The motion picture “Forrest Gump” earned six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Its most celebrated line perfectly captures the simplicity of the main character: “Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates: You never know what you’re gonna get.”
We do not know what Mama said about philosophy, but if she said it was like a box of chocolates, she would be far from the mark.
My besetting problem as a philosophy teacher was to convince my students that philosophy is really nothing like a box of chocolates which are individual entities and separated from all the rest in the box. We get to pick and choose our chocolates. We cannot pick and choose great ideas; they are eternally interconnected in special ways. We cannot choose peace all by itself. …
