Top Highlights

• No strand carries on for ever; thus as some pass away, others join. That’s why human life is social: it is the never-ending and collective process of figuring out how to live. Every way of life, then, represents a communal experiment in living. It is no more a solution to the problem of life than is the path a solution to the problem of how to reac...
• Anthropologists, to the contrary, do their philosophizing in the world. They study – above all through a deep involvement in observation, conversation and participatory practice – with the people among whom they choose to work.
• Anthropology, in my definition, is philosophy with the people in.
• To be wise, to the contrary, is to venture out into the world and take the risk of exposure to what is going on there. It is to let others into our presence, to pay attention and to care.
• But we need wisdom as well. At the present juncture, the balance has tipped precipitously towards the former, and away from the latter. At no previous time in history, indeed, has so much knowledge been married to so little wisdom. It is the task of anthropology, I believe, to restore the balance, to temper the knowledge bequeathed by science with ...