Sublime

How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?

If I am Abraham and maintain my secular faith, I believe that Isaac’s life is priceless—I am devoted to his well-being as an end in itself—but I also believe that his life can be lost. Indeed, it is only by acknowledging and being responsive to Isaac’s finitude that I can care for him.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, named for his son, Nicomachus, Aristotle argued that a good life is one of virtuous activity in accordance with reason. His word for happiness or human flourishing, “eudaimonia,” has been adopted by psychologists who distinguish self-realization or “eudaimonic well-being” from “hedonic well-being” or the experience of ple

In protesting, the psalmists reach out to a God who loves them.

our ability to think well will be determined to some considerable degree by who those others are: what we might call the moral form of our community. A willingness to be “broken on the floor,” for example, is in itself a testimony to belief that the people you’re debating are decent people who don’t want to harm or manipulate you—whereas if you don

being honest with God, even when life hurts, is not a rebellion against faith but a manifestation of it.