I’ve heard some unimpressive commencement speeches over the years at my school, and anticipate another this afternoon. To compensate: Tim Minchin - 9 LifeLessons youtu.be/FJ__a4qVE_g?...

What a lovely end-of-semester gift from a student in Philosophy of Happiness. Volume II includes the transcendent 1910 letter to Henry Adams I sent them off with: “ I am so happy I can stand it no longer!”

My exam-day welcome. I used to have that nightmare.

Percy Warner Park, Nashville 11.16.25

A gift from the bride. Priceless.

Younger Daughter’s wedding was picture-perfect, with wonderful weather after a stormy day and before a cold one. My reception toast channeled “my philosophical muse” on the art of knowing what to overlook. Hope they’ll never overlook the glory of love for a “fellow bird”…

Where does the time go? substack.com/@philoliver/...

Boo! substack.com/@philoliver/...

Elon couldn’t kill it. open.substack.com/pub/philoliv...

There was something sweet about having the No Kings protesters parade by as I waited to get my Jimmy Carter book signed.

Happening today, thanks to Parnassus Books, Vandy, and a legion of devotedly-“efficient” bibliophiles. www.sofestofbooks.org

Autumnal season’s greetings, fellow friends of William James. I first began to think of WJ in casually-friendly terms back in the Fall of my first year of grad school at Vanderbilt in the ’80s… wjsociety.org/news/

Those who most need to grasp this message will find it too long. They won’t read it. open.substack.com/pub/jmarriot...

Moving on. substack.com/@philoliver/...

Excellent Lyceum address from Megan Craig, on staying human(e) and present in the face of mortality. #mtsu #AppliedPhilosophyLyceum

Megan Craig (Stony Brook University) is MTSU's Applied Philosophy Lyceum speaker Friday... RELATION AND RUPTURE AT THE END OF LIFE Friday, September 26, 2025 • 5 p.m. College of Education, Room 164 Middle Tennessee State University philoshap2.blogspot.com/2025/09/a-co...

youtube.com/live/fQnMDJ7... (starts at about 25”… great to see former students Sneh and Victoria on the panel!)

A conversation with Megan Craig substack.com/@philoliver/...

Our conscious ground time is brief, we must ask our questions now. open.substack.com/pub/philoliv...

I consider it part of my teaching mission to lead students into the stacks philoliver.substack.com/p/recommende...

It’s been a lovely retreat here at the Doghouse. But all good things etc.

In the doghouse, in a good way substack.com/@philoliver/...

Grant's battlefield heroism was matched by the courage to complete his memoirs, pain and pressure be damned, as cancer closed in and the light dimmed. When he finished writing, he was done. Equally impressive was his winning battle against alcohol. Twain understood…

Dennett, Rorty, & a pair of Hofstadters open.substack.com/pub/philoliv...

The Theory of Organic Evolution. Audio recording: Winterton Curtis (1922), ch VII. open.substack.com/pub/philoliv...

A “humanistic philosophy of life” extollling “spiritual joy in living” that we ought not to forget. open.substack.com/pub/philoliv...

How to resist the “flatlining of thought”… open.substack.com/pub/philoliv...

It's the birthday of E.B. White (books by this author), born Elwin Brooks White in Mount Vernon, New York (1899)… who said: "I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

Added a colorful & hopeful new freedom flag today ☀️

Endorsing Twain’s patriotism and Emerson’s independence open.substack.com/pub/philoliv...

Contrary to the Woody Allen line suggesting Kafka’s perpetual moroseness (“self-esteem a notch below Kafka’s”), “he found love and happiness in the last year of his life…’Everything was done with laughter…[he was]always cheerful. He liked to play; he was a born playmate, always ready for some fun.’”

Looking forward to the centenary re-enactment of (an interpretation of) the 1925 Scopes Trial, this July in Dayton TN. open.substack.com/pub/philoliv...

Happy anniversary to Darwin’s Bulldog

Tybee Island pier, June ‘22

First thing I saw from my bedroom window this morning. Another good reason to wake early.

Scenes from last week’s Berkshires holiday

Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, which I picked up at the Williams College bookstore a week ago, was an ideal flight companion on our way home on No Kings Day eve. “The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot…”

Yesterday we ascended Mount Greylock, the highest peak in Massachusetts. Today we fly home, renewed by our holiday and resolved to resist the pathetic little aspiring autocrats who wouldn’t recognize an elevated perspective if it bit them. And it will.

The Mount, Edith Wharton’s “cottage”

Cheshire MA. Enjoying our Berkshires holiday. Williamstown, Lenox, Pittsfield, Dalton, …

Nice view of the Hoosic River and Ashuwillticook* Rail Trail from our rental in the Berkshires, and nice find on the shelf. (*”pleasant river between the hills”)

Anniversary Bird jposopher.blogspot.com/2025/05/old-...

I was a grad student at Vandy during his time there. Fascinating, complicated man. www.wordonfire.org/articles/rem...

The church next door has constructed a slight impediment to our “pedestrian use”…

Opened the pool yesterday, displaced a seasonal resident.