Philosophical Exercises

I am in the mood to celebrate the Universe! By which I mean reality itself, in all its mysteriousness. So, imitating the ancient catalogues of great architectural feats , I came up with a list of the Seven Wonders of Existence , just for a bit of fun. Rather than big artificial or natural objects, these wonders are deeply mysterious features of our existential situation. Things that never cease to boggle my mind. (pictured here: a wondrous comet giving off flames in every direction; it looks stylized rather than realistic to our modern eye ; Source  here   ) What follows is a list of metaphysically-flavoured things that  “fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them”  as Kant says of  “the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” I say "metaphysically-flavoured", because the items of this list tend to be things where our sense of their necessity (“things could not be otherwise”) clas...

In September 2025, I strived to be virtuous in accordance with the principles of Stoicism. I journaled daily and, during an examination-of-conscience exercise, I went over my experience with a fine-tooth comb: one made out of forty-four virtues uncovered by stoicism scholarship. This exercise helped me become more courageous and this courage deepened my practice of Stoicism. Illustration from Richard Deakin, Flora of the Colosseum of Rome,  or, Illustrations and Descriptions of Four Hundred and Twenty Plants Growing Spontaneously upon the Ruins of the Colosseum of Rome (London: Groombridge, 1855) Getting excited about virtue My partner and I have gotten into the habit of talking about “getting excited about virtue”. When we use this phrase, we are referring to our unabashed acknowledgement that we are trying to be morally good; which involves nerding out about the details of such an endeavour, and openly expressing how cool we find this to be. This is set against a contrasting...