🖼️ Monday Muse
The “Monday Muse” is a weekly collection of reminders, insights, and maxims on the art of living. The term “muse” has two meanings: (1) a state of deep thought; and (2) a source of inspiration. May the following (in a small way) be a source of contemplation and wisdom to live your highest good.
📌 Perennial Reminder(s)
The philosopher and journalist Julian Baggini (a previous podcast guest) on thinking like a philosopher:
Attention is the secret sauce of good reasoning that formal manuals of logic and critical thinking miss. It’s also the case that good reasoning fails to cut through when it is not accompanied by attentiveness to what the reasoning is about. …
When we have only thought through an issue at an abstract level, we haven’t thought it through enough. Thinking is impoverished when it is only about concepts, conducted entirely in our own heads. This kind of detached cognition does not connect enough with our lived experience of the world to change our behaviors or even what we deep down believe. For thinking to get out of our heads and into our hearts and actions it needs to be rooted in close attention to the world and to other people. […]
Source: How to Think Like a Philosopher
📜 Perennial Maxim(s)
The American philosopher and psychologist William James (1842—1910) on changing one’s mind (and life):
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💡 Perennial Insight(s)
The French philosopher and historian Pierre Hadot (1922—2010) on Plotinus and the spiritual life:
The spiritual life of the sage will not be interrupted just because he loses consciousness of his spiritual life, or the mirror of his consciousness is broken by physical disturbances. Nevertheless, we must try to understand why it is that we usually do not perceive the life of the Spirit within us.
The reason is that our inner mirror—our consciousness—has become foggy and tarnished by our concern for terrestrial and corporeal things. It is not life within the body which prevents us from being aware of our spiritual life; the former is, as such, unconscious. Rather, it is the concern we have for our bodies. This is the true fall of the soul. We allow ourselves to be absorbed by vain preoccupations and exaggerated worries: ‘If there is to be perception of these great faculties within the soul, we must direct the faculty of sensation inwards, and make it concentrate its attention there.’ […]
Source: Plotinus or the Simplicity of Vision
💀 Dying Every Day
On a recent episode of Dying Every Day, we discussed the examined life:
Listen to Dying Every Day on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
J.W. Bertolotti
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