Reads tagged with “philosophy”
From Euclid to Equality: Mathematician Lillian Lieber on How the Greatest Creative Revolution in Mathematics Illuminates the Core Ideals of Social Justice and Democracy
An imaginative extension of Euclid’s parallel postulate into life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Germaine de Staël’s Guide to Haters: The First Modern Woman on Meritocracy, the Psychology of Why the Masses Rejoice in Tearing Down Successful Individuals, and the Only True Measure of Genius
“The life of man, so short in itself, is still of longer duration than the judgment and the affections of his contemporaries.”
D.H. Lawrence on the Antidote to the Malady of Materialism
“Owners and owned, they are like the two sides of a ghastly disease. One feels a sort of madness come over one, as if the world had become hell. But it is only superimposed: it is only a temporary disease. It can be cleaned away.”
Inner Sanity Amid World Chaos: The Young Alan Watts on What Makes the Human Struggle Bearable, in a Touching Letter to His Parents
From the abyss of WWII, an elevating reminder that we each contain a universe within that contributes to the universe without.
On the Tranquility of Mind: Seneca on Resilience, the Trap of Power and Prestige, and How to Calibrate Our Ambitions for Maximum Contentment
“That man lives badly who does not know how to die well.”
The World’s Most Lyrical Footnote: Physicist Richard Feynman on the Life-Expanding Common Ground Between the Scientific and the Poetic Worldviews
“What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”
A Winter Walk with Thoreau: The Transcendentalist Way of Finding Inner Warmth in the Cold Season
“Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”
A Gentle Corrective for the Epidemic of Identity Politics Turning Us on Each Other and on Ourselves
“So many people are frightened by the wonder of their own presence. They are dying to tie themselves into a system, a role, or to an image, or to a predetermined identity that other people have actually settled on for them.”
Walt Whitman, Shortly After His Paralytic Stroke, on What Makes Life Worth Living
“Tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the skies.”
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