CoPhi: 2026

Friday, September 11, 2026

“Is life worth living?”

That’s the big question raised at the start of John Kaag’s Sick Souls, Healthy Minds.

Spoiler alert: yes, says Albert Camus. Maybe, says William James.

It definitely is and has been, say I. And I’m looking forward to retirement too.

English philosopher Anthony Grayling, arguing with Friedrich Nietzsche, asks:

Can there be optimism in a tragic universe? Or is escape – into music, as Schopenhauer said, or Dionysian dance, as Nietzsche said, or withdrawal, as Sceptics and sanyasis say, or drugs in all their forms, as so many say, or even suicide – the only option? Suffering is a condition of existence, and annihilation is its end: how else is one to face life, naked to its horror as thus viewed? Why, indeed, live?

… (continues)

https://acgrayling.substack.com/p/arguing-with-nietzsche?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Questions SEP 15

Midterm report presentations begin today

LHP

1. What did Machiavelli say a leader needs to have? Do you agree? Is it important to you for our leaders to be reliably honest, with exceptions only for instances of national security and the nation's best interests?

2. Machiavelli's philosophy is described as being "rooted" in what? Does your own experience confirm his appraisal of human nature and what's "realistic"?

3. The idea that leaders should rule by fear is based on what view of human nature? Do you respond more positively to politicians who appeal to pessimism and fear, or to those who appeal to hope?

4. Life outside society would be what, according to Hobbes? Do you think your neighbors would threaten your survival if they could get away with it?

5. What fear influenced Hobbes' writings? Do any particular fears influence your political opinions?

6. Hobbes did not believe in the existence of what? Do you? Why or why not?

John Kaag SSHM Prologue

1. Young William James's problem, as he felt "pulled in too many directions" and worried that we might be nothing but cogs in a machine, was ____.

2. What is distinctive about "our age" that makes James particularly relevant?

3. What happened on Feb. 6, 2014 that prompted Kaag to write this book?

(See "Is Life Worth Living...)

4. "Too much questioning and too little active responsibility lead" to what?

5. Human history is "one long commentary on" what?

6. A "wider world... unseen by us" may exist, just as our world does for ___.

7. The "deepest thing in our nature," which deals with possibilities rather than finished facts, is a "dumb region of the heart" called (in German) ___.

HWT
1. How do eastern and western philosophies differ in their approach to things, and what is ma? Which do you find more appealing?

2. An interest in what is much more developed in eastern thought? Do you share it?

3. What is dukkha?

4. What is Sakura?

5. What takes the place of religion in China? Do you know people here who have found religion-substitutes?

6. Chinese thought does not distinguish between natural and ____, focusing on what?

7. What is the famous story of Zhuangzi? What's your reaction to it?

8. The Japanese fascination with robots reflects what traditional view? Are you similarly fascinated?

FL

1. What was Arthur C. Clarke's 3d law regarding technology, and what's its converse?

2. What was the original "alternative medicine" and what is its "upside"?

3. What national craze of the 1830s relied on a "totally bogus extrapolation"?

4. Who was Mary Baker Eddy and what are her followers misleadingly called?

5. Who was Dr. William A. Rockefeller?

6. What did Mark Twain say about history?

7. How was the California Gold Rush an "inflection point" in how Americans thought about reality?

8. What did de Tocqueville say was "the chief or secondary motive in everything Americans do"?

Feb 8

Niccolo Machiavelli (in From Humanism to Hobbes by Quentin Skinner)

Calvin sounds like (Thomas) Hobbes describing the state of nature. Hobbes (the tiger) behaves like Machiavelli's Prince. (And check out Hobbes, Machiavelli & others in Existential Comics...)

Thomas Hobbes (in "The Dream of Enlightenment" by Anthony Gottlieb)

Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction | Quentin Skinner | Talks at Google

https://youtu.be/CKGuzJ6GwHM

As we commence reading John Kaag's Sick Souls, Healthy Minds (SSHM), here's a new venture he's recently launched:

Rebind: a new interactive way to read, a novel application of AI to learning. "Turn books into conversations"-

For the past year, two philosophy professors have been calling around to prominent authors and public intellectuals with an unusual, perhaps heretical, proposal. They have been asking these thinkers if, for a handsome fee, they wouldn’t mind turning themselves into A.I. chatbots.

John Kaag, one of the academics, is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He is known for writing books, such as “Hiking With Nietzsche” and “American Philosophy: A Love Story,” that blend philosophy and memoir... (nyt, continues)

==
Discussion questions:

Have you ever felt "pulled in too many directions"? 2 How did you respond?
Do you approach philosophy as a "detached intellectual exercise," an "existential life preserver," or something else?
Where would you place yourself on the spectrum between "sick soul" and "healthy-minded"? Does that change, over time?
Can belief that life is worth living become self-fulfilling?
Do you know any "sick souls"? 3 Or "healthy minds"? 4 Are they the same person?
Do you agree that believing life to be worth living "will help create the fact"? 5
Do you like WJ's answer to the question "Is life worth living?" 9
Is suicide always "the wrong way to exit life"? 10
Have you ever visited the Harvard campus? What were your impressions?
Is "maybe" a good answer to the eponymous question of James's essay below?
Do you like Whitman's poetic expression of "the joy of living"?
Have you ever been as happy as Rousseau at Annecy?
Do you agree that nature cannot embody the ultimate "divine" spirit of the universe? What if you remove (or re-define) "divine"? 489
Do you agree that "sufferings and hardships do not, as a rule, abate the love of life..."? 491
Does the "purely naturalistic basis" suffice to make life worth living? 494
Does life feel like a "real fight" to you? 502

==
*IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? (see the Library of America's terrific William James : Writings 1878-1899... vol.2 is William James : Writings 1902-1910).

