Andrea's Philosophy Blog

Every now and then it's worth to think about the big picture, and its details. I did hence write one article on the great chain of being and another one on lesser kinds. There are plenty of lesser kinds about which it's fun to speculate, and I chose a few to write about this time: odors, colors, wind waves, books, and authors. On the latter theme, I also compiled a selected list of quotations. I hope you'll enjoy these new entries!

Shall all online philosophical content be made available open access? Here to a recent article inspired by a post of Arianna Betti.

This is a question that has received increasing attention over the past few decades and which is contributing to rethink the boundaries of art. I recently wrote a short piece summing up some key objections to those who regard gastronomic experience as artistic experiences, and another piece detailing three ways in which food and art may intertwine, along with some philosophical quotes on food. If you have thoughts and ideas on the topic, send them along!

Why do humans engage in sportive activities? This is a simple question, whose answer is likely to comprise a variety of reasons and perspectives. I tried to compile some of them in a recent piece, along with a series of quotes on sport and technology (the latter being a condition of modern sports).

At different times, I find myself asking or being asked questions such as: "What does it take to truly make an effort to know your own mind?" "When is it that you are really empathizing with someone?" "Why is it that pleasure is fleeting?"

In the attempt to tackle some of the insidiousness of questions such as those, I have recently written a few articles. As a philosopher, I tend to think that there is a beauty in learning how to live with a question, as not every question can be answered. Certainly, addressing questions such as those posed above calls for some creativity; yet even the most creative minds may be unable to make us progress, as a species, on our quest for the answers. As Aldoux Huxley once put it: "There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self."

What fosters social bonding and cooperation? I bet many would say the absence of lies. And yet, not only it is quite difficult to define what a lie is: there are several moments when lying seems the best ethical option. Furthermore, lying may be so endemic to any human society that there is no hope to live without it, as the tradition of carnival - when observed philosophically - and as the authors who have written on the subject teach us.

Too often we assume that a ban on lying is the only mean to strengthen a community, forgetting another key aspect to our living: cheerfulness. Now, cheerfulness shall not be confused with happiness: while the former is a behavior, the latter is a condition. In opposition to the purist and idealistic ethics, which would desire to build a society void of sin, we may hence oppose a model of society that maintains itself on cheerfulness and sympathy. Even if you had to lie to me, as long as there is cheerfulness, I will accept you.

Of course, contemporary Western society reminds us that cheerfulness can be dangerous too: corporations as well as politicians often disguise under cheerful advertisements and slogans some dishonest purposes. But the solution is not to ban cheerfulness from our life, or to ban lies. (The liar paradox, one of the most difficult paradoxes to solve, is a witness to the elusiveness of the the concept of lying and, perhaps, to its unavoidability.) Rather, honesty should be the goal. Cheerfulness, happiness, and honesty: if you have those three in your life, you may hope to be blessed; if you have those three in a society, you may hope that it will grow strong.

I have always found inspiration through single quotes. They seem to open up a wider space of possibility than other forms of literature, that is to awake what Robert Musil called "the sense of possibility;" and they can often succinctly express the necessity of some view too. When I was in high school, I did not keep a journal, but I filled my notebooks with quotes, which I would then use also in assignments. Some people, indeed, reason through short thoughts, as for instance the Zen tradition, the Japanese form of poetry known as haiku, and those Western philosophers that expressed themselves through aphorisms (Wittgenstein, Marcus Aurelius, etc.) neatly exemplify.

Since the facebook era started, then, the amount of quotes on the Internet has been growing exponentially. Still, to find a decent selection of philosophical quotes is not always that easy. I thus sat down and compiled a few of them, on disparate topics: sex, possibility, love, violence, Lewis Carroll, and pleasure. I hope you'll enjoy them. If you have any suggestion, please get in touch!

The fourteen minutes between 9:35am-9:49am of December 14th 2012 will be remembered as a tragic moment in the history of the United States and another sad episode in the history of shootings. My very first reaction, I confess, was to think that in the U.S., even more so in New England, we may boast the most prestigious educational institutions; but when someone, repeatedly, arrives at putting into effect a plan for killing dozens of civilians, including kids and young adults, that means that the overall educational system, despite its high points, has failed. Still, I waited a few days before talking about the event here: there is a time for mourning, a time for pondering, and a time for discussing.

A shooting is a form of violence, that elicits all sorts of philosophical questions. Why are humans violent?; Can violence ever be just?, as when someone uses a weapon for self-defense?; Why are some humans violent against themselves? and is it a sin?

I have now written a host of articles on the topic of violence, starting from the distinction between physical, psychological, and verbal violence. But I also regard as key to reflect on what is coercion and how coercion is linked to violence, in order to be able to appreciate the different components that may lead to violent behaviors.

In the end, the usual question comes up: can a human society ever be wholly non-violent, or is pacifism destined to remain a wonderful ethical mirage?

When a few years ago I migrated to New England, I soon starting reflecting on the differences between my aesthetic sensibility and the sensibility of the people who were grown in the area. Most importantly, I pondered the relationship that there are between beauty and love or passion, justice, truth, and artistic expression.

Even is some claim that beauty is purposeless, I rather tend to believe that appreciation of beauty can come only from a deeper understanding of its role and its context of origin. The problem is that I found myself too often living in situations recalling a variant of the paradox of tragedy, which we may label "the paradox of ugliness;" in it, people seem to have a crave for those things that will aesthetically displease them. Perhaps also as a cathartic exercise, today I offer you some articles dealing with issues of beauty, along with some quotes on the topic, that I hope you'll find inspiring.

"It is difficulties that show what men are," wrote Epictetus.

Among the most remarkable features of a storm such as Sandy there is the fact that it put all humans living along its path face to face with catastrophe. It does not matter whether you are rich or poor, a smart or an idiot, cute or awful.

There are several aspects of Sandy that would deserve philosophical attention and that would have captivated the attention of stoic philosophers such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, or aroused the interest of acute observers of human affairs such as Machiavelli or Laozi. For instance, Machiavelli writes in the Discourses on Livy: "So in all human affairs one notices, if one examines them closely, that it is impossible to remove one inconvenience without another emerging."

But it is not on the problem of evil that I wish to concentrate here. Rather, it is on a fact that will have not gone unnoticed by most: Sandy raised a taxonomic problem, that is a metaphysical dilemma. On Monday evening, after making landfall, the media switched suddenly the terminology: Sandy was no more a hurricane, but a "super-storm." In the days before its arrival to the Northeast, some meteorologists had also used the label "the Perfect Storm." That was not by chance.

The system we have in place for classifying storms is pretty solid; and yet, every now and then, certain storms occur that seem to escape our best categories. A notable example, which would have amused Michel de Montaigne, occurred in 1991. It was still during Halloween. A large nor'easter developed over Canada; however, as it moved towards the ocean and warmer waters, the storm changed its configuration and turned into what we usually classify as a hurricane. Because of its origin from cold air, however, meteorologists could not classify it as a hurricane; hence, they introduced the label "perfect storm;" that was "The 1991 Perfect Storm" or, as some people also call it, "The No Name Storm of 1991."

The ontological difficulties we encounter in classifying storms parallel those taxonomists have encountered in classifying entities such as a platypus. And thus the old vexed question can be posed also with respect to storms: are storms natural kinds? Perhaps they are, but only if we concede that natural kinds have some degree of conventionality.