ZETEO

ZETEO

Zeteo (ζητέω): to challenge, question, dispute, explore the forgotten and ignored

Main menu

Skip to content
  • About
  • How to submit & what
  • Help us pioneer the short scholarly comment
  • Contact Zeteo

Tag: philosophy

Show Grid Show List

Post navigation

← Older posts
The Ballerina and the Bull, Adbusters poster - Occupy Wall Street

Artistry, Joy, Complexity, Freedom

June 5, 2016 by Ed Mooney

Allowing the full Influx of the World Artistry mitigates disaster and keeps us alive. I mean both the artistry of the world and our individual artistry in responding to it. It’s a balancing act, a ballet on the back of a dancing bull. Artistry, incoming and outgoing, from the world and from us, gives us both freedom and happiness, both joy and misery, both terror and adventure. I used to think the world was full of either/or’s, and your life […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: love, philosophy, poetry, Thoreau

2

Friendship, communion, autonomy, philosophy

May 29, 2016 by Ed Mooney

By Ed Mooney, Zeteo Contributor   These are preliminary notes on a tension between philosophy and friendship. They are prompted by two texts I encountered nearly in conjunction, within the passage of just a few days. The first is a remarkable passage from  Moby Dick where Ishmael, the narrator whose name echoes the Biblical figure cast into wilderness, reflects on friendship. Specifically, he reflects on his bond with Quequeeg, a tattooed, South Pacific, Muslim “Cannibal.” From the deck of the […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: literature, love, philosophy, race

Leave a comment

Chutzpah, Self-abnegation, Creation

April 24, 2016 by Ed Mooney

  I s creation, in the arts, or elsewhere, a matter of chutzpah or daring — perhaps of overweening pride? It often is.  And sometime it’s a matter of humility, stepping aside, letting another speak through one. Thus the Odyssey begins, Sing in me muse, Sing of the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course This makes the poet almost incidental to the creation. Can we generalize here?  No doubt some poets are models of humility […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: books, literature, philosophy, writing

Leave a comment
Power to Intrude, Illustration by Ben Jennings, Prospect Magazine, February 2016

Privacy and Power

March 28, 2016 by fritztucker

Two weeks ago I wrote about the relationship between privacy and power, and how may of today’s spokespeople for the oppressed focus more on stopping surveillance in the name of privacy than daring to call for surveillance of oppressors, or imagine ways that surveillance could be used to create a world devoid of oppression. Since then, I have been thinking a lot about our current obsession with privacy. In The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiR • Tags: books, capitalism, civil rights, crime, criminals, ethics, literature, New York City, philosophy, politics, reading, social justice, technology, women, writing

Leave a comment

Quixote, Carnival, Brussels, Easter

March 27, 2016 by Ed Mooney

                                                       Bakhtin coined the term “carnivalesque’ to mark literary works with multiple, contrasting, and forever-competing centers of gravity. These paintings above have multiple, contrasting, and forever-competing centers of gravity. They’re done by someone new in my world, Octavio Ocampo. These images help with Dostoevsky, Bakhtin, and Cervantes — with Paris, 9/11, Easter, and Brussels     And they just won’t hold still!   One is called “Kiss […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: art, death, literature, philosophy, writing

2

Starry Nights, Science, Atheists

March 20, 2016 by Ed Mooney

  Richard Dawkins’ head is fizzing with mad thoughts.. . .  Outside a shimmering band of turquoise near the horizon brings a soft sparkle to the beads of dew hanging from trees in early bud; the heavy clouds in the distance look peach-pink and insubstantial; so do the old pale brick houses that line his street. The birds are singing in riotous chorus. “Accept my genetic information, females of my species!” they sing. “Observe my superior fitness for survival, as […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: art, philosophy, poetry, politics, science

Leave a comment

Alienation, The Academy, Public Philosophy

March 13, 2016 by Ed Mooney

  Once upon a time, there was a wildly popular “school” of thought called “existentialism.” Ordinary educated persons read works of existential writing and attended plays by existentialist dramatists; existential themes were bandied about in pubs and cafes; even the mass media took note of the way in which existentialist philosophy had broken the boundaries of the academy and been taken up in the streets. Eventually, of course, the badge “existentialist” became exhausted and dismissed, parodied, travestied, and ignored until […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: alienation, education, literature, philosophy, universities, writing

2

Holocaust, Son of Saul, Kierkegaard

March 6, 2016 by Ed Mooney

  Kierkegaard appears unexpectedly on the “Opinionator” page of last week’s New York Times. He’s discussed in “The Stone” by a canny and sensitive philosopher, Katalin Balog. She finds the Danish thinker just under the surface of the Hungarian movie about the Holocaust, “Son of Saul,” which was recently awarded “Best Foreign Language Film” at the Oscars. The movie’s central theme is Saul’s inner world, the loss and recovery of his soul. In scene after scene we see his face unmoved, […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: death, ethics, film, love, philosophy, technology

Leave a comment

Identity, Erikson, and the Third Phase of Life

February 28, 2016 by Ed Mooney

I remember in the ’60s being fascinated by the writing of Erik Erikson. I’m not sure if he’s read much today. But there I was last week in the quiet of my new home, Portland, Maine, in the quiet of Longfellow Books, gazing fondly at the titles: Young Man Luther, Gandhi’s Truth, Childhood and Society. Beyond the books I had warm, appreciative feelings for the man. His many books portrayed exemplary persons. He did not stall with the lame and […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: childhood, ethics, philosophy, reading

Leave a comment

Post navigation

← Older posts

Archives

  • January 2022
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • October 2019
  • May 2019
  • February 2019
  • December 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • February 2018
  • December 2017
  • September 2017
  • July 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • June 2010

Meta

  • Create account
  • Log in
Powered by WordPress.com.
ZETEO
Powered by WordPress.com.
  • Subscribe Subscribed
    • ZETEO
    • Join 68 other subscribers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • ZETEO
    • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...