justin weinberg

I’m not sure it’s the first time, but it’s the first time I’m aware of: a quote from me was part of a presentation at a non-academic event.

It was at Beyond Tellerand in Düsseldorf, an event “where creativity and technology meet”. One of the featured speakers was Jason Pamental, a “design strategist, UX leader, technologist, expert in web typography” an author, and the person behind Responsive Web Typography.* He gave a talk called “Curious Findings.”

Here’s an excerpt from a Google-translated description of the talk:

In “Curious Findings,” Jason Pamental talks about curiosity—and how it, as an attitude, influences our creative work. The talk is personal, reflective, and full of quiet ‘aha’ moments. Instead of talking about web typography as usual, Jason devotes himself to a topic that has occupied him since the death of his father. His father was a lifelong inquisitive person who enthusiastically immersed himself in new topics, from guitar playing to Japanese social models. Jason asks himself: can curiosity be learned—or is it a trait you either have or don’t have?

As part of the presentation, he pulled my description of curiosity from a post of mine at Daily Nous in which I put forward five virtues of philosophers:

• Humility – knowledge of the limits of one’s knowledge, including one’s knowledge of those limits
• Curiosity – the propensity to be dissatisfied with one’s lack of understanding, but not discouraged by it
• Charity – the disposition to first seek the wisdom in what others say
• Courage – the strength to not mistake uncertainty for danger
• Grace – gratitude to those who help save us from ourselves

Photographer Florian Ziegler caught the moment, which Pamental shared on BlueSky:

Those five virtues aren’t virtues just of philosophers, of course. I drew attention to them because they seem to capture some important aspects of the character of good philosophers, but one needn’t be a philosopher to have them.

As you can see at the original post at Daily Nous, some philosophers thought my list was incomplete or otherwise mistaken, and didn’t hesitate to tell me—suggesting that one virtue possibly missing from the list is candor.

It appears that Beyond Tellerand is putting videos of its talks online, gradually. I look forward to hearing Pamental’s talk when it’s released.

* Edited to add: I noticed that Pamental is lead designer at Chewy, the online pet superstore, which, by coincidence, I do shop at, and which, I should add, has amazing customer service.