The Narthex

The philosopher Simone Weil’s Waiting on God (1950) is a haunting reflection on the distance between “the everyday” and the transcendent. A year earlier the playwright Samuel Beckett finished his Waiting for Godot. Beckett’s “Godot” is a fantasist’s inkblot: interpret him as you please. Not so the God to whom…

Here’s a snappy reality check: “You’re entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts.” But reality isn’t always easy to check. For a start, if my opinion is ill-formed, I’m not really entitled to it. There’s a duty to think carefully about our opinions. Of course, today’s political slugfest…

Know anyone who’s outspoken, opinionated, who calls a spade a spade? I surely knew my father, to whom I owe more than I can ever repay. When the family was planning his funeral, my mother told the pastor “John was outspoken…too outspoken for most people.” Right. Some of us liked…

Asking someone “How are you doing?” can get personal. What if someone takes the question literally? Maybe someone like Mr. Pilgrim. He’s no pushover. Suppose he flips the question and asks “How are you doing?” Or he might even ask “How are we doing?” If he raises this question, he…

Funny things happen on the way to political dialogues. Not to mention that the participants say the darnedest things… On the one hand, we believe that our deepest commitments should inform our political practices. These practices, presumably, include political dialogues. On the other hand, we tell each other that true…

In Balboa Park, a renewed antique carousel turns round and round, with bobbing horses and the familiar circus décor and music. It has one of the few operational brass-ring games anywhere. I was touring the Park to create an excursion video for the San Diego County Library branch in San…

As I stood in the entry of an Assisted Living dining hall, hoping to join my friend after lunch, I overheard this comment: “She’s no angel. I heard she shacked up with George last night.” The speaker nodded toward another woman two tables over with coiffed hair and Fifth Avenue…

What are we doing? When philosophers ask that question, they’re looking for an act-description. An act-description involves an agent, an act, and (implicitly) the intention in so acting. We can take some act-descriptions at face value. Others we can't. Consider two presidential examples. Harry S Truman, pressed to declare a…

Dysfunction is the order of day, and at every level. Each of us, I’ll wager, wants to tell someone  “get your act together.” Plenty of people think that I need to hear the same message. And someone, no doubt, thinks that you, gentle reader, need to as well. Of course,…

Ask me “what’s your angle?” around 7 am. If I can summon the strength, I’ll say that in five minutes or so, if I’m upright, I’ll be at a 90 degree angle from the floor. It might take a few tries, though. Graceful, I'm not. Intellectual angles matter even more…

Last week a young activist for whom I have sympathy wrote that he was hesitant to discuss democracy. Why so? Because he looks at democracy "differently." Democracy, he thinks, is only a tool to secure good leadership. But tools don’t always work. That’s why, he notes, once a party wins…

Remember the drill? Which of these things does not belong? Example #1 (apple, banana, carrot). Easy! A carrot isn’t a fruit, so it doesn’t belong. Example # 2 (cat, dog, butterfly). Well, a butterfly isn’t a mammal, so it doesn’t belong. The logical point in each example is that the…

Let’s list a few words: smart, clever, bright, ingenious. They’re all familiar. No one needs to make a pitch for aspiring to being smart, clever, bright, or ingenious. With “practical reason” we’re in a different territory. The term isn’t so familiar. It’s easy to confuse with “practicality.” And we can’t…

America, it’s said, is the land of the free and home of the brave. It’s also said, and might well be true, that America flies the flag of pragmatism. But if we are pragmatists, then the star spangled banner is at risk. So is our freedom, and our bravery is…

A character in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, tempted to despair, asks an intriguing question. Will beauty save the world? There are a couple of reasons to answer “not likely.” Here’s a first reason. Since there are sharply differing accounts of the nature of beauty, it probably isn’t any one thing. But…