Descartes isolated himself in a cabin, set a ball of wax in front of himself, and set about determining what he could know. Martin Heidegger, some 300 years later, saw this thought experiment as all wrong: Descartes should have picked up the wax, used it, molded it. For Heidegger, the truth is reveal

Contemplative, Deconstruction, Ecstatic, Illusive, Phenomenology, Repetition, Spectral, Spiritual

The term hermeneutics comes from the name of the Greek messenger of the gods, Hermes. Over the past millenia, hermeneutics has referred to the practice of theological interpretation. But for Gadamer, who re-introduced the term hermeneutics into contemporary discussion, the hermeneutic process is not

Contemplative, Dense, Event, Hermeneutics, Repetition, Sincere

The essay did not always exist. Nor was the idea of recording one's personal introspections, whether in private diary or public form, always valued. It took centuries of evolution, from Seneca's philosophical epistles to the Christian confessional and beyond, before twentieth-century students would b

Contemplative, Essays, Repetitive, Self-reflection, Tranquil, Witty

It might seem as if she lived an entire lifetime during the writing of "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek." Her voice is that of a wizened old woman with boundless patience and an endless amount of time to observe the smallest sublime moments in nature. But in fact, Annie Dillard wrote the book while she was s

Clever, Contemplative, Elegant, Intense, Literary fiction, Witty