Archive for the ‘Virtue’ Category

December 9, 2009 1

Theses on Mysticism and Dialectic

By Robert Minto in Epistemology, Learning, Mystery, Thinking, Virtue

(Courtesy of the prompting of Maimonides, Yair Lorberbaum, Karl Barth, and my all-nighter—on whom be no blame for the result.)

Mysticism and dialectic share a willingness to suspend the certainty and comfort of dogmatic pronouncement for better things. Mysticism refuses to degrade the divine by insisting that one apparently mutually exclusive truth disproves another, while dialectic [...]

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November 14, 2009 0

The Moral Tutelage of Literature

By Robert Minto in Books, Literary Theory, Pedagogy, Virtue

To the Lighthouse is a profoundly convicting book. As we follow Virginia Woolf on her whirlwind tour through the consciousnesses of her characters, I imagine that all of us will get stuck identifying with a particular character. She lures us into identification by attractively presenting the internal monologue of that character—in my case, the single-minded [...]

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July 30, 2009 2

From Marcus Aurelius (3): To Live Toward Dying

By Robert Minto in Books, Death, Eschatology, Motivation, Virtue

I concluded the last essay by suggesting that everyone should take time out to ask themselves why they get up in the morning. Clearly this question only had tangential relevance to my main thesis in that essay, which had to do with Marcus Aurelius’s exemplary clarity in setting up an objective or ideal pattern for [...]

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July 28, 2009 0

From Marcus Aurelius (2): How To Get Up In the Morning

By Robert Minto in Books, Hope, Motivation, Virtue

This is the second part of a series about Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. The series is introduced here.
One of the most popular articles on one of the most popular self-help websites is entitled How To Become An Early Riser. Steve Pavlina has gotten a lot of mileage from that article—and it’s not because he tapped a [...]

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July 27, 2009 1

Self-help from the 2nd Century A.D.

By Robert Minto in Blogging, Books, Man, Strategy, Virtue

The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote a fabulous book that we simply call Meditations.
Authorities tend to denigrate this book. Some have called it contradictory. The best that can often be managed in its favor is this: it’s the best representation we have of the basic tenets of Stoicism. And as everybody knows, “Stoicism” functions mainly [...]

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July 11, 2009 0

Patience: A Moral Strategy*

By Robert Minto in Man, Strategy, Virtue

Things that improve with practice: concentration, geniality, memory, humility, confidence in public, steadiness in self-discipline, getting up with the alarm, putting in a full day’s work, loving, thinking, noticing, and every mental, physical, and emotional skill. The vital characteristic that sustains steady practice is patience.
What is patience? Patience is the firm place in the center, [...]

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July 7, 2009 0

The Aesthetics of Vocabulary-building

By Robert Minto in Education, Virtue, Words

Let me tell you the history of the acquisition of two words.
The first word is “procrustean.” I discovered it in a book about India by Shashi Tharoor. He just threw it out there, a jewel from the stores of a rich vocabulary, glittering, but tastefully set in the clarity of his prose. Discovering such words [...]

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