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Browsing All Posts filed under »Philosophy«
Remembering, Forgetting, and Irony: Thinking About Kundera
According to his translators, Milan Kundera writes, “remembering is a form of forgetting.” Why? Remembering is always a reconstruction and, eventually, a construction. Remembering can’t reproduce an experience. At best, it refers to it. Eventually, remembering creates a wholly different experience, with almost no connection to the original experience. Kundera also sets immediate experience — […]
One Meaning of Christmas: If Redemption is the Hope, Why Are We So Conservative?
December 25, 2012
I was thinking about Christmas, yesterday. It lead to a question I can’t easily answer. Maybe you can help. For me, the core meaning of Christmas is redemption. From a religious perspective, it’s the ritual that marks the beginning of humanity’s redemption. On this day, light was sent into a world of darkness to save […]
My Plays Are Wiser Than I Am: A Reason to Write.
July 11, 2012
On Sunday, I discovered that my plays are wiser than I am. REREADING AND RELEARNING On Saturday, over drinks (natch), Wayne floated the idea of producing either Paris is Dead or Sunlight. Accordingly, I reread them the next day. As I reread them, I was surprised to realize that I had much to learn from […]
The Irrationality of More Rather Than Fewer Nanoseconds of Life and the Extinction of Our Species.
July 3, 2012
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. This is also true of a species, including our own. Rationally speaking, it should make no difference to me whether or not I live one nanosecond longer because, once I am dead, my experience of that nanosecond dies with me. From this […]
Righting All Wrongs: There’s No Single Way To Do It.
May 21, 2012
In the face of a wrong, shortcoming, failure, or problem, there really are only three plausible responses. Pretend the wrong doesn’t exist. Address it indirectly. Address it directly. While it’s tempting to claim that, in every instance of wrong, one should always and only respond in one way, in fact, any of the three responses […]
The Problem of Evil Revisited: You Are A Loving, Knowing, Powerful Being, So Why Is There Evil?
January 23, 2012
Traditionally, the problem of evil has been a problem for people who believe in a certain kind of God. If God is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful, so the problem goes, why is there evil? There are a variety of reasonable responses to the problem of evil and they all — more or less — undercut […]
The Conventions of Theatre, the Aesthetic, and Living.
July 3, 2011
In theatre, it seems to me, much of the craft exists to overcome the obstacles created by the conventions of theatre itself. No, we are not in a darkened black box watching a rehearsed performance by one or more actors; we are, we all hope and pretend, somewhere else very different. Even meta-theatrical antics that […]
February 18, 2013
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