Category: Uncategorized
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Frankenstein, His Monster, and Moral Responsibility
“You are in the wrong, ” replied the fiend; “and instead of threatening, I am content to reason with you. I am malicious because I am miserable. . . You, my creator, would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?” (Frankenstein,…
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Borges’s “The Witness”: Memory’s Preservation
“Events far-reaching enough to people all space, whose end is nonetheless tolled when one man dies, may cause us wonder. But something, or an infinite number of things, dies in every death, unless the universe is possessed of a memory, as the theosophists have supposed” (Jorge Borges, The Witness). What is memory? Malleable, imperfect memory,…
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Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: The Art of Being Present
“This is it, I think, this is it, right now, the present, this empty gas station, here, this western wind, this tang of coffee on the tongue, and I am patting this puppy, I am watching the mountain. And the second I verbalize this awareness in my brain, I cease to see the mountain or…
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Smeagol or Gollum, Pity or Hatred: How Are We to View The Slave of Ring?
“Pity? It’s pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play in…