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There Will Always Be Boxes Beside the Door
Maturity sometimes looks more like making room. We keep what has formed us without allowing it to occupy all the available space. That applies to ideas. It applies to traditions. It applies to the judgments of parents and teachers whose voices we may still hear years after they are gone. It applies even to our… Continue reading
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Truthful Belonging: How Can a Life Become Our Own?
Sometimes belonging provided the conditions in which a life could flourish. Sometimes it narrowed what could be spoken or pursued. Sometimes individual aspiration opened a life; sometimes it damaged relationships whose value became visible only after they were strained. Continue reading
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Two Meanings of Sovereignty
My freedom matters precisely because fidelity cannot be coerced. A promise made under compulsion is not much of a promise. Love extracted by force is not love. A life that can genuinely be given must first, in some meaningful sense, belong to the giver. Continue reading
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When the Choices Don’t Quite Fit
I had a conversation recently in which I was repeatedly offered choices: was I this kind of person, or that kind? Did I want this, or did I want that? The questions were reasonable enough. The problem was that I kept wanting to say, “Neither. Or perhaps both. It depends.” I have been noticing how… Continue reading
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Taking the Long Way Toward What Comes Next
Four hours does not sound catastrophic until you add it to an already very long drive. Then four hours begins to feel less like patriotism and more like poor judgment. Continue reading
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Beyond the Product: Standing Behind Our Work
Work becomes one way of caring for what we have received. We develop inherited capacities and return them, altered by attention and judgment, to the common world. None of us begins from nothing, and none of us can truthfully claim complete ownership of the conditions that made our contribution possible. Continue reading
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Last Words; Lasting Inheritances
There are conversations that never really end. Most of our words disappear into the ordinary flow of life. We forget what we said last Tuesday, or even yesterday afternoon. Yet some conversations settle deeply within us. Years later, we can still hear the tone of voice, remember the room, or picture the face of the… Continue reading
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Well-formed Small Groups Form Their Members
New one out today: “A well-formed group asks students to practise attention. They must listen closely enough to understand what another person means, not merely wait for their turn to speak. It asks them to practise articulation. They must put a thought into words that others can hear, question, and use. It asks them to… Continue reading
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Authenticity isn’t Legibility
Many performances of authenticity are protective. They arise not from vanity, but from fear. People learn to reveal enough to appear honest, but not enough to risk being known. Performed vulnerability then becomes a shelter. It looks like openness while preserving control over exposure. Continue reading
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The Human Being Is Not the Source of Meaning: Heidegger and Sartre
For Sartre, authenticity is bound up with self-creation. The authentic person accepts the burden of freedom and refuses bad faith. They do not pretend that their choices are dictated by some fixed essence or external authority. They own their freedom and act. But for Heidegger, authenticity is not primarily self-creation. It is a more truthful… Continue reading