January 27, 2008 – When I think of Rose, I think of respect. I respect her tremendously. Here eyes are her soul.  On our walk this morning, I took a copy of Hannah Arendt’s “Responsibility and Judgement” a book I love, and which has had a huge influence on me in my life, as she deals with moral conduct, and the right way to make decisions, something I have often struggled with. I read this book often, and think of it often, and the more I read it, the better I do. Lenore and Izzy are not interested in my rantings, sniffing around, but Rose always stares at me intently, as she did above this  morning, perhaps thinking I will finally take her to the sheep. I love this dog.
  In the past year, I struggled with decisions often, as I saw people do things that did not cause them to respect themselves
  Moral conduct, wrote Arendt, depends primarily on the conversations we have with ourselves. We must  not contradict ourselves by making exceptions in our own favor. We must not place ourselves in a position in which we would have to despise ourselves. This should be enough not only to enable us to tell right from wrong, but also to do right and avoid wrong.
  “It certainly is not a matter of concern with the other but with the self,” I read aloud in the woods, “not of meekness but of  human dignity and even human pride. The standard is neither the love of some neighbor nor self-love, but self-respect.”
  Then, Arendt quotes Kant’s “Critique of Practical Reason”:
 “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me.”