When Mr. Mallock's book with this title appeared some fifteen years ago, the jocose answer that "it depends on the liver" had great currency in the newspapers. The answer which I propose to give to-night cannot be jocose. In the words of one of Shakespeare's prologues,—
"I come no more to make you laugh; things now,

That bear a weighty and a serious brow,

Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,"—

must be my theme. In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly; and I know not what such an association as yours intends, nor what you ask of those whom you invite to address you, unless it be to lead you from the surface-glamour of existence, and for an hour at least to make you heedless to the buzzing and jigging and vibration of small interests and excitements that form the tissue of our ordinary consciousness. Without further explanation or apology, then, I ask you to join me in turning an attention, commonly too unwilling, to the profounder bass-note of life. Let us search the lonely depths for an hour together, and see what answers in the last folds and recesses of things our question may find... (continues)

FL 39-40

1. Who's the (former-fringe) freak and Sandy Hook "truther" who nonetheless draws the line at shape-shifting reptilian humanoids?

2. Where did the reptilian conspiracy idea begin?

3. What started to happen with "unhinged" people in the 90s?

4. What fictional work and author influenced libertarian/conservative politicians like Paul Ryan?

5. What has the GOP become, besides a distinctly Christian political party?

6. What two states "require officeholders to believe in Heaven and Hell"?

7. What did H.L. Mencken say about "civilized Tennesseans"?

Why does anyone give Alex Jones any credibility at all?
Why do people like Ayn Rand's message that selfishness is a virtue?
Was Mencken right about the Scopes Trial? 375

Kieran Setiya's Five Questions podcast... Five questions for Setiya in TPM...

Map of William James's Cambridge...

Do you feel more resentful or grateful to have been "thrown" into the world? 11
Do you agree with Jennifer Michael Hecht? “None of us can truly know what we mean to other people, and none of us can know what our future self will experience. History and philosophy ask us to remember these mysteries, to look around at friends, family, humanity, at the surprises life brings — the endless possibilities that living offers — and to persevere. There is love and insight to live for, bright moments to cherish, and even the possibility of happiness, and the chance of helping someone else through his or her own troubles. Know that people, through history and today, understand how much courage it takes to stay. Bear witness to the night side of being human and the bravery it entails, and wait for the sun. If we meditate on the record of human wisdom we may find there reason enough to persist and find our way back to happiness. The first step is to consider the arguments and evidence and choose to stay. After that, anything may happen. First, choose to stay.” Stay: A History of Suicide and the Arguments Against It by Jennifer Michael Hecht

Does Calvinism "set out an impossible task"? 13
Do you agree with WJ's father about "the point of life"?
Can there be a constructive, non-violent "moral equivalent of war"? 21
Do you agree with James about "our national disease"? 22
Would it be bad if all your wishes "were fulfilled as soon as they arose"? 23
Was "Mark" right about the three parts of a person? 26
If there's no "soul" is determinism true? 28
If humans are animals, do we have no soul? 31
Were Nietzsche and Buber right about suicide? 34-5
Are you one of the lucky "once-born"? Does that make you "blind and shallow"? 40
If we possess free will, would it be wrong to insist on a coercive demonstration that we do? DD 566
Do you believe you regularly experience opportunities to really choose between alternative futures? Could you decide, for instance, to take an alternate route home from school today? 573
Are some regrets appropriate and unavoidable? 577
Does determinism define our universe as one in which it is impossible to close the gap between how things are and how they ought to be? 578
Which is better, pessimism or subjectivism? 584f.
Does life lose zest and excitement, if things were foredoomed and settled long ago? 594

LISTEN (11.4.21). ~~The World Series may be over, but~~ "radical evil gets its innings" still (wrote William James in the "Sick Soul" chapter of Varieties of Religious Experience). That's what's really at stake in the free will-determinism debate: whether we'll get ours, and have a shot at amelioration.

William's philosophy was, among other things, the working-out of a strategy to prolong the game and not surrender to fated failure. Determinism as he understood it is the functional equivalent of a rainout that cancels the game and gives the win to the evil visitors. The home team doesn't even get another chance to score and maybe walk off with winged victory.

And, William's philosophy was a quest for real success in living, not the squalid, fake, morally-flabby cash-value form he diagnosed as our national disease in a 1906 letter to H.G.Wells ("the moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success is our national disease")... (continues)

Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life

by John Kaag (author of American Philosophy: A Love Story and Hiking with Nietzsche)

In 1895, William James, the father of American philosophy, delivered a lecture entitled "Is Life Worth Living?" It was no theoretical question for James, who had contemplated suicide during an existential crisis as a young man a quarter century earlier. Indeed, as John Kaag writes, "James's entire philosophy, from beginning to end, was geared to save a life, his life"--and that's why it just might be able to save yours, too. Sick Souls, Healthy Minds is a compelling introduction to James's life and thought that shows why the founder of pragmatism and empirical psychology--and an inspiration for Alcoholics Anonymous--can still speak so directly and profoundly to anyone struggling to make a life worth living.

Kaag tells how James's experiences as one of what he called the "sick-souled," those who think that life might be meaningless, drove him to articulate an ideal of "healthy-mindedness"--an attitude toward life that is open, active, and hopeful, but also realistic about its risks. In fact, all of James's pragmatism, resting on the idea that truth should be judged by its practical consequences for our lives, is a response to, and possible antidote for, crises of meaning that threaten to undo many of us at one time or another. Along the way, Kaag also movingly describes how his own life has been endlessly enriched by James.

