A eulogy for my grandfather, Frank Stier
What I’m thinking about at any one time tends to be massively over-determined, for good or ill. In the last few days I’ve been thinking about the elderly. (I hate the term senior citizens). Partly this is because I’ve been doing a lot of health care events with old folks. Partly it is because my mother-in-law had a stroke last week and I’ve been talking with daughter about grandparents and what they mean to us. And partly its because Ted Kennedy just died and I think of him, as I thought of my grandparents, as someone who passed a political and moral tradition on to me, not in theory but in practice. I’m a political philosopher and I believe in the importance of theory and reason in politics. But I’ve always believed that my fundamental commitments come from some place deeper than theoretical reasons, from a way of life that is exemplified… Continue reading