Caring

  LISTEN. John Dewey got a mention in the Times. In an opinion piece, by an academic, but still it's a rare and welcome echo of a time in this country when philosophers' views were valued and sought after and considered by the broad educated public. Dewey's (and Molly Worthen's) rejection of academic irrelevance is as timely as ever.

I'm also happy this morning that one of my favorite novelists has a new book out. Richard Powers has just published Bewilderment. Hope for a Grieving Kid and Planet May Lurk in the Human Brain, headlines the Times review.  That sounds right. Where else are we going to find it? The brain is wider than the sky.

Also, the Cards won again. Nine straight. Roger Angell was surely right, “It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team," but forming and honing the habit of caring is anything but foolish. It teaches me to care in class and in life about bigger things. It's an affiliation that pays its way. 

We conclude our very short intro to Epicureanism today. I wanted us to read it early in the semester because it's a view I find both enticing and challenging, and thus a good benchmark against which to measure subsequent Happiness philosophies... (continues)