Eloquent, inspiring, and filled with insight, Sick Souls, Healthy Minds may be the smartest and most important self-help book you'll ever read. g'r

THE DILEMMA OF DETERMINISM
By William James

A common opinion prevails that the juice has ages ago been pressed out of the free-will controversy, and that no new champion can do more than warm up stale arguments which everyone has heard. This is a radical mistake. I know of no subject less worn out, or in which inventive genius has a better chance of breaking open new ground--not, perhaps, of forcing a conclusion or of coercing assent, but of deepening our sense of what the issue between the two parties really is, of what the ideas of fate and of free will imply. At our very side almost, in the past few years, we have seen falling in rapid succession from the press works that present the alternative in entirely novel lights. Not to speak of the English disciples of Hegel, such as Green and Bradley; not to speak of Hinton and Hodgson, nor of Hazard here --we see in the writings of Renouvier, Fouillée, and Delbœuf how completely changed and refreshed is the form of all the old disputes. I cannot pretend to vie in originality with any of the masters I have named, and my ambition limits itself to just one little point. If I can make two of the necessarily implied corollaries of determinism clearer to you than they have been made before, I shall have made it possible for you to decide for or against that doctrine with a better understanding of what you are about. And if you prefer not to decide at all, but to remain doubters, you will at least see more plainly what the subject of your hesitation is. I thus disclaim openly on the threshold all pretension to prove to you that the freedom of the will is true. The most I hope is to induce some of you to follow my own example in assuming it true, and acting as if it were true. If it be true, it seems to me that this is involved in the strict logic of the case. Its truth ought not to be forced willy-nilly down our indifferent throats. It ought to be freely espoused by men who can equally well turn their backs upon it. In other words, our first act of freedom, if we are free, ought in all inward propriety to be to affirm that we are free. This should exclude, it seems to me, from the freewill side of the question all hope of a coercive demonstrations,-- a demonstration which I, for one, am perfectly contented to go without.

With thus much understood at the outset, we can advance. But not without one more point understood as well. The arguments I am about to urge all proceed on two suppositions: first, when we make theories about the world and discuss them with one another, we do so in order to attain a conception of things which shall give us subjective satisfaction; and, second, if there be two conceptions, and the one seems to us, on the whole, more rational than the other, we are entitled to suppose that the more rational one is the truer of the two. I hope that you are all willing to make these suppositions with me; for I am afraid that if there be any of you here who are not, they will find little edification in the rest of what I have to say. I cannot stop to argue the point; but I myself believe that all the magnificent achievements of mathematical and physical science--our doctrines of evolution, of uniformity of law, and the rest--proceed from our indomitable desire to cast the world into a more rational shape in our minds than the shape into which it is thrown there by the crude order of our experience. The world has shown itself, to a great extent, plastic to this demand of ours for rationality. How much farther it will show itself plastic no one can say. Our only means of finding out is to try; and I, for one, feel as free to try conceptions of moral as of mechanical or of logical rationality. If a certain formula for expressing the nature of the world violates my moral demand, I shall feel as free to throw it overboard, or at least to doubt it, as if it disappointed my demand for uniformity of sequence, for example; the one demand being, so far as I can see, quite as subjective and emotional as the other is. The principle of causality, for example--what is it but a postulate, an empty name covering simply a demand that the sequence of events shall some day manifest a deeper kind of belonging of one thing with another than the mere arbitrary juxtaposition which now phenomenally appears? It is as much an altar to an unknown god as the one that Saint Paul found at Athens. All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods. Uniformity is as much so as is free will. If this be admitted, we can debate on even terms. But if anyone pretends that while freedom and variety are, in the first instance, subjective demands, necessity and uniformity are something altogether different, I do not see how we can debate at all...

...determinism leads us to call our judgments of regret wrong, because they are pessimistic in implying that what is impossible yet ought to be. But how then about the judgments of regret themselves? If they are wrong, other judgments, judgments of approval presumably, ought to be in their place. But as they are necessitated, nothing else can be in their place; and the universe is just what it was before,--namely, a place in which what ought to be appears impossible. We have got one foot out of the pessimistic bog, but the other one sinks all the deeper. We have rescued our actions from the bonds of evil, but our judgments are now held fast. When murders and treacheries cease to be sins, regrets are theoretic absurdities and errors. The theoretic and the active life thus play a kind of see-saw with each other on the ground of evil. The rise of either sends the other down. Murder and treachery cannot be good without regret being bad: regret cannot be good without treachery and murder being bad. Both, however, are supposed to have been foredoomed; so something must be fatally unreasonable, absurd, and wrong in the world. It must be a place of which either sin or error forms a necessary part. From this dilemma there seems at first sight no escape. Are we then so soon to fall back into the pessimism from which we thought we had emerged? And is there no possible way by which we may, with good intellectual consciences, call the cruelties and treacheries, the reluctances and the regrets, all good together?

...

The dilemma of this determinism is one whose left horn is pessimism and whose right horn is subjectivism. In other words, if determinism is to escape pessimism, it must leave off looking at the goods and ills of life in a simple objective way, and regard them as materials, indifferent in themselves, for the production of consciousness, scientific and ethical, in us... (continues)

Thursday, September 10, 2026

The Digital Cave

Coming Oct 2-

#H1 THURSDAY: MEET IN LIBRARY Room 264a

BREAKING NEWS: Section #H1 will meet at 9:40 in WALKER LIBRARY Room 264a ~~272~~, with librarian Rachel Kirk. Ask any questions you may have about the library, its resources, etc.

Sections #H2 & #H3 will meet in the library on Sep 24. (Go ahead and sign up for midterm report presentations on that date, if you wish, but the actual date of presentation will probably be later.)

Midterm report presentations

Starting Sep 10 you can indicate your preference (in the comments' space of this post) for the topic and date of your report presentation. It can be on any relevant topic of your choice that you can relate to the reading assignments (required or recommended) on the corresponding date. Presentations will begin on the 15th. We'll do two or three presentations per class, hoping to finish before Fall Break. I'll give you a free base or two on the scorecard if you volunteer to present on the 15th.

Take a look ahead at the coming syllabus assignments (reprinted below). Scan the assigned texts and select your topic accordingly. You do not have to cover everything, just anything you can plausibly relate to something in that day's assigned material. Also scan the lists of recommended books in the right sidebar, to see if you would like to use any of them as a basis for your report. If the library does not have the text(s) you choose, go to the circulation desk and request via interlibrary loan.

