January 2011
8 posts
Ideas of the century: The art of living →
WRITTEN BY: MARK VERNON
tpm cover art by Felix Bennett
“The art of living” is one of those expressions that can think for you. It sounds great. Who isn’t seduced by the notion that their life can be a work of art? So, one must keep asking what it actually means.
It’s a conception of moral philosophy that is certainly on the rise. Alexander Nehamas has written about the lives of philosophers...
How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne →
How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne by Sarah Bakewell
Click image to read Michael Bywater’s book review.
WatchLesley Hazleton: On reading the Koran | Video on TED.com
Jonathan Glover | A Philosophy Website →
WITTGENSTEIN AND HITLER.
Among the darker encounters is that Hitler and Wittgenstein (almost exactly the same age, Hitler being six days older than Wittgenstein) were both schoolboys together in the Realschule at Linz in the year 1903-1904. Academically they were two years apart, as Wittgenstein had been advanced a year and Hitler was year behind. As the school had only about 300 students, it...
Poetry in Times of Tragedy | The University of... →
William Stanley Merwin is the seventeenth Poet Laureate of the United States.
To the New Year
With what stillness at last you appear in the valley your first sunlight reaching down to touch the tips of a few high leaves that do not stir as though they had not noticed and did not know you at all then the voice of a dove calls from far away in itself to the hush of the morning
so this is the...
"if you like my poems let them" by e.e. cummings
if you like my poems let them walk in the evening, a little behind you then people will say “Along this road i saw a princess pass on her way to meet her lover (it was toward nightfall) with tall and ignorant servants.”
“Wedding,” by Alice Oswald, from The Thing in the Gap-stone Style (Oxford University Press).
Wedding From time to time our love is like a sail and when the sail begins to alternate from tack to tack, it’s like a swallowtail and when the swallow flies it’s like a coat; and if the coat is yours, it has a tear like a wide mouth and when the mouth begins to draw the wind,...