Philosophy

Co-authors Dave Jilk and Brad Feld examine business culture through the lens of quotes from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

At Google-Nest I saw up close and personal a “riotous jumble of styles.” Nest was “polished,” Google was “fluid”; Nest “disciplined,” Google “experimental”; Nest “premium,” Google “ubiquitous.” And so on. Brad holds degrees in management science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also an art collector and long-distance runner, and has completed 25 marathons as part of his mission to finish a marathon in each of the 50 U.S. states. Ultimately, the totality of these artistic styles (like it or not, brand marketers and human performance professionals!) is what a company’s culture is. All one needs to do is go back to review how Google’s “brand perception” was affected by the public exposure of its “internal culture.” This exposed the notion that despite our best efforts at separate brand building and culture building, the quintessence of the company shines through in myriad ways—imbued by both the internal culture and the external brand. “Culture is, before all things, the unity of artistic style, in every expression of the life of a people. Don’t let it “grow organically,” because that will result in that “riotous jumble of styles.” People will work subliminally at cross-purposes, which radically impedes teamwork and success. This unity is also true of IBM, though the style itself is stodgy and uninspired. A strong culture and a strong brand are crucial to success, and both must be built proactively, but they are distinct. Is it reasonable to think of the employees of a company as “a people”? “Culture” developed its modern meaning in the 19th century as an out- growth of the nascent field of anthropology. The interactions that employees have with customers, vendors, and the general public—in how they answer phones, in how they handle negotiations, and in the style of the Twitter feed—leave a distinctive emotional response.

What is the importance of listening to children? What are the challenges in teaching cosmopolitanism through world history? What does it look like to teach ...

Dennis Sansom says we shouldn't be too quick to pluck philosophers out of their own historical contexts in order to put them into ours.

It is not that Nussbaum and others are wrong to rely on the Socratic method to advance the ideal of a progressive education. After several failed attempts to define piety, in which Socrates shows that Euthyphro is logically inconsistent in his definitions, Euthyphro says that a pious (or holy, or good) action is the same as one that is loved by all the gods. That involved a form of democracy in which all property-owning men could and should contribute to the cultural and moral life of the city. The dilemma is this: is an action pious because it is loved by the gods, or is it loved by the gods because it is pious? Also to be soothed, and gently and reverently entreated when angry, even more than a father, and either to be persuaded, or if not persuaded, to be obeyed?” He tells Crito and the others that Athens has given him every good thing he owned and loved, and if he rejected the court’s judgment against him to escape to another country, he would undermine the faith of Athens’s citizens in their state. Rather, he was telling them that to be a good citizen of Athens, a respectable person within the Athenian political life, to contribute to the necessary social institutions of law and marriage, they must genuinely be virtuous people, fully understand what life and society requires of them, and not merely follow conventions. Through the intellectual pursuit to expose logical fallacies in public discourse, we can follow Socrates’ lead and so cultivate a democratic society that is intelligent, respectful, and open to all people. Friedrich Nietzsche, by contrast, saw Socrates as the bane of Western civilization, for putting so much emphasis on rational inquiry over emotion, and so suppressing what is really important in Greek culture (to Nietzsche) – the absurd and tragic elements of life. We can and should reason together in a Socratic way, and our campuses should prepare us to do so.” (Cultivating Humanity, 1997, p.19) Socratic dialogue with others – in which we pursue a “coherent, contradiction-free account of some central legal and political concepts, concepts such as equality, justice, and law” (p.21) – becomes the paradigm for teaching students how to reason correctly, and this correct way of reasoning critiques both the political right and left. But although he never intended to establish his own school of thought or philosophical movement, over the centuries people have used his method of intellectual inquiry and his opinions to justify a myriad of positions in philosophy, religion, politics, and psychological counseling. Socrates was born in Athens in 469 BC, to a stonemason and a midwife.

In 1989 Bernstein was elected President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. Bernstein died on 4 July 2022 at the age of 90. Midnight Philosophy. A Philosophy Now online initiative to combat the isolation of thinkers during ...

For one hour fortnightly on Thursdays, at midnight London time, thinkers from all over the world started getting together on Zoom to consider issues from everyday life, from “food” to”prejudice”, “love” to “boredom” from a philosophical point of view. We believe the right approach is to engage and challenge companies and other partners to do more to make the global economy less carbon intensive.” Forty prominent individuals, including a former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as many leading scientists, who have worked closely with the museum in the past, said they were deeply concerned about its fossil fuel sponsorship deals and that they were withdrawing their support for the museum until a moratorium was announced. Academic philosopher and public intellectual Richard J. Bernstein stood out for battling to overcome the entrenched divide between ‘continental’ and ‘analytical’ philosophy. The business interests and practices of your major fossil fuel sponsors go directly against this.” The museum’s director, Ian Blatchford, said: “We agree that climate change is the most urgent challenge facing humanity but we don’t agree with the argument from some who say we should sever ties with all energy companies with an association, direct or indirect, with fossil fuels. One example is the case of Nijeer Parks, who was charged with aggravated assault, unlawful possession of weapons, using a fake ID, possession of marijuana, shoplifting, leaving the scene of a crime, resisting arrest and hitting a police officer with a car. He was arrested on the strength of a ‘high profile comparison’ from a facial recognition scan of a photo from what turned out to be a fake ID left at the crime scene.

