Eric Scheske

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Philosophy

Left-Hemispheric Knowledge

Left-Hemispheric Knowledge

💡I wrote this short essay 15 years ago, before I was even aware of the hemisphere hypothesis. This passage from the essay captures well the problem with left hemisphere thinking: "It takes a proud person to take incomplete knowledge and respond as though he has a complete grasp of

Pulling Thomas Aquinas Kicking and Screaming into the Twentieth Century

Pulling Thomas Aquinas Kicking and Screaming into the Twentieth Century

There are some authors who make you think, “I could read this guy, and just this guy, for the rest of my life. He'd bring me to greater and greater levels of wisdom and understanding.” For me, the German philosopher Josef Pieper (1904-1997) is such a writer. He

The Peasant Sentiment

The Peasant Sentiment

The Greatest Game Ever Played is a true story about an unaccomplished young golfer, Francis Ouimet, at the turn of the century and how he beat the world's top two golfers in an 18-hole playoff at the 1913 U.S. Open. Francis's goal to be a

What the Ape Man Can Teach Us About a Common Mental Mistake

What the Ape Man Can Teach Us About a Common Mental Mistake

Pithecanthropus is the ape-man. He's also known as the Java Man and the Peking Man. Latin-loving scientists call him Homo erectus, Homo modjokertenses, Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, Pithecanthropus robustus, and Pithecanthropus dubius. He is the creation of Dutch physician Eugene Dubois. In the 1890s, Dubois discovered a few bony remains

Five Dispositions that Can Make Your Life More Productive and Happy

Five Dispositions that Can Make Your Life More Productive and Happy

The philosophy of focusing on a slow and loving existence in the quiet now

Five Pieces of Furniture for Your Intellectual Living Room

Five Pieces of Furniture for Your Intellectual Living Room

These truths settle nothing but ought to inform everything

Don't Crowd Me

Don't Crowd Me

A few years ago, I went to my local high school's first home football game. Afterwards, I was exhausted. I mean, absolutely exhausted, like I had lead around my shoulders. I'd had a hard week at work, but the level of exhaustion was something else. I

Ben Franklin and the Mouse

Ben Franklin and the Mouse

How I finally accepted multi-tasking It had been there for years, but I had never noticed it. Until one morning when I found myself with a telephone receiver tucked under my neck while I talked with an acquaintance, a computer mouse in my hand while I surfed the Internet, and

Give Me Nothingness or Give Me Nothing at All

Give Me Nothingness or Give Me Nothing at All

Last Friday evening, I was supposed to meet friends at the Hillcrest Lounge shortly after 5:00. I got there at 5:10 and ordered a drink. The others were delayed, so I sat there for over twenty minutes, looking out the window. Other than Ted Nugent on the jukebox,

Cell Phones, Radio, and the Philosophy of Marshall McLuhan

Cell Phones, Radio, and the Philosophy of Marshall McLuhan

Breaking down a 21st-century matter by bringing back a 1960s icon. My first cell phone was the Motorola RAZR V3. That was in 2005. I didn’t use it a lot at first, but it made me more accessible to my clients. I would often use it to return calls