Have fun with the project. Be creative. Consider using the podcast/video resources in the library's MakerSpace to prepare your presentation. Plan to present for about 10 minutes, with the goal of teaching us something we wouldn't have learned merely reading the assignment. Then lead a brief class discussion. Don't stress, you'll get all 25 available points if you fulfill these minimal criteria.

15 Kaag 1 - SSHM... Midterm report presentations begin. Machiavelli, Hobbes-LHP 9-10. Rec: FL 11-12. HWT 11-13.

17 Kaag 2... Montaigne, Descartes, & Pascal-LHP 11-12. Weiner 14. Rec: FL 13-14. HWT 14-15.

22 Kaag 3... Spinoza, Locke, & Reid-LHP 13-14. Rec: FL 15-16. HWT 16-17.

24 Kaag 4... Berkeley, Leibniz, Hume, & Rousseau-LHP 15-18. Weiner 3. Rec: FL 17-18. HWT 18-19.

29 Kaag 5... Kant, Bentham, Hegel, Schopenhauer-LHP 19-23. Weiner 5. Rec: FL 19-20. HWT 20-22.

OCT

1 Kaag 6... Mill, Darwin, Kierkegaard, Marx-LHP 24-27. Rec: FL 21-22. HWT 23-24.

2 Meet the author: Applied Philosophy Lyceum Friday Oct 2, 5 pm, COE 164. John Kaag, The Digital Cave" Reading, Thinking, and Dwelling in the Age of the Algorithm. Catered reception follows. Attendance expected.

6 Exam 1.

8 Peirce & James, Nietzsche, Freud-LHP 28-30. Weiner 11. Rec: FL 23-24. HWT 25-26.

Russell, Ayer, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus-LHP 31-33. Weiner 13. Rec: FL 25-26. HWT 27-28.

Fall Break

Having fun isn't hard...

if you've got a library card (or student ID). Remember, on Thursday (10th) we meet in the library: Room 264a, top of the stairs to the left (look for the sign).

"Who is Dewey?" Not John, not Tom...

Melvil

Melville Louis Kossuth "Melvil" Dewey (December 10, 1851 – December 26, 1931) was

an influential American librarian and educator, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System

The Great Library of Alexandria

The Modest Library of Brownlee Dr

Read Banned Books...
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. -Cicero

MTSU Walker Library - 2nd Floor B945.J24 O55 2001

Book-banning etc.-
I asked ChatGPT about this. Haven't yet confirmed the total accuracy of its response, but we'll be in the right place to do that Thursday. https://chatgpt.com/share/679b507b-4368-8007-96e9-4b5ea5bfca33

And remember:

There are several ways to access The New York Times:

MTSU provides a free online subscription to The New York Times to faculty, staff and students. See the info here for how to subscribe: How do I subscribe to the New York Times?
MTSU students, faculty and staff can also access the New York Times through several library databases.
- For a complete list, use Journals A-Z and type new york times in the Title begins with search box.
The New York Times is is also available on Microfilm on the 2nd floor of the Library.

Related info:

If you need further assistance, please Ask Us!

https://libanswers.mtsu.edu/faq/90420

Wednesday, September 9, 2026

A skeptic’s responsibility

People tend to think of themselves as critical thinkers. Yet, most of these people will defend their own opinions vehemently. We could say that these people are skeptical of others’ opinions but would we call them skeptics?

No. Skepticism as a philosophy encompasses all opinions. A skeptic should therefore be as (or even more) skeptical towards his own opinions than towards those of others. A skeptic, if he is to call himself one, is well advised to remind himself of the responsibility he has. This responsibility concerns primarily himself. He is responsible to assess an issue based on his own knowledge about the matter and about himself…

Skye Cleary

https://jonas1510.substack.com/p/a-short-case-for-skepticism?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Tuesday, September 8, 2026

Questions Sep 10

Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas-LHP 6-8. FL 9-10, HWT 9-10

LHP

1. How did Augustine "solve" the problem of evil in his younger days, and then after his conversion to Christianity? Why wasn't it such a problem for him originally?

2. What does Boethius not mention about himself in The Consolation of Philosophy?

3. Boethius' "recollection of ideas" can be traced back to what philosopher?

4. What uniquely self-validating idea did Anselm say we have?

5. Gaunilo criticized Anselm's reasoning using what example?

6. What was Aquinas' 2nd Way?

1. How did Enlightenment values advance in America in the 19th century?

2. What fantasy about 1776 has been accepted as fact by Americans across the religious spectrum (and Ronald Reagan) ever since?

