Is Aspiration Mimetic?

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In My Brilliant Friend, Lila tries to get out of marrying Mary Stefano. "I think that aspirants don't really know what they're doing," says Foronte. But aspiration is mimetic; it's imitative and when we imitate, we often go wrong or make missteps. In this case, she went down the sun-known path and did something quite desperate.

Is a written dialogue the best way to learn from philosopher Agnes Callard?

If so, what does that say about philosophy? Is Plato’s Symposium about love or mere intoxication? If good people lived forever, would they be less bored than the bad people? Should we fear death? Is parenting undertheorized? Must philosophy rely on refutation? Should we read the classics? Is Jordan Peterson’s moralizing good? Should we take Socrates at his word? Is Hamlet a Cartesian? Are we all either Beethoven or Mozart people? How do we get ourselves to care about things we don’t yet care about? To what should we aspire to?

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Recorded March 22nd, 2018 Other ways to connect

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