Sublime

c’est « un homme » qui s’y exprime, comme disait Pascal, et pas seulement « un auteur » ! Cette philosophie à la première personne, que j’ai appelée l’ego-philosophie, reste fidèle à la tradition socratique. Il s’agit de « se connaître soi-même, explique Pascal : quand cela ne servirait pas à trouver le vrai, cela au moins sert à régler sa vie, et

Sometimes I think my role as a Zen teacher comes down to being the one person in the room who says, “I don’t know,” when everyone else is sure they know what to do—or more often than not, sure they know what somebody else should be doing.

People are not monads. A real, live human self is always already partial to certain, select others. Morality needs to take this essential fact about human selfhood into account rather than pretend to override it.

Within the humanities, some of the key theorists drew inspiration from the writings published at midcentury by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who had analyzed, with stunning lucidity, the body’s influence upon even our most rarefied cogitiations.

Philosophy begins, and in my view must end, as an attempt to answer real questions asked by real people.