I find nothing substantial to critique in this essay. You make a few universal claims with an air of them being self-evident and which could easily elicit protests from some readers. But I accept those claims, so for me they’re not an issue. Less important, there are two phrases, a) “people to make us and people who help us make sense of reality,” and b) “because the quiet I cultivate to better hear and understand the music, and I am impatient to hear it,” where I believe that I understand your intent, but I stumbled on how it was said.
I again have a maybe misguided instinct to read your essay in light of earlier essays about the importance of the polis. Whether or not it was your intent, it seems to me that your reasonable sounding arguments about external influences being essential to the proper internal function of the soul serve well as building blocks for the foundation of those earlier essays.
The writing is lovely. Though you began by disavowing self-portraiture, you veered back in that direction towards the close. That shift back to the personal is a good thing and adds a persuasive power to the essay in the same manner that you speak of music, art, and theater contributing to philosophy in general.
To be honest, this had nothing to do with my other essays. It is, if anything, a post-performance dirge and reminder that I need to work on my dissertation.
I certainly find myself gravitating away from the spirituality of "interiority," and that inclination is in some way connected to my anti-American taste for strong cultural boundaries. Liberalism exaggerates interiority, because liberalism exaggerates the significance of the Self. There is no true interiority without God (that is the paradox). On the other hand, "exteriority" can't devolve into a formless kumbaya that banishes asceticism––especially in our culture that has created so much extraneous noise and motion.
I find nothing substantial to critique in this essay. You make a few universal claims with an air of them being self-evident and which could easily elicit protests from some readers. But I accept those claims, so for me they’re not an issue. Less important, there are two phrases, a) “people to make us and people who help us make sense of reality,” and b) “because the quiet I cultivate to better hear and understand the music, and I am impatient to hear it,” where I believe that I understand your intent, but I stumbled on how it was said.
I again have a maybe misguided instinct to read your essay in light of earlier essays about the importance of the polis. Whether or not it was your intent, it seems to me that your reasonable sounding arguments about external influences being essential to the proper internal function of the soul serve well as building blocks for the foundation of those earlier essays.
The writing is lovely. Though you began by disavowing self-portraiture, you veered back in that direction towards the close. That shift back to the personal is a good thing and adds a persuasive power to the essay in the same manner that you speak of music, art, and theater contributing to philosophy in general.
To be honest, this had nothing to do with my other essays. It is, if anything, a post-performance dirge and reminder that I need to work on my dissertation.
I certainly find myself gravitating away from the spirituality of "interiority," and that inclination is in some way connected to my anti-American taste for strong cultural boundaries. Liberalism exaggerates interiority, because liberalism exaggerates the significance of the Self. There is no true interiority without God (that is the paradox). On the other hand, "exteriority" can't devolve into a formless kumbaya that banishes asceticism––especially in our culture that has created so much extraneous noise and motion.