Wisdom
Sixian and
Wisdom
Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Like the Stoics and Daoists, I want to put my focus on wisdom so that a “wise agency” can emerge. This would mean people take the right action and get the right things done, in whatever domain they find themselves.
Peter Limberg • High Agency to Wise Agency
Helen Garner on Happiness: ‘It’s Taken Me 80 Years to Figure Out It’s Not a Tranquil, Sunlit Realm’
Helen Garnertheguardian.com
Optimistic Nihilism
youtube.com
The Keatsian endeavor has never been popular, but is particularly unfashionable today. Religious fundamentalists reject it on the grounds that revelation and commitment are needed to orient oneself in the world. The amorality of a poet who is a “thoroughfare for all thoughts” risks heresy or destabilization. Tell me where you stand, where your... See more
Zohar Atkins • The Liberal Arts Are Dying Because Liberalism is Dying
The dream of a Liberal (arts) education—which is the scaled, democratic form of the Keatsian ideal of negative capability—cannot hold up when liberalism itself is held to be suspect.