3. How was religion in America, unlike Europe, non-binary?

4. How did Thomas Jefferson characterize America's religious differences in the north and the south?

5. What happened in Cane Ridge, KY in 1801, and how did a Vanderbilt historian describe it?

6. Who was Charles Finney, and what did he understand about American Christianity?

7. What did de Tocqueville say was different about religion in America, compared to Europe?

8. Who was William Miller and what beliefs did he help revive?

9. Who was Joseph Smith and what is the most interesting thing about him?

HWT

1. What fundamental and non-western sense of time has underpinned much of human history?

2. What is "dreamtime" and how is it alien to the modern west?

3. The universalism of western universities implies that what is unimportant?

4. What does John Gray say about the idea of progress?

5. Karma originally concerned what, and lacked what connotations now commonly associated with it?

6. What western ideas have displaced karma, for many young Indians?

Discussion Questions

[Add your own DQs]
Would the existence of evil equivalent to good, without guarantees of tthe inevitable triiumph of the latter, solve the problem of suffering?
Why do you think Boethius didn't write "The Consolation of Christianity"?
Do you think you have a clear idea of what it would mean for there to be an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good supernatural being?
Do you think knowledge is really a form of remembering or recollection? Have we just forgotten what we knew?
Is there a difference between an uncaused cause (or unmoved mover) and a god?
Which is the more plausible explanation of the extent of gratuitous suffering in the world, that God exists but is not more powerful than Satan, or that neither God nor Satan exists? Why?
Are supernatural stories of faith, redemption, and salvation more comforting to you than the power of reason and evidence? Why or why not?
What do you think of the Manichean idea that an "evil God created the earth and emtombed our souls in the prisons of our bodies"? (Dream of Reason 392)
Do you agree with Augustine about "the main message of Christianity...that man needs a great deal of help"? (DR 395). If so, must "help" take the form of supernatural salvation? If not, what do you think the message is? What kind of help do we need?
What do you think of Boethius' proposed solution to the puzzle of free will, that from a divine point of view there's no difference between past, present, and future? 402
Did Russell "demolish" Anselm's ontological argument? (See below)
COMMENT: “The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.” Carl Sagan
COMMENT: “Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.” Carl Sagan
If you were falsely imprisoned, tortured, and scheduled for execution, would you be able to achieve "consolation"? How?
Can the definition of a word prove anything about the world?
Is theoretical simplicity always better, even if the universe is complex?
Does the possibility of other worlds somehow diminish humanity?
How does the definition of God as omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good make it harder to account for evil and suffering in the world? Would it be better to believe in a lesser god, or no god at all?
Can you explain the concept of Original Sin? Do you think you understand it?
Is it better to embrace (or renounce) religious faith early in life, or to "sow your wild oats" and enjoy a wide experience of the world before committing to any particular tradition or belief? Were you encouraged by adults, in childhood, to make a public profession of faith? If so, did you understand what that meant or entailed?
Does the concept of a never-ending struggle between good and evil appeal to you? Does it make sense, in the light of whatever else you believe? Would there be anything "wrong" with a world in which good was already triumphant, happiness for all already secured, kindness and compassion unrivaled by hatred and cruelty?
Do you find the concept of Original Sin compelling, difficult, unfair, or dubious? In general, do we "inherit the sins of our fathers (and mothers)"? If yes, give examples and explain.
What kinds of present-day McCarthyism can you see? Is socialism the new communism? How are alternate political philosophies discouraged in America, and where would you place yourself on the spectrum?
Andersen notes that since WWII "mainline" Christian denominations were peaking (and, as evidence shows, are now declining). What do you think about this when you consider the visible political power of other evangelical denominations? Are you a part of a mainline traditon? If so, how would you explain this shift?

Feb 3

If our brains seem to be a step ahead of our minds, does that mean we do not possess free will?

Are all our actions inevitable? (Don't confuse that with ineffable.)

Is belief in free will better for some of us, while belief in determinism is better advised for others?

"Liberty consists in doing what one desires." — John Stuart Mill (But what if you always desire to do what nature has determined that you'll do? Is liberty the same as free will, if you couldn't have done otherwise... whether or not you desired to? What if you were a domino in one of those elaborately-prepared configurations, and you desired nothing more of life than to topple elegantly when your time came? Should we call you free?

I once stole a pear in Vegas, just to watch it die.

The first sin that Augustine remembers doing was as a child stealing pears, just to steal them. That is, it was the crime itself that made him want to do it, he didn't even want the pears, he just wanted to sin. It was his "original sin" in a sense, and he always felt most guilty about it.

Aquinas...

David Lewis doesn't offer much consolation:

I share these provocative cartoons not in hostility to religion, but because they reflect genuine puzzlements some of us have regarding the seeming incongruity of saying that God is ineffable AND being confident that one knows God's precise attitudes towards quite specific human concerns... and regarding the paradox of human free will in a universe allegedly governed by omniscience. I hope we'll all choose not to take offense, but to think about and discuss the experiences of ineffability, faith, agency, the unseen objects of belief, etc.

"Boethius (AD c.475–524) was a Christian philosopher and theologian from an aristocratic Roman family who worked as principal minister to Theodoric the Ostrogoth, the ruler of Italy from 493 to 526. Boethius was depressed by the rapid degeneration of intellectual life and by the fact that few people in the West could read the Greek classics any more. He set out to translate all of Plato’s and Aristotle’s works into Latin so that they would not be lost to future generations.

Unfortunately he was executed for treason before this ambitious project could get very far. Its only surviving fruits are Latin versions of Aristotle’s logical writings, which may help to explain why early medieval philosophers were so obsessed with old logic. They had little else to study. It is intriguing to speculate how much better informed the Latin world might have been if only the labours of Boethius had not been cruelly cut short.

On the other hand, his indictment on what were probably trumped-up charges did have one happy result, though not for him. It was while he was in prison under sentence of death that Boethius wrote his impassioned The Consolation of Philosophy. Impending extinction concentrated his mind wonderfully: this masterpiece became one of the most widely read books of medieval times. King Alfred the Great, Chaucer and Queen Elizabeth I were among those who made English translations of it. It might never have been written had Boethius lived to a ripe, uneventful and scholarly old age instead of getting caught up in politics.

The Consolation takes the form of a dialogue between Boethius, who speaks in prose, and Lady Philosophy, who replies mostly in verse. Lady Philosophy answers Boethius’ despondent meditations about the miseries and injustice of life with a mixture of Stoic and Platonic wisdom. Adversity in general and evil rulers in particular are powerless to harm a good man, she says, because a good soul will remain untouched by ‘slippery Fortune’; besides, divine Providence oversees everything.

Lady Philosophy steers him away from the many false roads to happiness and tries to guide him instead towards the contemplation of all that is good—which is to say, God: Grant, Father, that our minds Thy august seat may scan, Grant us the sight of true good’s source, and grant us light That we may fix on Thee our mind’s unblinded eye. Disperse the clouds of earthly matter’s cloying weight; Shine out in all Thy glory; for Thou art rest and peace To those who worship Thee; to see Thee is our end, Who art our source and maker, lord and path and goal.

