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Tag: Hannah Arendt

Man the Maker

January 10, 2022December 16, 2022 ~ Warren Zhu ~ Leave a comment

What is the antidote to transience? The fact that everything enters and everything goes? The futility that bubbles out of death and dying? What can anchor us and provide us with meaning in the symbolic order of identities, where one thing is equivalent to another? (E.g. money, status, abstractions. Not terrible in themselves, but often … Continue reading Man the Maker

The Death of the Public

October 20, 2021 ~ Warren Zhu ~ Leave a comment

Hannah Arendt was a master at making distinctions. One of her most enlightening is the distinction between the public, the social, and the private. The public is where men (the gendered pronoun is intended because the concept of the public realm rose out of the experience of the Greek polis, consisting exclusively of man) act … Continue reading The Death of the Public

Minecraft and Heidegger

October 9, 2021December 16, 2022 ~ Warren Zhu ~ Leave a comment

The foremost imagery that I associate with the later Heidegger's analysis of technology is the Mine. A place where the logic of "challenging" nature, measuring the resources available, the most efficient ways to mine, the instrumental value of the stones, thus seeing everything as a "standing reserve" to be used and exhausted, "enframing" nature in … Continue reading Minecraft and Heidegger

Chaos and Personal Responsibility

August 24, 2021May 3, 2022 ~ Warren Zhu ~ Leave a comment

We all know the thing about chaos—a chaotic system is sensitive to initial conditions, where the effect of a minor variation grows exponentially. But it has just occurred to me what it means for personal responsibility.  It is often said that a feature of modernity (late capitalism, as Marxists would say) is the increasing "bureaucratization" … Continue reading Chaos and Personal Responsibility

“Why do you love me?”

August 6, 2021December 16, 2022 ~ Warren Zhu ~ Leave a comment

Unedited essay for the UChicago supplement prompt: “Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.“—Miles Davis (1926–91). (It is way over the word limit. But...) Note from Dec 16 2022: I got waitlisted by UChi. I still think it is one of the best pieces of writing that I did in my college admissions era … Continue reading “Why do you love me?”

Be Myself?

July 24, 2021May 3, 2022 ~ Warren Zhu ~ Leave a comment

Hannah Arendt wrote about this in Between Past and Future: We are always subject to social pressures. When parents reject any form of discipline of the child, in fear of destroying their childhood innocence, of tyrannizing them, they are only leaving children to the tyranny of the larger social group. I can see this clearly … Continue reading Be Myself?

An Essay Concerning Morality

June 30, 2021December 16, 2022 ~ Warren Zhu ~ Leave a comment

(An essay written for John Locke Competition, Philosophy. Highly Commended. Question is: "Are you more moral than others? How do you know? Should you strive to be more moral? Why or why not?"—admittedly, it is a brutal question and quite confused, but nevertheless interesting. Unfortunately, because of the word limits (and considering the palate of … Continue reading An Essay Concerning Morality

The One Moral Question

April 24, 2021May 3, 2022 ~ Warren Zhu ~ Leave a comment

This is taken from Hannah Arendt's brilliant book, Responsibility and Judgement. What is the most central moral question, the one that holds itself against evil's banality, is never the imperative: 'thou shalt' (either in the commandments or from Kant), nor the normative: "I ought", I "should", but the I can't, which stems from the categorical: … Continue reading The One Moral Question

Love as a Human Faculty (Some Sketches)

April 16, 2021 ~ Warren Zhu ~ 1 Comment

These are frantic, unorganized notes that I types onto my phone. Enjoy. I took the ideas about Augustine and Dun Scrotus from Arendt's Life of the Mind. “Love seeketh not Itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care; But for another gives its ease; And builds a Heaven in Hells despair.” To Augustine, love … Continue reading Love as a Human Faculty (Some Sketches)

The Joy in Writing (And Writing Blogs)

March 9, 2021 ~ Warren Zhu ~ 1 Comment

The venture into the public sphere. The joy in revelation. The fear in revelation. Loneliness. Dasein's authentic mode of being.

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(Selfie with my friend who's working through some difficult relationship problems in his notebook.)

Who am I?

Warren Zhu. Harvard ’26 (sorry, this one’s for the algorithm).

An emotionally unstable towel who does some Math/Philosophy/Lit. but likes talking with people more.

Used to do a lot of Philosophy, and enjoys Hegel, Kant, Heidegger, Žižek, handstands, Wallace, Arendt, sleep, Nassim Taleb, and Wong Kar-wai. Now is super interested in (and concerned about) AI safety.

Doesn’t like to talk American politics, take photos, or look back at his past posts (or the really really bad TED Talk he has on YT).

Am sometimes sad for no reason. And generally writes the blogposts when that happens.

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