philosophy | The Smart Set

To Philosophize is to Learn How to Die

Rachel Ashcroft — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 12:30:00 +0000

I spent four years writing a PhD on philosophical definitions of time in the 16th century. Most of my research revolved around the subject of death. Every day I read discussions about the nature of the afterlife, suicide, pain, mortality, and of course — fear of death. With all this philosophical study under my belt, […]

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Jottings During Covid

Balu George — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 12:30:00 +0000

The road is wet this evening and there are small puddles everywhere. That car slipping onto the main road from the side road with its indicator flashing, the sales girl holding up the bottom of her sari to prevent it from getting wet; that cigarette stub flying through the air to settle down in a […]

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We Tell Stories in Order to Die

David Stromberg — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 11:30:00 +0000

I turned 39 not long after my first daughter was born. When she was about five months old, I saw the big four-oh on the horizon, and started to think about what I was going to leave behind when I was gone, at least from a literary perspective. So I looked at the bookshelf of […]

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A New Scar in Time

Greg Gerke — Thu, 26 May 2022 13:48:06 +0000

One of my dreams was the synthesis of what my imagination had often sought to depict, in my waking hours, of a certain seagirt place and its mediaeval past. In my sleep I saw a gothic fortress rising from a sea whose waves were stilled as in a painted window. An arm of the sea […]

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Death Lessons

Larry Patten — Mon, 23 May 2022 10:33:00 +0000

Death has been a wise mentor for my ongoing journey of faith. Now a retired pastor, death has also broken me, along with challenging me to heal. Did we discuss dying, and death, and how they would impact ministry in the bygone days of seminary education? Not so much. There were the predictable discussions about […]

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Theses on Sugar Man

Sam Kahn — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 11:30:00 +0000

My girlfriend and I have plenty of things to argue about, but, surprisingly enough, the leading topic of argument — the argument that pretty much all others circle back to — is about the documentary film Searching for Sugar Man. You probably already know at least the outlines of the story. Sixto Rodriguez (the “Sugar […]

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The Radicalism of W.E.B. Du Bois

Arvind Dilawar — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 12:20:12 +0000

In the April 1919 edition of The Crisis, the official publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an editorial lambasts the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) for its position on World War I. As a revolutionary, anti-capitalist labor union, the IWW opposed the war for pitting workers against one another, […]

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Chasing Shadows

Erik Mortenson — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 11:30:00 +0000

Have you ever caught yourself staring at a shadow? Almost everyone has. What is it that makes these fleeting images so compelling? It’s an odd feeling to see something that technically is not there but at the same time is unmistakably present. The mind immediately struggles to make sense of this phantasm, either trying to figure out […]

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Gnosticism and the Smoking Gun

David Frost — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 12:30:00 +0000

In July 2018, my fiancé, Kelly, and I hiked the Neahkahnie Mountain trail on the Oregon coast. We needed a break from the incessant news cycle and my future father-in-law’s pro-Trump shares on Facebook. Days earlier, the President appeared quisling-like in his deference to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a joint press conference in Helsinki. […]

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Plain Sense in Buffalo

Greg Gerke — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 11:30:20 +0000

Many have no use for the small corners and underseen pockets of this country. You look on a map, say the indubitable Rand McNally Atlas, of what is Western New York and what do you see? A narrow run-off of flatlands from the crux of the state’s main mass; a left-field afterbirth, excepting Niagara Falls, […]

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