Tag Archives: obituary

A tribute to Michael Jerryson

28 Sunday Aug 2022

Posted by in Early and Theravāda, M.T.S.R., Modernized Buddhism, Politics, Social Science

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I only recently became aware that Michael Jerryson passed away last year – far too young, barely older than myself. I would like to offer my tribute to him here.

Michael Jerryson (1974-2021)

I knew Michael personally because of a wonderful biannual invite-only conference that brings together scholars of Buddhist ethics. He and I certainly clashed, for he would claim that scholars – even in ethics! – should not themselves be taking normative positions. I am not exactly friendly to that view. But the debates themselves were friendly and warm, as they should be – and as Michael himself was.

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Lessons from a favourite teacher

04 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by in German Tradition, Place, Politics

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This semester I’m teaching Indian philosophy and spent a lot of time thinking about pedagogy. It’s hard for me to do that for very long without thinking about the best teacher I ever had, Warwick Armstrong, who taught me as a McGill undergrad over twenty years ago. I tried to contact him recently to let him know what a difference he had made, and found that that would not be possible: Warwick Armstrong is no longer with us.

I missed my chance to tell Warwick how great he was. But I can at least let the world know. Continue reading →

On wanting it darker

04 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by in Aesthetics, Death, Despair, External Goods, God, Hope, Judaism, Mahāyāna, Modernized Buddhism, Politics

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Leonard Cohen at the Arena in Geneva, 27 October 2008

Leonard Cohen at the Arena in Geneva, 27 October 2008

2016 has taken many great musicians from us. Early in the year we lost Prince and David Bowie. Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip is still with us for now, but the band played its last concert. And then there was Leonard Cohen.

Cohen began his career as one of the long parade of 1960s singer-songwriters who temporarily changed the phrase “folk music” so that it now referred to the music of educated urban élites. He earned a place alongside Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan – many of whom he played with. In that context he developed his talent for enigmatic, evocative lyrics. But as far as I’m concerned, none of his real greatness comes from that period. If he had died as young as Janis Joplin (or Amy Winehouse), I wouldn’t be writing this tribute, and a few decades from now I’m not sure that he would be remembered.

Cohen’s real brilliance came out in the 1980s and early 1990s, when decades of whisky and cigarettes had lowered his sensitive folkie voice into a gravelly growl, and his music took a darker turn to match. Continue reading →

In memoriam: Claude Vipond

23 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by in Death, Family, Protestantism

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My maternal grandfather, Claude Vipond, died peacefully last Tuesday. His life was long – he reached 95 years. Claude was a doctor and a World War II veteran, but I knew him entirely as a grandfather – an often larger-than-life figure at family gatherings, delivering corny jokes with an enthusiasm that made them hilarious. At large Christmas gatherings he would read to the grandchildren, not some sentimental Victorian Christmas story but Stephen Leacock‘s marvelously tongue-in-cheek Caroline’s Christmas.

The irreverence of Leacock’s self-subverting story left a strong impression on me as a boy – much like the movie The Princess Bride, which came out when I was the age of its child narratee. In a different way from my father, “Caroline’s Christmas” helped teach me the pleasures of being an outsider, with an ironic detachment expressed in humour – in ways perhaps more profound than I realized at the time. In many ways I think that story really sums up my grandfather’s spirit. Continue reading →

The innovations of S.N. Goenka (1930-2013)

06 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by in Early and Theravāda, Meditation, Modernized Buddhism, Monasticism

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S.N. GoenkaI found out via Justin Whitaker the sad news that S.N. Goenka died this week. The name needs little introduction for Yavanayāna Buddhists, but others may wish some additional insight.

Goenka, born in Burma, was a pioneer – really the pioneer – of what is now known as vipassanā meditation. This term vipassanā (usually translated “insight”) is found in the classical Pali texts, and so is the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta from which Goenka originally drew the meditation technique. Notably, though, the term vipassanā does not show up in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta itself. And that detail, I think, is telling about Goenka’s whole project.

I recall Goenka claiming, like many other contemporary Buddhist teachers, that what he was teaching was not new; it was just the teaching of the Buddha. That statement is not false exactly, but it’s not the whole truth. Continue reading →

The virtue of leadership

09 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by in Humility, Leadership, Virtue, Work

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I was intending this week to continue the series of posts about value and reality, but that can wait. For this week, there’s been another of the memorable lives that ended in 2011.

