By: Patrick Read the previous part of the interview here. Interviewer: Are there specific things that are fundamentally necessary for a meaningful life? Some may suggest that experiencing love, or living for a certain minimum amount of time, or having a social life, are bedrock essentials for achieving meaningfulness. Do you think this is…
Category: Musings
Holly
By: everylittlething How easy it is to forget the raw hands and wet socks of a snowball fight – to neglect to remind oneself that lying down with sunburnt shoulders is, to say the least, uncomfortable – and how the joy of collecting holly to decorate the house for Christmas is tempered by punctured palms,…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #5)
By: Patrick Read the previous part of the interview here. Interviewer: Albert Camus made a famous reading of the Greek myth of Sisyphus in which he characterized human life as fundamentally absurd. The image of a man forced by the gods to push, forever, the same boulder back to the top of the same…
Dear O2 Academy (Sadly, A Letter of Complaint)
By: Lydia Crow Dear O2 Academy, Firstly, I would like to congratulate you on the well-organised and fabulous evening which was the Ben Folds Five gig last night. The organisation at the door was smooth, the venue amazing and the music outstanding. Sadly, however, I must confess there was something which jarred slightly about…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #4)
By: Patrick Read the previous part of the interview here. Interviewer: This seems to connect with something you touched on earlier, about definition. To define is to make a thing distinct, clear – definite. In boredom, the overwhelming feeling is, as you say, of anxiety, uncertainty. What one lacks is a definiteness about one’s…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #3)
By: Patrick Read the previous part of the interview here. Interviewer: In your recent paper ‘Boredom and Consciousness’ you suggest that boredom may be as much a solution to the problem of meaninglessness as a cause or symptom. By inhabiting my boredom, I am forced to ask what I really want. Do you think…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #2)
By: Patrick Read the first part of the interview here. Interviewer: That seems like an important distinction, between ‘the meaning’ and the ‘meaningfulness’ of a thing. Yet, why is meaningfulness necessarily important at all? I can imagine a life in which pleasure, or satisfaction, or kindness – a whole array of dispositions – could…
On Meaning: An Interview (Part #1)
By: Patrick Interviewer: In daily life we refer to different kinds of meanings: we talk about the meaning of a person’s actions, the meaning of a word, the meaning of life. What sort of meaning that you have in mind as a philosopher? Are these sorts of ‘meanings’ all the same? Patrick: The kind…
The Woman at the Foot of the Bed
By: Vague It was a dark and stormy night. Actually, this is a lie. It was a clear, windy, and typically Northern-Scottish-Autumn night, with the moon shining through the sloped window in my attic bedroom. I had no blind or curtain, not a problem in winter, but at this latitude summers are light, all…
Viola
By: everylittlething Earlier this month I was delighted to discover that one of my young friends has chosen Violet as the second Christian / given name of her daughter. “Vaahlut” as it was spoken locally when I was growing up is such a pretty name when pronounced clearly – “Vi-o-let”. Even prettier is “Vi-(ee)-o-letta”, as…