The book never explicitly mentions Christianity. But it manages to address, in a non-technical manner, many of the philosophical problems that are likely to intrigue a believer. For example, it includes a solution to the puzzle of how man can be said to have any real choice in his actions if an omniscient God always knows beforehand what he is going to do. Boethius’ answer starts from the idea that there is no difference between past, present and future from God’s point of view. For God, all of eternity is like the present. So when God foresees what I will do, my freedom is no more curtailed by this fact than it would be by somebody observing what I am doing while I am doing it. Essentially the same solution was adopted by St Thomas Aquinas and some other late-medieval theologians.

The Consolation of Philosophy set the pattern for popular philosophizing. It showed Philosophy as a soothing balm to heal life’s wounds and as a source of perennial wisdom that could illuminate religious questions. It also served to broadcast the Platonic world-picture to a civilization that knew virtually none of the writings of ‘my servant Plato’, as Lady Philosophy called him. Many of the themes and images in medieval literature that derive ultimately from Plato or Aristotle made a vivid early appearance in Boethius’ Consolation."

Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance (New Edition) by Anthony Gottlieb

SEP 15 Midterm report presentations begin.[Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas] Kaag SSHM prologue. Machiavelli, Hobbes-LHP 9-10. Rec: FL 11-12. HWT 11-13... SEP 17 Kaag 2... Montaigne, Descartes, & Pascal-LHP 11-12. Weiner 14. Rec: FL 13-14. HWT 14-15... SEP 22 Kaag 3... Spinoza, Locke, & Reid-LHP 13-14. Rec: FL 15-16. HWT 16-17... SEP 24 Sections #H2 & #H3 meet in library. Kaag 4... Berkeley, Leibniz, Hume, & Rousseau-LHP 15-18. Weiner 3. Rec: FL 17-18. HWT 18-19... HONR 117, Sections H1-9:40, H2-1 pm, H3 2:40 pm...Look for posted "Questions" PRIOR TO CLASS each day... phil.oliver@mtsu.edu... 220 HONR... 220 Honors Building, 300 James Union Building (Call or text 615-525-7865 DURING OFFICE HOURS before coming in, please.)

Our presumption

Resentment vs. Happiness "...In an inevitably plural society, one of the things a person growing up needs to acquire is skin thickness. So I don't think encouraging people to resent everything they think is a moral mistake made by everybody else is a good way to prepare yourself for a happy life... At the beginning of most of my classes, I tell students that if someone says something that upsets you, assume they didn't mean to. Let's start with that. Evidence can mount up that that's not what's going on. But that should be our presumption in a college classroom..." Kwame Anthony Appiah on Identity in an Age of Essentialism (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2025)

On 3-day reserve in the Walker Library, at the circulation desk

Be Not Afraid of Life: In the Words of William James-companion anthology to Sick Souls Healthy Minds by John Kaag - because William James can save your life, or at least ameliorate it.
Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, a 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen (FL) - because the contemporary crisis of American democracy is rooted in our history.
How the World Thinks (HWT) by Julian Baggini - because Western philosophy is not the whole story.
How to Think Like Marcus Aurelius, by Donald J. Robertson - because he was a wise stoic and emperor, as close to a Philosopher-King as we've had or are likely to get.
How to Think Like Socrates, by Donald J. Robertson - because he was, as the Monty Python song says, "a lovely little thinker..."
Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help by Kieran Setiya - because we'll all eventually be challenged by something hard.
More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity by Adam Becker - "Tech billionaires have decided that they should determine our futures for us. According to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and more, the only good future for humanity is one powered by technology: trillions of humans living in space, functionally immortal, served by superintelligent AIs. In More Everything Forever, science journalist Adam Becker investigates these wildly implausible and often profoundly immoral visions of tomorrow—and shows why, in reality, there is no good evidence that they will, or should, come to pass."
Night Vision: seeing ourselves through dark moods, by Mariana Allesandri - because all is not sunshine and light.
Question Everything: A Stone Reader, eds. Catapano and Critchley - short popular essays by contemporary philosophers published in the New York Times, because philosophy is relevant to contemporary issues.
Starry Messenger: cosmic perspectives on civilization, by Neil deGrasse Tyson - because we are cosmopolitans, citizens of the cosmos.
The Philosopher Queens: the lives and legacies of philosophy's unsung women, by Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting - because women have always philosophized too.
Three Roads Back: How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives by Robert Richardson - because we'll all eventually lose someone close.
William James by Philip Davis - "This book is about William James's life-writing, writing for the sake of existence, that puts together a mix of literature, psychology, philosophy, and biography in the search for purpose and human flourishing, in place of formal religion. It includes James' interest in his brother's novels and in Shakespearean drama, as well as Thomas Hardy's pessimistic challenge to James. Davis is a reader of literature who feels that readers of novels and poems also need the help of psychology and philosophy, to get the thinking out, to make it into a working part of a life. His book is for readers, especially readers of literature, seeking to create, like William James, a literary way of thinking outside the realm of literature."

Also recommended for report topics (but not currently on library reserve)

Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist, by David Bather Woods
How to Think Like a Woman: Four Women Philosophers Who Taught Me How to Love the Life of the Mind, by Regan Petaluna
John Lachs's Practical Philosophy, ed. by Skowronski - about my Vanderbilt mentor (& including an essay by me)
Kant: A Revolution in Thinking, by Marcus Willaschek
Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial that Riveted a Nation, by Brenda Wineapple. About the Scopes Trial in Dayton TN, 1925.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophy in the Age of Airplanes, by Anthony Gottlieb
Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth, by Jennifer Banks, Jen Jayden, et al
On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt
On Truth, by Harry Frankfurt
On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder
Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life, by Agnes Callard (our Spring '25 Lyceum guest)
Science and Human Affairs from the Viewpoint of Biology, by Winterton C. Curtis (my first landlord)
Stoic Pragmatism, by John Lachs
The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy
The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance
The Fragility of Goodness, by Martha Nussbaum
The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt
The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir
The Varieties of Experience: William James After the Linguistic Turn, by Alexis Dianda (our Spring '26 Lyceum guest). About the philosophical importance of experience, even when philosophers cannot put it into words.
Thinking in Transit: Explorations of Life in Motion, by Ed Casey and Megan Craig. About the value of philosophy that literally moves, co-authored by our Fall '25 Lyceum guest Megan Craig
Walking: A History, by Rebecca Solnit
Why Plato Matters Now, by Angie Hobbs
William James, M.D., by Emma Sutton
William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism by Robert Richardson
Writings of William James (WJ) -- James's work is in the public domain, & free on the Internet... but if you'd prefer a handsome keepers' edition in book format I recommend the Library of America's two volumes.

