Aug. 28th, 2008

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I'm really happy with the revised outline I made today for my materials on wonder. I hope I'll get time to work on it again soon. Although I'm not one for publicly posting a lot of my own thoughts on works in progress, I'd like to share something from R. Hepburn's essay, which is maybe the most thorough on the topic. Along with listing a great many types of situations in which one might experience wonder, Hepburn describes some of the conditions that are necessary for being receptive to the experience:

  • Recognizing an intrinsic value in the phenomenon (otherwise it may be interpreted instead with dread or as an absurdity).

  • Not shielding oneself from the experience through irony, cynicism, or indifference.

  • Not filtering the experience through a dread at the human predicament (that is, an apprehensive awareness of mortality).

  • Being receptive to acknowledging Otherness.

  • Not having an exploitive, utilitarian attitude.


  • What else? I spent an hour digging up a rose bush, we just watched the Beavers lose a close game to Stanford, and I barbecued some tasty hotdogs. I finally harvested my first three tomatoes of the summer, and they were really juicy. Also, I finally started started some of my usual sort of summer reading. This one's about a bicycle trip through India and Sri Lanka, on the path of the heroes in the Ramayana. Just exactly the kind of thing I like to read in the summer!

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