I speak, of course, of Steve Jobs, the co-founder and former CEO of Apple Computer. Jobs’s figure loomed large over my life a decade ago. My first wife had convinced me to switch to a Mac in 2000, and I embraced everything Mac and Apple with all the zeal of the newly converted. She and I regularly went together to the Apple retail store in Cambridge for Jobs’s keynotes, just to watch him announce new products with his famous showmanship. I have been far less enthused about Apple recently, especially the arbitrary restrictions the company places on iPhone apps – the exact kind of controlling monopolistic behaviour that Apple was once best known for fighting against. I still happily use Macs and iPods, though. And more importantly for today, I learned important lessons from following Apple and Jobs so devotedly in the 2000s – above all about leadership. Continue reading →

Love is better than anger: Jack Layton (1950-2011)

28 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by in Anger, Buddhism, Fear, Flourishing, Gentleness, Happiness, Hope, Patient Endurance, Politics, Protestantism

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Jack LaytonIt will not do my readers much of a service to announce that Jack Layton has died. To non-Canadian readers, the name will probably mean little or nothing; Canadian readers in the past week will have heard of little else.

Jack Layton was the leader of the left-wing New Democratic Party, the only political party whose candidates I have ever voted for. He died of cancer on 22 August, at the relatively young age of 61 – at the peak of his career. Until Layton took over the NDP, the party had never received more than 44 of the roughly 300 seats in the Canadian Parliament. Earlier this year, under his leadership, the party earned over 100, most of those in Québec – where the party had never held more than a single seat before. It received more than twice as many seats as the third-place Liberals, a party which had governed Canada so often that it viewed itself as the “natural governing party.” And a great deal of this rapid rise derived from Layton’s personal popularity. His funeral has now been receiving coverage in Canada comparable to that of Princess Diana’s – at a time when it is held as a commonplace that people hate politicians and are fed up with them. His life and death moved a great many. My American wife, who a year ago didn’t know who Jack Layton was, was moved to tears watching the coverage of his memorials.

Now why am I going on about Jack Layton on a philosophy blog? Continue reading →

Of real and imaginary evils and goods

31 Sunday Jul 2011

Posted by in Aesthetics, Daoism, Epics, Flourishing, Greek and Roman Tradition, Happiness, Serenity

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A week ago today, the talented young British R&B/pop singer Amy Winehouse died. I think I can sum up the popular reaction thus: everybody was sad; nobody was surprised. The chorus to Winehouse’s most popular and famous song went: “They tried to make me go to rehab; I said no, no, no.” The lifestyle she lived matched her lyrics exactly – as when she was hospitalized for an overdose of heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and alcohol.

It’s a shame that the world lost such a great singer so early. And yet, the same louche excess that killed Winehouse was part of the appeal of her songs. Nobody wants to hear a soulful voice sing “I ate all my vegetables and flossed daily,” even if this idea is put in more poetic cadences.

Since her death I’ve been thinking about the 20th-century French philosopher Simone Weil – who was not much older than Winehouse when she died herself. Continue reading →

Can philosophy be a way of life? Pierre Hadot (1922-2010)

12 Wednesday May 2010

Posted by in Analytic Tradition, Christianity, Epicureanism, Faith, French Tradition, Greek and Roman Tradition, Health, Metaphilosophy, Mindfulness, Monasticism, Natural Science, South Asia, Stoicism, Therapy

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Skholiast recently pointed to a sad event that I’d been unaware of until he mentioned it: the death of Pierre Hadot. Skholiast’s involvement with Hadot, from the look of things, is deeper than mine – I’ve read some of his work and referred to him a couple of times on the blog, but I don’t think that he has (yet) had a deep effect on my thinking. Still, I find myself very much in sympathy with Hadot’s approach, and I think his loss is a real one, so I’d like to offer a few musings in memoriam.

The idea that I always associate with Hadot is encapsulated in the translated English title of one of his major works: philosophy as a way of life. Hadot, a scholar of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, treats this philosophy as a way of life, a set of “spiritual practices,” and in so doing he helps remind us of the distance between ancient and modern philosophy. And I don’t just mean that he gives us yet another reason to critique contemporary philosophy departments, which (whether analytic or continental) typically seem far from any ancient ideal of the love of wisdom. I mean also that he reminds us why philosophy has so little place in contemporary Western culture. Continue reading →