Youth always has its share of idealism, whereas old age encourages reflection and more than a little guilt for past misdemeanours. Being seventy-four, and a member of a designated vulnerable group during the current Covid-19 pandemic, can be more than a little confusing, given mixed messages from the media. Should I stay at home and self-isolate? And if so, how should I pass my time?
I began by revisiting my profile on LinkedIn, an online platform for professional networking. I had joined LinkedIn around nine years earlier, when coming to the end of my academic career, whereupon I had posted formally, with the aim of promoting my brilliance, fantasizing that no one in the world of education could do without my special skills. Attempting now to update my profile, I was hit by the stark realization of how much my perception of life had changed over the years.
I then rewatched a film that as a sixteen-year old I was much taken with – Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 masterpiece The Seventh Seal, which is not, as you might think, a nature film but is inspired by the Book of Revelation. The film features death, plague, and famine amongst the horsemen of the Apocalypse, and those scenes, shot in black and white, have fascinated me for years. The stakes of the game of chess played throughout the film between Death and the knight are not merely the crusader’s life and soul, but his feelings about God and his general disillusionment with religion and humanity. However, given the Covid situation, the film’s plague setting seemed all-too-familiar, and upon re-watching it, far from being overwhelmed by its brilliance as I was in my youth, it terrified me!
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Denne historien er fra April/May 2021-utgaven av Philosophy Now.
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The Two Dennises
Hannah Mortimer observes a close encounter of the same kind.
Heraclitus (c.500 BC)
Harry Keith lets flow a stream of ideas about permanence and change.
Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.
Is Driving Fossil-Fuelled Cars Immoral?
Rufus Duits asks when we can justify driving our carbon contributors.
Abelard & Carneades Yes & No
Frank Breslin says 'yes and no' to presenting both sides of an argument.
Frankl & Sartre in Search of Meaning
Georgia Arkell compares logotherapy and atheistic existentialism.
Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray, now ninety-two years old, was, among many other things, one of the most impactful feminists of the 1970s liberation movements - before she was marginalised, then ostracised, from the francophone intellectual sphere.
Significance
Ruben David Azevedo tells us why, in a limitless universe, we’re not insignificant.
The Present Is Not All There Is To Happiness
Rob Glacier says don’t just live in the now.
Philosophers Exploring The Good Life
Jim Mepham quests with philosophers to discover what makes a life good.