Wisdom of the Ages
Most modern thinkers have not been much concerned with the virtue of wisdom. So it may just be time to put the sapiens back in homo sapiens sapiens.
continue readingWilliam Desmond
William Desmond holds a doctorate from Yale and is a lecturer in the classics department at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He is the author of two books: Cynics (University of California Press) and The Greek Praise of Poverty (University of Notre Dame Press), which recently won the National University of Ireland Centennial Prize for the best first single-authored book in languages, literature, and linguistics.
Articles by William Desmond
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Wisdom of the Ages
Most modern thinkers have not been much concerned with the virtue of wisdom. So it may just be time to put the sapiens back in homo sapiens sapiens.
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The Declaration of Independence – a lab report
The Declaration of Independence is an exceptional expression of moral conviction, but what makes it so? The document contains a list of the king’s crimes and transgressions, a list that is lengthy, detailed, and now mostly forgotten. What we remember instead is a curious appeal to our natural sense of justice: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Jefferson charges his king and country with having become “deaf to the voice of justice,” a voice he believed to be native to mankind. His invocation of our sense of justice strikes a chord that still resonates today, more deeply perhaps than appeals to the authority of law, logic, history, or divinity. Sometimes justice is a matter of common sense – an intuition that defies justification or analysis, and seems to rise from the heart of our human nature.
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Everyday Creativity
Envision these activities. A proud parent displays the drawing of his toddler on the refrigerator door. A dedicated host concocts a new dish for a party. Marketers dream up names for a new hairspray. James Watson and Francis Crick build a 3D model of DNA. Painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, collaborating intensively for a few years, establish the Cubist style. Martha Graham launches modern dance in the United States. During the Cuban Missile Crisis President Kennedy decides to ignore the most recent cable from Soviet Premier Khrushchev and instead answers the previous communication, thereby avoiding a possible nuclear confrontation.
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