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Oliver Sacks on the Necessity of Our Illusions
“We need detachment… as much as we need engagement in our lives… transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear.” “Our normal waking consciousness,” William James wrote in his pioneering work on transcendent experiences, “is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest…
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What Makes a Person: The Seven Layers of Selfhood in Literature and Life
“It is the intentions, the capacities for choice rather than the total configuration of traits which defines the person.” “A person’s identity,” Amin Maalouf wrote as he contemplated what he so poetically called the genes of the soul, “is like a pattern drawn on a tightly stretched parchment. Touch just one part of it, just…
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Obligations to Others: Hunger in America
In my previous essay, I considered various arguments that we have obligations to people we do not know. In this essay I will consider hunger in the United States of America in the context of obligations. The United States is both the wealthiest nation and one that has been facing an obesity epidemic. Hence, it…
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