Tag: Emotion
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
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July 24, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Last week, I talked about my own shortcomings as a reader of The Iliad. I am just now starting to realize the importance of discussing Achilles’ wrath. I have always struggled to face it because it leads me to the darkest of human truths. His “cataclysmic wrath” (as coined by Emily Wilson) evidences itself in books 20-23 when Achilles kills everything in his path,
July 17, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Recently, I’ve been talking a lot about fate. For example, in The Iliad, everyone knows the fate of Achilles – even Achilles. In fact, Achilles’ death is so unimportant to the telling of the tale, that it’s not even included in the book. This confirms that the end of the story is less important than the arc of the journey.
February 14, 2025
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
If we’re going to celebrate something on this Valentine’s Day, let’s celebrate dance. Take this performance by Dai Matsuoka with Jeffrey Ziegler on the cello. Filmed in black and white with great stone structures on the stage, Matsuoka plays with shadow. He moves through space, around the pillars sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly. The viewer must ask what these actions mean.
August 9, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Typically, I write a blog about my intended summer reading. Though I did not get around to writing that blog this year, I would like to share some of the great findings from the books on my summer reading list.
As a child, fiction wholly captured me. I remember feeling frustration at having to put down books like Anne of Green Gables or King of the Wind,
April 5, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
It’s an unlikely pairing, but reading Moby Dick feels a lot like taking a deep dive into a Queen album. First, you’re in gospel, then punk rock, then opera, and all of this about some seemingly mundane thing, like a bicycle. Or, in the case of Moby Dick, into the world of whaling. There are entire chapters on the shape of a whale’s head,
March 8, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
If there’s one thing you know about me by now, it’s that I value discussion. This past weekend, a number of students, staff and alumni gathered in Tempe, Arizona for a rare in-person meeting. We last met just before COVID, which caused a few years hiatus. Happily, we were finally able to renew this tradition. HMU President Joe Coulson started us off with an excellent introductory discussion about the similarities between music and poetry.
August 25, 2023
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s blog.
Don’t forget the sensations, Whitehead reminds us. Near the end of “Part II: Discussions and Applications” in Whitehead’s book Process and Reality, he mentions his frustration at the fact that philosophers (logicians, really) have discarded emotion as largely unworthy of discussion. He notes the various reasons that feeling is difficult to discuss, but then reminds us that it is also an essential aspect of experience.
July 8, 2022
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Happiness is of such importance that the Declaration of Independence uses it as a foundational principle. Considering its importance in my own society, one would think that I thoroughly understand the term. However, it is as slippery today as it has always been. Sometimes I believe that my own personal happiness is necessary because it will assist me to support those around me.
Ahab Rages and Odysseus Weeps: Trauma as a Core Concept for Humanistic Inquiry
June 24, 2022
Thanks to David C. Yamada, a 2022 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
The Great Books of the Western World series includes the two-volume Syntopicon, An Index to the Great Ideas, which contains 102 core ideas and accompanying entries that help to frame the major works to follow.
February 18, 2022
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
In Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomon few facts can be established. As with most murder mysteries, the viewer sees a tangled web of evidence unfold before them. Unlike most murder mysteries, the audience begins to assume the role of judge and jury. Though we never receive an answer to the crime, the audience weighs details from each testimonial.