On the rare occasion that I seek the advice of a medical professional, I’m careful not to offend the good doctor by asking if his adherence to the ethical standards of his profession remains, after all these years, unwavering. That supposedly “sacred” Hippocratic oath to which he pledged himself way back in med school–does he …
“Violence, which plays a most conspicuous part in war, is a thing which belongs to wild beasts; wherefore we should take most diligent pains to temper it with humanity, lest by too much imitation of the beasts we forget how to be human”. Hugo Grotius Lest we forget how to be human, we should, for …
There are, for better or worse, two things with which Key West is synonymous: one is “Fantasy Fest”, the annual ten-day bacchanal at the end of October to which thousands of topless revelers flock. The other is Ernest Hemingway. With the exception of the striped concrete buoy that marks the island’s “Southernmost Point” , no …
Reflections on Ernest Hemingway, An American Icon Read More »
Summer 2020 An initial installment of my “Lives of the Philosophers”, composed in Plutarchian fashion during the summer of 2020. This series (on which I hope to expand) will comprise essays on the philosophers whom I find most interesting, and, more importantly, whom I can understand. It is my modest goal to compile a few …
On Friedrich Nietzsche: Lives of the Philosophers Read More »
Tell me, dear friend and reader: have you traveled lately? Have you thought deeply lately? Please—don’t withhold from me your answers. I know just how static and monotonous life can sometimes be. I know how inert and incurious we can sometimes get. If, to those two questions, you answered in the negative, here’s what I’ll …
“Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed; The next in majesty; in both, the last. The force of nature could no further go; To make a third, She joined the former two”. John Dryden In one’s attempt to identify the three poets …
The following is an essay/meditation from my sister project, Pneuma. If you’d like to listen to this meditation as a podcast, please visit my website, pneumameditations.com, or download Pneuma By Daniel Finneran on any of your favorite podcast platforms. Greetings my friends, and welcome to this episode of Pneuma. I’m your host, Daniel Finneran, and …
It’s my habit, whenever I’m in conversation with someone of a strong and unconcealed political bent, from whom the gift of a sound civic education and a talent for an idea’s thoughtful expression haven’t been withheld, to ask him which of America’s two central documents, the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence, he regards more …
Unlike most of his corpulent countrymen, John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, spent more time at the gambling than at the dinner table. A founding member of the notorious Hellfire Club, to which only the most refined rakes and well-born lechers in England were granted admittance, Montagu was, by any measure, an extraordinary man. …
Louis XVI: C’est une grande révolte! La Rochefoucault-Liancourt: Non, Sire, c’est une grande révolution. Upon learning of the fall of the Bastille in the summer of 1789, Louis XVI—the hapless (and soon to be headless) French king against whom popular opinion in the country had long since turned—responded with one of the great understatements of …
On Revolts and Revolutions: 18th-Century France and Modern China Read More »