Leading a Worthy Life Quotes

“Ours is the age of atomic power but also of nuclear proliferation, of globalized trade but also worldwide terrorism, of instant communication but also fragmented communities, of free association but also marital failure, of limitless mobility but also homogenized destinations, of open borders but also confused identities, of astounding medical advances but also greater worries about health, of longer and more vigorous lives but also protracted and more miserable deaths, of unprecedented freedom and prosperity but also remarkable anxiety about our future, both personal and national. In our age of heightened expectations”
― Leon R. Kass, Leading a Worthy Life: Finding Meaning in Modern Times

“The first gift from parents to a child, after the gift of life itself, is a name. The given name is a gift for a lifetime – indeed, for more than a lifetime. When we are gone, our name carved in stone and the memories it evokes will be, for nearly all of us, all that remains. Here is a gift that is not only permanent but possibly life-shaping. Here is a gift that cannot be refused; here is a gift that cannot easily be put aside; here is a gift that must be worn and that straightaway not only marks but constitutes one’s identity.”
― Leon R. Kass, Leading a Worthy Life: Finding Meaning in Modern Times

“Later, a different passion will lead the man to rename the woman, this time without reference to himself. Hearing that the woman will bear children, the only good news in God’s grim prophecy of the dismal human future (sorrow, sweat, toil, and death), he grasps at this straw of hope, renaming the woman Eve (Chavah), because she is the mother of all living (chai). From Adam’s hopefulness, Eve gets the first genuinely proper name in the Bible.”
― Leon R. Kass, Leading a Worthy Life: Finding Meaning in Modern Times

“bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh” strikes us as the verbalization of sexual desire; the man looks upon the woman as if she were his missing half, to which he now feels powerfully drawn in a desire for fusion. At the very least, one must admit that his delight in her leads him to exaggerate the degree to which she is “his own,” more same than other, and to see her as an exteriorized portion of himself. This is not the voice of pure reason naming; and the name, born of his desire, has consequences for their relationship.”
― Leon R. Kass, Leading a Worthy Life: Finding Meaning in Modern Times