Perhaps the most famous allegory in philosophy is Plato's Allegory of the Cave, in which Plato, via Socrates, compares people who lack philosophical ...

For Plato, myth is a means of bypassing reason and tapping straight into the more dominant emotional and irrational aspects of the soul. In the Charmides, Socrates tells the young Charmides, who has been suffering from headaches, about a charm for headaches that he learnt from the mystical physician to the King of Thrace. However, this great sorcerer warned that it is best to cure the soul before curing the body, since health and happiness ultimately depend on the state of the soul: One ought, then, to treat the soul first and foremost, if the head and the rest of the body were to be well. And the Chariot metaphor leans on his theory of knowledge, theory of forms, and theory of love, showing how they all fit and work together: the chariots of the souls that are most alike to the gods are able to ascend high enough for their charioteers to lift their heads above the rim of heaven and glimpse the universal forms. The Allegory of the Cave does not quite cut it as a myth, insofar as it lacks the sacred dimension that is the core of myth. This is the voice of Meno, a young mercenary general with a philosophical bent, in Plato’s Meno :

Lawrence Evans contemplates Aristotle's argument that happiness is the ultimate goal of human life, and that it can best be found in philosophical contemplation ...

by Phil Witte by Harley Schwadron by Phil Witte

'More songs about Buildings and Food' was the title of a 1978 album by the rock band Talking Heads, about all the things rock stars normally don't sing ...

I’ll be back in a few minutes” (The Mandarins, p.827). I’ll do the same. Have you tried to describe the aroma of coffee and not succeeded?” (Philosophical Investigations, §610) Have you ever felt the lack of such a description? “There were two things in life for which Kant had an intolerable liking; coffee and tobacco,” reported Thomas De Quincy in The Last Days of Kant (p.118). Philosophers disagree on many things, however. Iris Murdoch, the Anglo-Irish philosopher and novelist, did not share Kant’s obsession: “Coffee, unless it is very good and made by somebody else, is pretty intolerable at any time” (The Sea, The Sea, p.90). Philosophers, likewise, tend to have a narrow focus on epistemology, metaphysics and trifles like the meaning of life.

The conventional wisdom isn't quite right: Failure is not a great teacher. It's how we reflect on failure that instructs. It's something I learned ...

Bio: Roi Ben-Yehuda is the Founder and CEO of NextArrow, an organization dedicated to helping innovative teams and leaders develop courage to achieve excellence. Through our conversation, it became clear that she was working on several projects and didn’t know which one to prioritize, causing things to fall through the cracks. As Navy Seal Team 6 Commander Dave Cooper put it: “The most important words a leader can say are, ‘I screwed that up.’” It’s why most people attribute their success to their efforts, and their failure to circumstances, a bias, known as the fundamental attribution error. It’s up to a company’s leaders not to avoid those failures—a futile exercise at any organization—but to make sure those failures are stepping stones to learning and growth. Most leaders have unexamined assumptions about failure that impact the way they work. Research shows that psychological safety increases in the long term when leaders are open about their own developmental areas. To bring those biases to light, take a few minutes to conduct what I like to call a failure audit. Here’s how to make sure that’s not the case for yours. It’s a goal that’s easier said than achieved when admitting to failure goes against our basic human wiring. We didn’t have a mechanism in place to alert us when clients hadn’t signed a contract before we delivered our services. We needed norms, values, rituals that allowed us to slow down and spend some time with our failures.

You've read one of your four complimentary articles for this month. You can read four articles free per month. To have complete access to the thousands of ...

but you sure know how to drink wine with your mates!” You can read four articles free per month. How can you not know to pick up groceries for the kids?”

Marcus Aurelius had it right — Stoicism addresses our most complex problems, and can help leaders remain steadfast and consistent in rocky times.

The first time you really apply Stoicism to the way you lead, it can feel uncomfortable and disconcerting because you are likely fundamentally changing how you made decisions and interacted with people previously. As leaders, it is incumbent upon us to be calm and steady in a crisis — and to make decisions that benefit the whole, rather than act from self-interest. Most people tend to make a judgment and then look for facts that justify the judgment — a causal connection to explain their choices. And where there is dialogue, there is a significantly greater chance of solution when people are calm and willing to listen. Although this decision was in opposition to the nepotistic dynamics in which I found myself, it was fundamentally the right thing to do, both morally and for the organization. So, I read Meditations and loved its unsentimental and unvarnished approach to the human experience: The condition of humanity is universal to all humanity.