Puzzling Existence

The unexamined life is not worth living - I suppose any first year philosophy student has heard that one, right? Even so, I come back to it, perhaps because I heard it as an impressionable first year philosophy student many years ago. At 20, what do you have to even examine? Life has seemingly just begun and will continue for the foreseeable future.  That's not always true, though, is it? My husband lost a dear friend recently. He was 38.  Something like 700,000 people just in the U.S. have died in the last year and a half from the coronavirus. They have been young and old and everything in between.  Puzzles have been one constant in recent times. I found early in the pandemic that setting the pieces on the table, arranging them by color or shapes gave me a sense of direction and a way to order the chaos that was all around. Puzzles came to take on a greater significance. It’s hard to explain - maybe they always had this significance and I just never noticed it befor...

  When I was a teenager, I became a “vegetarian” out of love for animals - pop tarts & Mac & Cheese were my staples through college, with black beans & pizza from time to time. About seven years ago, I was teaching an ethics class and we had this exact discussion. As it turns out, I could not think of any ways to justify eating meat, so just like that, I became a vegetarian, this time one who also eats vegetables.  The first problem we encounter is Descartes. He gave us a duality that is challenging to escape. If we (humans) are bodies and minds, that makes us better. We can justify our treatment of animals because they are just bodies. Even Kant makes this argument: “But so far as animals are concerned, we have no direct duties. Animals are not self-conscious and are there merely as a means to an end. That end is man.” He does go on, however, to say that the way we treat animals is a mirror to our treatment of humans. The way we treat those who are seemingly in...