by Ed Mooney
Could Milton write this? How charming is divine Philosophy Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose but musical as is Apollo’s lute He writes these lines as part of a masque in honor of chastity, presented September 29, 1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, newly installed as President of Wales. So these lines may not express his true sentiments but rather his wish to please the Earl. And note that Milton has Apollo praise chastity. The […]
by Ed Mooney
Who says philosophers can’t be funny? Here’s Kierkegaard: What philosophers say about reality is often as disappointing as a sign you see in a shop window, which reads: Pressing Done Here. If you brought your clothes to be pressed, you would be fooled; for the sign is for sale. Philosophers offer you a service (so it seems). The banner says that they’ll smarten your appreciation of reality. So you enter the shop — only to learn than you won’t […]
Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: Kierkegaard
by Ed Mooney
In the last paragraph of the second chapter of Walden, “Where I Lived, and What I lived for,” Thoreau gives us a very quotable line: “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.” But that’s just the start of falling down a rabbit hole. He adds, “I drink at it: but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. . . I would drink deeper: fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly […]
by Ed Mooney
Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world. — Bertrand Russell, “The Study of Mathematics” I’ve often thought we should value collections of philosophical snippets more than we do—and not for mere cocktail-party polish. (Does anyone still go […]
by Ed Mooney
Katrina van Grouw’s Picked Bones, Plucked Hens, Plumed Skeletons By Edward F. Mooney Review of The Unfeathered Bird by Katrina van Grouw (Princeton University Press, 2013). Click for pdf. I have always pictured birds in flight, singly or in flocks, or tending eggs; regal swans, slowly drifting, or birds swooping down for a fish or a mouse. But elegant drawings of birds undressed—bones picked dry, neither dead nor alive? I’ve never seen the likes of these—inhabitants of a nether […]
by Ed Mooney
Thoreau: Mourning Turtle Doves An amble from Concord on out By Edward F. Mooney I propose an amble with Thoreau, keeping him usually in sight (not reined in), and letting him be sometimes conjured, rather than the subject of an exclusively scholarly, investigative report. There will be some polemic, a reverie or two, and thoughts on how we might teach others, our students or neighbors, what our walking companion has taught us. I don’t write solely from a place of […]
Categories: Essay, Fall 2012 Issue • Tags: mourning, nature, Thoreau
ZETEO