Well, in the era of Donald trump the word Philosophy with its four syllables might find its way into a tweet. Bit not as likely as "sad" or "fake" or some other monosyllabic pejorative. So it is nice to know that tomorrow there will be a marriage that actually has all the marks of a philosophical union. I shall embed the Tweet of the NYTimes story so you can read it at your leisure. My motivation was initially to say something about integrating Triadic Philosophy and Abba's way, the basic foundation on which my theory of Cybercommunities is based.
But then I got interested in the wedding story. So I shall in 400 words try to illuminate both things.
The Wedding
This young couple -- they are both 38 and were students at Bard College where they met -- will live in my city, New York, and he will do rare book things at the public library while she pursues a freelance career in archival and research for galleries and estates. They were brought together by a philosophical interest and the term "Emersonian" cropped up, explaining the photo above. People seem to marry later. I had three children growing up when I was 38. But it is nice to see the tradition of a marriage which combines the intellectual with the loving has not gone out of fashion.
It speaks well of a liberal arts education like that favored by the Leon Botstein sorts of the world
The bride is named Farrar Fitzgerald and I give to her the apposite thought that knowledge and love are similar. As a former scout and minor dealer in rare and scarce books and such, I nod to Thomas Lannon, the groom. He will be working a few blocks from where I type.
Farrar Fitzgerald and Thomas Lannon: Searching for Knowledge and Discovering Love https://t.co/RQhmwsunnm
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) May 6, 2017
Triadic Philosophy
Triadic Philosophy is my term for a philosophy I created that derives from the thinking of Charles Sanders Peirce.The key elements of this approach, called pragmaticism to differentiate it from pragmatism, are thinking in three stages instead of two, combining reality with ethics and aesthetics, and an insistence on achieving measurable results to substantiate any hypothesis and declare it at least provisionally true.
It is an optimistic philosophy that assumes the goal of logic is goodness and that the world is at once continuous, fallible and evolutionary. But this philosophy is linked to what I call Abba's Way.
Abba's Way
Abba's way is my name for the understanding that comes once one sees that the churches have been based on the false premise that they are the sole possessor of the truth about things. No one is the sole possessor of truth. No institution rules. In fact, the cardinal root value of Abba's Way is non-idolatry and its ethic is the pursuit of tolerance, helpfulness, and democracy.
That's enough of a mouthful for a Saturday article. Best wishes to the hopefully happy couple and to my readers as well.
