Essays

All essay are shown below, with the most recent at top. You can jump to any individual category by selecting it from the drop-down box. Individual category pages have brief excerpts from each essay.

Topics: Change Consistency Death Eternity Happiness Independence/Dependence Injustice Loss Normality Parenting Personal Identity (True Self) Questions Sacrifice Selfishness Strangeness Suffering Virtue

Philosophers: Emily Dickinson Fyodor Dostoevsky Ralph Waldo Emerson Alexander Hamilton Heraclitus Homer Franz Kafka Friedrich Nietzsche Plato Rainer Maria Rilke William Shakespeare Socrates Henry David Thoreau Ludwig Wittgenstein

1. A Little Bit Of Virtue Can Be A Dangerous Thing
   (Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers)
2. Can One Person's Suffering Be Another Person's Happiness?
   (Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov and Notes From The Underground)
3. Seeing The Familiar More Clearly and The Unfamiliar More Fairly
   (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations)
4. When We Lose Something, We Haven't Lost Everything
   (Emily Dickinson, poem)
5. The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change
   (Heraclitus, fragment)
6. Awaken Thyself!
   (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)
7. Would You Want To Live Forever?
   (Homer, The Odyssey)
8. Philosophical Understanding Comes As Much From The Questions As From The Answers
   (Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet)
9. The Most Important Philosophy Is Your Own
   (Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
10. We Must Become Philosophers To See That Philosophy is Relevant to Daily Life
    (Franz Kafka, "On Parables")