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: Patrick
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…
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…
Sunday, Around Midday (2)
By: Patrick Walking back to my car, And suddenly the present, uninvited, emerges. It’s a cloudless, sunny day. I take in the birds, the cars, The voices of a couple of neighbours On the other side of the road. Autumnal colours And all that stuff That poets manage to capture so elegantly: A tree…
Saturday Morning (1)
By: Patrick Today My world drags Like a bad movie. I stare at the murky surface of a cup of green tea For minutes on end, Without a thought in my mind. Yesterdays confuse and amuse. Today Is about being slow, Above all about being slow. Silence, time, solitude, All seem eternal, Like the…
Buber
By: Patrick I just finished an old biography of the theologican and philosopher Martin Buber (Encounter with Martin Buber by Aubrey Hodes). One of my friends raves about Buber, so I thought I would give this book a go. Buber really was an extraordinary man concerned with love, relationships, dialogue, peace, politics, education and…
A Little Thought
By: Patrick A couple of years ago in a section of this website entitled ’21’, I wrote a list of 21 things that I would like to achieve in life. I would now only put 8 of them on the list were I to re-write it (which is not to say I have actively turned…