Month: April 2020

According to Michel de Montaigne (Essays I: xix) Cicero was right to say that to study philosophy is to learn to die.  He suggests this might be true in two different ways.  First, the act of studying involves us distancing our thinking minds from our unthinking bodies, which is in some ways a precursor to the experience of death.  Second, wise reflection about death teaches us not to fear it, better preparing us to face the end of life. Both are interesting ideas, although not fully developed in the chapter.  This is not one of Montaigne’s better essays, for he quickly becomes distracted from recounting his own acute observations in favour of the citation of endless classical sources.  In this instance, the wisdom of the modern is squandered owing to unmerited respect for the wisdom of the ancients.

Continue reading “My Philosophy: On staying busy being born”

There was an entertaining article in the New York Times on Monday about a recent Russian submarine disaster.  17 sailors lost their lives but no one, except of course the crew and the Russian chain of command, really knows why or how.  The submarine was designed to dive much deeper than any other manned navy submersible ever built, and had skids designed to allow it to creep along the muddy bottoms of the world’s seafloors where it would… do the kinds of nefarious stuff one might do on the bottom of the world’s seafloors.  Experts believe it most likely was designed to search for, and in times of war or tension, cut the cables on the seabed which link continents and countries to one another, or which link the deep sea listening devices across the North Atlantic with NATO designed to listen for other kinds of submarines, or, even in peacetime, simply test the West and its willingness to develop countermeasures.

Continue reading “Perceptions of loss”

Dear Fellows of the ‘Essence of Water’,

I hope that you are all well, staying safe and making the Herculean effort — as I am — not to touch your face.  In this time of social distancing, as governments everywhere are taking extraordinary measures to ‘flatten the curve’, I know that we are all affected by this new virus.  Maybe your daily routine has changed.  Maybe your level of general anxiety has peaked.  I know, mine has.  Yet, I cannot help but be glad that we — humanity — are suddenly forced to realize the depth of our interdependencies.  

Continue reading “These Strange Days”

Of course Proust has a more refined set of memories, and indeed a more refined sensory palette, than I have.  He tasted and the world came into being.  I can only breathe.  But still, scents matter.

Continue reading “Madeleines in the oven”

One of my favourite pieces of orchestral music is Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.  In my early teens, back in the days of vinyl long-playing records, which rotated on the turntable 33 times per minute, I was given a recording which I played regularly.  The music is accessible and exciting, an ideal introduction to the classical tradition.   The work had been written for piano in the 1870s, but fifty years later Maurice Ravel had produced an orchestral adaptation of the score, which was the music I knew.   In 1986, I watched on television as Barry Douglas played the original version in Moscow, on his way to winning the Tchaikovsky Piano Prize.  I still listen to his recording, released the following year.

Continue reading “My Philosophy: On other possibilities”