Crossing the divide: A website about Literature, Art & Philosophy by Venkat Ramanan

Below is my "Question of the Month" response which was published in  Philosophy Now , April/May 2016  (see subscriber only link) (I was awarded a random book for my response.) What’s Your Best Advice or Wisdom? Mars Rover (By NASA/JPL/Cornell University, Maas Digital LLC [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons) Imagine if Alice hadn’t followed the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole. She would then not have drunk the potion (or was it ate the forbidden fruit?) and met the March Hare and the Mad Hatter. My best piece of wisdom is therefore for us  not to lose our sense of wonder about the world around us . If not for our inquisitiveness, we would still be living with the Flintstones. Evolution did not have in mind a Buddha or a Beethoven; we nevertheless went on to discover fire, invent the wheel, and to write Hamlet. An inquiring mind led us also to relativity, quantum physics and all the natural laws. If we had not uncovered them, we would still be conflating

This was originally posted as a "viewpoint" at Aeon Conversations Cicero looked upon philosophy as a way to prepare for death as it worked in two ways. Firstly, reason and contemplation distracted us from quotidian cares and drew our souls from our bodies in a semblance of death. Secondly, the purpose of gaining wisdom is to teach ourselves to not be afraid to die. Death and taxes, Benjamin Franklin noted, are the only two inevitable things in House of Excise Collector (built in 1841), Prague (Photo: Wikimedia/Public Domain) our lives. We can hope to influence taxes by changing our politicians every now and then or, in the case of despotism, get rid of our rulers by more violent means. But we have no choice but to accept death. Cicero looked upon philosophy as a way to prepare for death as it worked in two ways. Firstly, reason and contemplation distracted us from quotidian cares and drew our souls from our bodies in a semblance of death. Secondly, the purpose of