Day: August 31, 2009

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A short observation on sensory experience and age

  By About me, Music

I really have trouble listening to music while I write now. And that’s because, even though I have always love music love, the intensity of the pleasure I get from is stronger now than it has ever been. Something similar seems to be true for all my senses. They are all duller in some ways than they were twenty years ago. I’m starting to have trouble hearing things and not only am I as nearsighted as ever but I’ve totally lost my near point and have to take my glasses off to see close up. My touch is still pretty good but I’ve started to notice that I can’t pick up quite the level of details on a surface as I once did. But the intensity of my sensual experience is much greater than before. Continue reading

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A eulogy for my grandfather, Frank Stier

  By Family Stories

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