eTexts at the library

…Based on our search, the following eBooks are available to your students: A little history of philosophy- https://ezproxy.mtsu.edu/login?url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/j.ctt5vkvxd ... Sick souls, healthy minds : how William James can save your life-https://ezproxy.mtsu.edu/login?url=https://muse.jhu.edu/book/73048 … To see more about the library's effort to support students and faculty in offering affordable course materials, please check out our web page and newaffordable course materials search. And if you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.- Suzanne Mangrum, MLS Acquisitions Librarian James E. Walker Library

The Philosophy of Well-Being

MALA 6010 Spring 2026-The Connection Between Liberal Arts and Well-Being... Block 3 (Feb 26 & Mar 5)-Phil Oliver, The Philosophy of Well-Being: Philosophers since antiquity have concerned themselves with the pursuit of happiness and human flourishing, which (along with physical and mental health) substantially comprise "well-being" as most of us conceive it. William James said "If we were to ask the question: What is human life's chief concern? one of the answers we should receive would be: It is happiness. How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most people at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure." And he once advised an ailing friend: "Keep your health, your splendid health. It is better than all the truths under the firmament." In this block we'll discuss what philosophers like James have said about well-being as our chief concern. https://cophilosophy2.blogspot.com/2026/01/mala-6010-spring-2026.html

JPO bio

The author of "William James's Springs of Delight: The Return to Life, (VU Press, 2001) " Phil Oliver specializes in the American philosophical tradition with supporting interests in applied ethics (particularly Bioethics and Environmental Ethics), Anglo-American literature, history, humanism, naturalism, science and exploration, peripatetic ("walking & talking") philosophy, baseball, cycling, swimming, the pursuit of happiness, and the perpetual dawn of day. One of his favorite MTSU courses is The Philosophy of Happiness. He is academic advisor for minors in American Culture (American Studies), and a founding board member and current President of the William James Society (wjsociety.org). You can follow him on Bluesky (@osopher.bsky.social), Substack (philoliver.substack.com) and on his blogsite Up@dawn (jposopher.blogspot.com) but of course, as Immanuel Kant and Monty Python's Brian Cohen agreed: You don't have to follow anybody. "Sapere aude," have the courage to think for yourself. But not BY yourself. Good philosophy collaborates and converses.

Cosmic philosophy

"…Let's consider our "cosmic address." It starts small—your house, your city, your country. But zoom out: you're on Earth, orbiting a modest star, tucked into a spiral arm of the Milky Way, itself just one galaxy among billions in a universe that's still expanding. This perspective isn't meant to make us feel insignificant. Instead, it offers context and a sense of unity. Every atom in your body was forged in the core of ancient stars. Our planet—our home—is both fragile and extraordinary. It's the only place we know of, so far, where the universe has become conscious of itself..." Neil deGrasse Tyson

The View from Above

"You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the Moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch."—Edgar D. Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, quoted in "Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization" by Neil deGrasse Tyson https://a.co/by8i9Dw

Philosophy tutor & Writing Center

Fall '26- Tutoring for Intro, Elementary Logic, & Ethics! + general philosophy questions related to classes! Caleb Chapman; contact: csc5i@mtmail.mtsu.edu... Tuesdays & Thursdays | 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. | Tutor Spot in Library ... WRITING CENTER: The Margaret H. Ordoubadian University Writing Center is located in LIB 362 and online at www.mtsu.edu/writing-center. Here, students can receive valuable (and FREE!) one-to-one assistance in person or online on writing projects for any course. Please make your appointment by stopping by LIB 362, calling 615-904-8237, or visiting the UWC website. Visit early and often! https://www.mtsu.edu/writing-center/

'To learn to philosophise is to learn to die’

What is the balance between suffering and enjoyment in human existence? From the Buddha to Schopenhauer the answer is that the former far outweighs the latter. Reflection and experience together suggest that they have a point. Relationships can bring both suffering and its alleviations, but most relationships must anyway end in suffering – for in any pair of humans, one is likely to die first, or fall out of love and leave – and indeed, with the frailties of age and the decay brought by disease, with the loss of things valued (loved ones and old friends who pass away, capacities such as walking in the country one can no longer do) the typical human life ends in privations that, unless accepted with grace, courage and wisdom, are forms of suffering. To acquire the courage and wisdom needed to face them is to do philosophy, which is why the ancients said, ‘To learn to philosophise is to learn to die’. -A.C. Grayling

Gymnasiums of the Mind

"Followers of the Greek Aristotle were known as peripatetics because they passed their days strolling and mind-wrestling through the groves of the Academe. The Romans’ equally high opinion of walking was summed up pithily in the Latin proverb: “It is solved by walking.” Nearly every philosopher-poet worth his salt has voiced similar sentiments. Erasmus recommended a little walk before supper and “after supper do the same.” Thomas Hobbes had an inkwell built into his walking stick to more easily jot down his brainstorms during his rambles. Jean- Jacques Rousseau claimed he could only meditate when walking: “When I stop, I cease to think,” he said. “My mind only works with my legs.” Søren Kierkegaard believed he’d walked himself into his best thoughts. In his brief life Henry David Thoreau walked an estimated 250,000 miles, or ten times the circumference of earth. “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits,” wrote Thoreau, “unless I spend four hours a day at least – and it is commonly more than that – sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields absolutely free from worldly engagements.” Thoreau’s landlord and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson characterized walking as “gymnastics for the mind...” Christopher Orlet, Philosophy Now https://philosophynow.org/issues/44/The_Gymnasiums_of_the_Mind

Admirable profession

"...Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live..."

