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240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2020
What does it mean to pursue learning for its own sake? Is it even possible? Is the joy of learning itself selfish? If not, how could the strands of selfishness in it, the rush for achievement, the thrill of competition, be unwound from its heart?
And yet, without visible results, why should intellectual life matter, especially in a world so suffused with suffering? What role could it or should it play in repairing the broken fragments of our communities or in pushing back the darkness at their margins? These questions, along with a host of others that arise from them, shape the chapters that follow.
When we cultivate an inner life, we set aside concerns for social ease or advancement. We forget, if only temporarily, the anxious press of necessities.
The inwardness of the mind at leisure unlocks the dignity that is so often denied or diminished by social life and social circumstances. [...] Intellectual life is a way to recover one’s real value when it is denied recognition by the power plays and careless judgments of social life. That is why it is a source of dignity.
To read and inquire as a free adult is to take on the awesome responsibility of allowing oneself to be changed.
Can one play video games in a contemplative spirit? The answer, of course, is yes—but the activities are not quite fitting to their contemplative goal.
A lie in the service of lower ends denies the dignity of the human capacity for rational belief; by contrast, seeking the truth at all costs recovers that dignity, reminds us of surer footing.