Up@dawn 2.0 (blogger)

Delight Springs

Friday, December 2, 2022

American Philosophy: A love Story. Amy Menendez #7

 

This is actually an article in the New York Times  about A book called “ American Philosophy A love story by John Kaag. It introduces Love, freedom and how wisdom plays a part in fixing someone’s life.

   
  
          
He focuses on American Philosophers like Emerson, Thoreau, James Peirce, Royce, and hocking. He sees these thinkers as celebrating the value of love and freedom, differing to scientific determinism and self-mind, in giving life a meaning. Kaag makes a note about self reliance and self cultivation from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in which he states, “My life would become an experiment in Ralph’s self-cultivation, a project that had always struck me as more manageable and realistic than trying to embody Emerson’s  "self-reliance".In this case self reliance being developed  in the mind and body with endless modifications.

 

Going on with Thoreau again, Kaag  talked about husbanity which is tending to ones owns garden. This is also, said by Kaag to be shared and interchangeable cultivation with others. This saying that husbanity will also meaning being a good husband and being worthy of another person’s love. 
He believed solipsism could be fixed by love. He found inspiration from Charles Sanders Peirce’s and how he saw love, in opposition to self-interest, as the ability to give up one’s self for the sake of another.

What Kaag learns ultimately is that one must hold onto the freedom to learn and the freedom to love.

 




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