"I went to the woods because...

I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion... "

"I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there...

Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now... I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours..."

Where he lived, and what he lived for

"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d’appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business."

Vote!

"The next election is going to be decided by people under 30, who have the most at stake, and they need to register to vote in order to make a difference. That’s the answer, simple democracy." -GK... Please visit TennVoterLookup if you would like to check your Tennessee registration status or check RockTheVote.org. TN residents can update or change their information on the TN Government's website. If you're currently registered in another county it may be easier for you to vote here. Register in Rutherford County: https://www.mtsu.edu/amerdem/register-to-vote.php

Thinking is a social activity

"We do not (on Justice Holmes's reasoning) permit the free expression of ideas because some individual may have the right one. No individual alone can have the right one. We permit free expression because we need the resources of the whole group to get us the ideas we need. Thinking is a social activity. I tolerate your thought because it is part of my thought—even when my thought defines itself in opposition to yours." — The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand https://a.co/8qI6C9a

A proper education

“The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.” ― Wendell Berry

The college project

“The American college may be considered a continuation, at the human level, of the self-education process of the earth itself: universe education, earth education, and human education are stages of development in a single unbroken process...The entire college project can be seen as that of enabling the student to understand the immense story of the universe and the role of the student in creating the next phase of the story.” --Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth

Planting seeds

One thing is certain: if our educational system does not honestly and explicitly promote the central tenet of science—that nothing is sacred—then we encourage myth and prejudice to endure. We need to equip our children with tools to avoid the mistakes of the past while constructing a better, and more sustainable, world for themselves and future generations. We won’t do that by dodging inevitable and important questions about facts and faith. Instead of punting on those questions, we owe it to the next generation to plant the seeds of doubt." Lawrence M. Krauss, "Teaching Doubt"-The New Yorker

Enlightened thoughts

“Reason drives your search to make sense of the world by pushing you to ask why things are as they are. For theoretical reason, the outcome of that search becomes science; for practical reason, the outcome is a more just world.”

“A defence of the Enlightenment is a defence of the modern world, along with all its possibilities for self-criticism and transformation. If you’re committed to Enlightenment, you’re committed to understanding the world in order to improve it.”

“Freedom cannot simply mean doing whatever strikes you at the moment: that way you're a slave to any whim or passing fancy. Real freedom involves control over your life as a whole, learning to make plans and promises and decisions, to take responsibility for your actions' consequences.”

“Doing what you can to move your part of the world closer to the way that it should be, while never losing sight of the way that it is, is what being a grown-up comes to.”
― Susan Neiman, Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age

The thinkers of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment saw an urgent need for a secular foundation for morality, because they were haunted by a historical memory of centuries of religious carnage: the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch hunts, the European wars of religion. They laid that foundation in what we now call humanism, which privileges the well-being of individual men, women, and children over the glory of the tribe, race, nation, or religion. It is individuals, not groups, who are sentient—who feel pleasure and pain, fulfillment and anguish. Whether it is framed as the goal of providing the greatest happiness for the greatest number or as a categorical imperative to treat people as ends rather than means, it was the universal capacity of a person to suffer and flourish, they said, that called on our moral concern.”

“The Enlightenment thus translated the ultimate question ‘How can I be saved?’ into the pragmatic ‘How can I be happy?’—thereby heralding a new praxis of personal and social adjustment.”

“The ideals of the Enlightenment are products of human reason, but they always struggle with other strands of human nature: loyalty to tribe, deference to authority, magical thinking, the blaming of misfortune on evildoers.”― Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

“We must cultivate our garden.”

“Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.” Voltaire

“Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.”

“To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.” ― John Locke

“One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.”

“I pretend not to teach, but to inquire; and therefore cannot but confess here again,–that external and internal sensation are the only passages I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this DARK ROOM. For, methinks, the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little openings left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without: which, would they but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.”

― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.”

“Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

“It does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are 20 gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion... shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear... ...Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you... In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it... [Jefferson, Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, advising him in matters of religion, 1787]”

“The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.”― Albert Einstein

“There is strong shadow where there is much light.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Götz von Berlichingen

“How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?”
― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

“Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life.”
― William Blake

“To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

“We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog.”
― Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit

“I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
==

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American life is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

“We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

“If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

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On the other hand, eastern enlightenment...

“Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.”
― Bodhidharma, The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma

How to add links, embed videos etc.

Videos: in Blogger, after clicking on "New Post"-- 1. Copy the URL of the video you want to share. 2. Click on "More options" on the far right of the toolbar above, then Insert Video icon (3d from left) 3. Select YouTube 5. Select Search 6. Paste the URL & Select it == To insert links: 1. Highlight a word or phrase in your text 2. Click on the link icon 3. Paste the URL address of the site or passage you want to link to == To insert graphics, either just copy-&-paste... OR, click on the "insert image" icon (to the right of the link icon, to the left of the "insert video" icon) and select the appropriate option == To embed Google Books pages: 1. Find the book you want to embed. 2. Select Preview 3. Select (click on) the page you want to embed. 4. Click More Actions (the three vertical dots in the upper right) 5. Select Embed (unless you just want to link the page) 6. Copy the code 7. In edit mode on blogger, select the pen icon in the upper left and click on HTML view 8. Paste the code == Familiarize yourself with the edit icons in the drop-down menu (link, insert image, insert video, etc.) Always make sure, after you Publish, that the formatting is correct on the blogsite. If not, click More options (the three horizontal dots in the upper right) and then Clear Formatting on the far right (the T with a diagonal slash).