing comedy, in the serious sense. Look at the famous ones. Plato defines a human as a featherless biped; Diogenes plucks a chicken, brings it to the…
Started by Gemma PritchardReply first (no replies yet) -
Compassion fatigue: does the duty to care have limits?
After a hard month at work I've been thinking about this. People in care work talk about "compassion fatigue": after enough exposure to suffering, you start to feel less. You become efficient and a little cold, and you hate yourself for it.…
Started by Elin Hedqvist1 reply -
Privacy as a virtue, not just a right
We usually talk about privacy as a right: something others shouldn't violate. But in my work I see people giving away their data voluntarily all the time, for convenience or a discount. The right isn't violated; it's waived, again and again. I've…
Started by Nur Aisyah Rahman1 reply -
My kitchen friendships end when people change jobs. Were they only friendships of utility?
For fifteen years in kitchens the pattern has been the same. You work ten-hour services side by side with someone, you cover for each other, you eat together at midnight, you know about their kids and their visa problems. Then they move…
Started by Joel D'SouzaReply first (no replies yet) -
My agent called me an idealist. Which of the three idealisms was that?
Last week my agent told me I was "too much of an idealist" for turning down a corporate gig. Naturally I went home and looked the word up instead of reconsidering my finances. It turns out "idealist" has at least three meanings…
Started by Gemma PritchardReply first (no replies yet) -
Sartre’s “look” and Fanon on being fixed by another’s gaze
In Being and Nothingness (1943), Sartre describes the moment of being caught looking through a keyhole: suddenly I am an object for someone else, and I feel shame. The look of the other gives me an outside I can't control. Fanon's Black…
Started by Claire Dubois2 replies -
Karma as moral causation: does the theory hold together?
The doctrine of karma says that actions have consequences for the agent that go beyond their visible effects, ripening in this life or future lives. It is shared, in different forms, by Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions. As an engineer I want…
Started by Arjun Iyer1 reply -
Automated cranes at my port: freedom from drudgery, or the end of what gave the day shape?
The port where I operate a gantry crane has announced that the new terminal will be automated: cranes run remotely from an office, straddle carriers without drivers. Some of us will retrain to sit at screens. Most won't be needed. As a…
Started by Hugo MarchettiReply first (no replies yet)
