Throughout the Platonic dialogues, Socrates takes aim at Sophists and writers.     The problem Socrates has with the Sophists is that they may sound good but, in truth, they don’t know what they are talking about.   They are masters of language, not thought.   By way of analogy, Socrates suggests that to follow a Sophist is to […]

The feeling of pain (what Emmanuel Levinas calls the “little death”) and the existential onset of death are the most private experiences. It goes without saying that nobody can feel my pain or experience my death for me. Even though someone can take notice of pain and say, “I feel you.” He or she really […]

Recently, I have been engaged in a fascinating conversation with a colleague about the concept of tsimtsum.   After suggesting that I think about the tsimtsum in terms of contraction and expansion, he asked me a personal question. Would I, at this very moment, prefer expanding or contracting? After thinking about it, it struck me that […]

Apocalyptic disaster is and has been a preoccupation with many great writers and artists. Apocalypse is also a grave concern for prophets and prophesies that span Judaism, Christianity, and Eastern Religions. Oftentimes the apocalyptic is described as something that is not only revelatory and miraculous but also destructive. As I have pointed out elsewhere, a […]

In an era which endlessly celebrates youth and beauty, aging oftentimes provokes shame, revulsion, and denial. For this reason, celebrities do their utmost to look and seem young when they are old and why the elderly often feel worthless and unappreciated.   Think, for instance, of Joan Rivers or the bevy of celebrities who turn to […]

I grew up in a small town in the middle of New York State. It was like a small family. Everyone knew everyone else and could see the potential in this or that person. As for myself, my family, teachers, and coaches always told me that I would someday be “someone.” My grandmother, who loved […]

When I was an undergraduate, I remember reading James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and wondering whether art could be reconciled with religion. In my studies, I came across several arguments that insisted on separating the two. Soren Kierkegaard, in his book Either/Or, puts aesthetics in a battle with faith and […]

The relationship of boredom to art, entertainment, and modernity is a topic of interest to great thinkers and writers such as Soren Kierkegaard, Charles Baudelaire, and Walter Benjamin. For all of them, boredom is something that is born out of modernity. In many ways it is something that passes on from the aristocracy to the […]

Success and failure – winning and losing – define our lives and how we think of ourselves. But sometimes one blurs into the other. One of Bob Dylan’s most quoted lyrics – from his song “Love Minus Zero” – addresses the paradox of success and failure: “She knows there’s no success like failure and that […]