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No Save Point
I seem to have entered into a stage of life at which I find myself wrestling with regret more often than I might like. This doesn’t make me special in any way: generations of us humans, upon reaching a certain age, have said wistfully, “If I’d known then what I know now . . .”… Continue reading
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On Sleeping through the Night, Part 5
And now, at last, the conclusion of my recent manuscript, “On Sleeping through the Night: Ecology, Economy and Ethics of a Vital Human Project.” 5. The Ethics of Sleep Following a skunk track through the slush of an early thaw, Leopold (1949: 4) observed the carefully established tunnels and food stores of a meadow mouse… Continue reading
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The Greatest Weight
As I wrestled with disorientation on my way back from Ohio, earlier this week, I recalled something that could serve as a counterweight, helping me to keep my balance and so to avoid sliding into regret and dwelling on what could have been. I first gave serious attention to the work of Friedrich Nietzsche in… Continue reading
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On Sleeping through the Night, Part 4
Here is the fourth main section of my recent manuscript, “On Sleeping through the Night: Ecology, Economy and Ethics of a Vital Human Project.” 4. The Economy of Sleep: Arrangements Luhmann (2017: 7) claims that human beings are alone in being able to “select their environment” to reduce complexity and manage uncertainty about the future.… Continue reading
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Home/Not Home
I never feel more like an “internal exile” than when I have traveled from my current residence near Atlanta to the place where I grew up, just upstream from Toledo, Ohio, along the Maumee River. I took the long fall-break weekend to drive up I-75 to visit my mom, my siblings, and a few of… Continue reading
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On Sleeping through the Night, Part 3
The third main section of my recent manuscript, “On Sleeping through the Night: Ecology, Economy and Ethics of a Vital Human Project.” 3. The Ecology of Sleep: Affordances Aldo Leopold (1949: 113) once encountered two young men canoeing on the Flambeau River, in northern Wisconsin. For the first time in their lives, he wrote, they… Continue reading
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On Sleeping through the Night, Part 2
Now for the second main section of my recent manuscript, “On Sleeping through the Night: Ecology, Economy and Ethics of a Vital Human Project.” 2. The Problem of Sleeping through the Night The peculiarity of sleep as a project is the source of what is most compelling about it as a matter of ethical and… Continue reading
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Citizens of Nowhere
Preparing for a class session on Aristotle’s virtue ethics, I came across a passage in Alisdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue that gets to the heart of the idea of my recent post, “Ethics for Exiles.” It concerns the role of friendship in ethics and in political life. Friendship of course, on Aristotle’s view, involves affection. But… Continue reading
