Practice in Still Life Fragments, Essays, and Lectures

Practice in Still Life explores how philosophical and contemplative traditions transform our perception and understanding of reality. Through a series of fragments, essays, and lectures, these pieces show how practice fundamentally shapes our way of being in the world and the aesthetic nature of perception itself. By studying the works of saints, mystics, monastics, and philosophers, A.E. Robbert demonstrates how different modes of attention—both intellectual investigation and contemplative practice—serve as complementary vehicles for philosophical illumination. Central to this work is how askēsis (spiritual exercise) mediates and joins us together with the reality we bring to presence through practice. The ideas and figures treated herein are varied in senses at once historical, disciplinary, and existential, dealing in themes from phenomenology, philosophy, and religion alike. Equal parts practical and metaphysical, first personal and theological, they engage questions of perception and agency but also transcendence and immanence.