To clarify why I liked it, I find comfort in the fact that someone else has thought about the same existentially terrifying things as me. (I read the beauty-terrible complaint as one of the nature of nature, rather than of something we can change.) So when I think about such things, I’m less likely to feel quite as alone if I recall this poetry. Somehow reading other people’s prose on the subject doesn’t strike the same effect as poetry.
It [the poem] might not relate to consequentialist thinking that easily, but I found it a good antidote to the negative emotional effects consequentialist thinking has. I expect other people’s mileage to vary; I have a specific personal set of philosophical neuroses, roughly identified as this sort of nihilism.
I’ve now upvoted your link to “Explaining vs. Explaining Away”, by the way, because I think it serves, for me, the same function as the poem. I’m guessing you didn’t have this reaction though?
To clarify why I liked it, I find comfort in the fact that someone else has thought about the same existentially terrifying things as me. (I read the beauty-terrible complaint as one of the nature of nature, rather than of something we can change.) So when I think about such things, I’m less likely to feel quite as alone if I recall this poetry. Somehow reading other people’s prose on the subject doesn’t strike the same effect as poetry.
It [the poem] might not relate to consequentialist thinking that easily, but I found it a good antidote to the negative emotional effects consequentialist thinking has. I expect other people’s mileage to vary; I have a specific personal set of philosophical neuroses, roughly identified as this sort of nihilism.
I’ve now upvoted your link to “Explaining vs. Explaining Away”, by the way, because I think it serves, for me, the same function as the poem. I’m guessing you didn’t have this reaction though?