philosophy | ZETEO

Affect, Irony, Idiom

February 21, 2016 by Ed Mooney

Post-secular spirituality features: 1) posthuman ethics; 2) posthuman subjects; 3) totalistic re-positioning I’ll read anything — almost. Once a month it’s my habit to browse stacks of journals out of my field. Looking for promising titles, I’ll glance at the first page or so to get the drift, then tag the piece to the “read later“ pile or the trash. A few weeks ago I was in the midst of leafing through a pile of new […]

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

Bach, God, Fervor, the Devil

February 14, 2016 by Ed Mooney

I returned last night from a concert that featured, among other things, two movements from Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites. By pure luck, I had been reading an essay by Edward Said on Bach’s life and work. Bach cavorts with immortality. As my exposure to the cello suites confirmed once more, Bach’s work is inexhaustible in its energy and in its inspiration. Its boundless innovation can — and is — rendered in ever fresh ways. With discrete elision, I might […]

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

Leave a comment

Big Science, Big Art

January 31, 2016 by Ed Mooney

I was startled to read in yesterday’s Boston Globe that a scholarly paper on “the God particle” (the Higgs boson) had 5,154 authors. I wondered if they hired a stadium for the signing and celebration. I usually think of science as dancing with poetry. An odd couple, you’ll say, but I’ve learned from Thoreau that they don’t have to stay off the dance floor, or only glower at each other. But here, in this headline about the “God particle,” I […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: art, philosophy, technology, writing

Listening, Stillness, Inaction

January 17, 2016 by Ed Mooney

I have a friend who has published an award-winning book of poems titled “Having Listened.” He writes in the shadow of Boston, near the Arnold Arboretum, designed by Fredrick Law Olmsted. We walked there recently, a patrician park overseen by Harvard University. It has no end of whispering trees and rolling paths. It’s quiet; it’s easy to listen. My friend listens there as we walk, taking a break from non-stop Christmas festivities. But his listening didn’t begin in […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiLL • Tags: love, philosophy, poetry, writing

Leave a comment

Brains, Literature, Disposable Selves

January 10, 2016 by Ed Mooney

The Self is Disposable, Isn’t It? Not for most of us for most of the time. But its reality can be brought into question. There are exotic cases of apparent persons who seem to lack a self. Bureaucracies and the structures capitalism seem to deflate any rich sense of self. And the splendor of brain science swallows our better judgment about the reality of selves. My previous Zeteo post, 01.03.2016, followed the incredible story of a girl of many disguises, […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, literature, love, philosophy, reading, science, theater

Leave a comment

Narrative, Performance, Selves & Solitude

January 3, 2016 by Ed Mooney

Nothing is more fascinating — and frustrating to others — than our capacity to manipulate the image or story we present to others. In an acute way this capacity to pretend or impersonate raises the question of who we are beneath public appearances. The clash between public appearance and underlying reality plays into the hands of those who deceive, sometimes in criminal activities, sometimes just as part of a harmless game of charades or a sober theatrical performance. Some persons […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: ethics, philosophy, politics, social justice

Leave a comment

Dancing with Woolf, Treading with Eliot

December 27, 2015 by Ed Mooney

♦ What would happen if God leaned down and gave you a full, wet kiss? — Daniel Ladinsky Some words, like people, move us before we’re really aware of what’s happening. We return the glance from across the room instantaneously, spontaneously. Sometimes words are like that, a contagious spark. We dance in the space of words and things worded. A quickness of phrase or movement will quicken an alert return. The glance and spark not just of looks […]

Categories: Ed Mooney • Tags: death, philosophy, poetry, women, writing

Leave a comment

Massacres, Slow Violence, Solidarity

December 6, 2015 by Ed Mooney

The massacres in Paris or Beirut, the stabbings and instant “justice-by-cop” in Israel, unabated slaughter in Syria or Yemen, or the crystal clear framing here in Zeteo of centuries of suffering attributable to brutal class warfare — if faced unblinkingly, all this can induce paralysis. Then we learn, within days, that three are murdered in Colorado Springs, and fourteen in San Bernadino. Slow-burning or explosive, the catastrophes seem to go on and on. Sad to say, if there’s a tropism […]

Categories: Ed Mooney, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, class warfare, crime, Marx, massacres, philosophy, solidarity

Truth, Madeline, and the Trill of Doom

November 29, 2015 by Ed Mooney

In “Madeline, Imperfection, Love, and Loss” (Zeteo, 11.25.2015), Joy Yeager reminds us of that priceless book for children and adults called, simply, Madeline. It’s the story, as she reminds us, “of a little girl, an orphan, who lives in an old house in Paris, with eleven other girls.” A nun, Miss Clavel, is in charge. For many, the book is unforgettable, full of enchanting illustrations and about many essentials: love and loss, wandering in Paris, a little community of […]

Categories: Ed Mooney • Tags: death, literature, love, music, philosophy

Leave a comment