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• Philosophy Weekend: Our Hegelian Times
  History has a way of turning complex philosophers into simple cliches. Through the course of my philosophical education, I’ve only ever heard of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel as a target for refutation, a “straight man” from an earlier age of extreme rationalism, destined to be torn to shreds by the witty talents of Soren Kierkegaard, …
• Philosophy Weekend: Kierkegaard’s Birthday
  What do you buy a morose Danish philosopher who invented Existentialism for his 200th birthday? It doesn’t really matter anymore, since Soren Aabye Kierkegaard is dead. He died at the young age of 42, already at this time a mostly broken man, an obsessive writer, a lonely bachelor, and a frequent subject of popular ridicule. …
• Philosophy Weekend: Kierkegaard’s Either-Or
  The great Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard never married, but he anguished for years over the existential personal puzzle of love and marriage. He transformed the question into a revolutionary book, Either-Or, published anonymously as Enten-Eller in 1943. This debut work immediately captivated readers, and would turn out to be not only his breakthrough work as …
• Philosophy Weekend: Disturbances in the Field
  I’m still taking a break from the lengthy weekend posts. What I’ve got for you today is three enigmatic quotes. ”An ant can look up at you, too, and even threaten you with its arms. Of course, my dog does not know I am human, he sees me as dog, though I do not leap …
• Ship of Fools, the Enduring Metaphor
  I stumbled upon our society’s most fascinating enduring metaphor by chance. Clicking around on iTunes, I noticed that I owned six different songs called “Ship of Fools”. But these weren’t six different versions of one song. “Ship of Fools” was not a classic cover song, like “Dancing in the Streets” or “Hallelujah”. Rather, six different …
• Sixteen Songs About a Ship of Fools
  A few days ago I began exploring how writers from Plato to Sebastian Brant to Katherine Anne Porter have written about a “Ship of Fools”. This was inspired by my discovery that sixteen different songs with that exact title have been written and performed by major rock, punk, folk and pop artists between 1969 and …
• Glimpses
  It’s a new year and a new universe (because, let’s face it, the universe is always changing, and always new) … and I’m now writing with a new name. So I thought I’d reach for something familiar and easy and tell you briefly about what I’ve been reading and enjoying lately. Here are three things …
• Beverly, Clearly
  For a long time I thought her name was Beverly Clearly. That’s because she wrote so clearly. For real: as a kid I would look at the covers of these wonderfully readable books, and “Beverly Clearly” was the author name I saw. It’s rare that I have a chance to celebrate a favorite author who …
• Midsummer in Winter
  In the moving documentary Midsummer in Newtown, a production of a Shakespeare comedy starring local kids brings renewal to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.