The true skeptic does not deny truth. He is an inquirer who so loves truth that he will accept no substitutes, no easy answers, no comforting dogmatisms. That some skeptics become Pyrrhonian slackers is no argument against skepticism properly understood. The true skeptic is an inquirer, not a denier.
Category: Aphorisms and Observations
Tempted?
Indulgence weakens; resistance strengthens.
The Shroud of Turin
Remarkable is the contrast between the face of serenity and the body brutalized.
Ignorance of Evil
Ignorance is evil, and the worst ignorance is the ignorance of evil itself: that it is real, and that free will is real, without which evil cannot exist.
Brevity Protracted
The longer the life, the longer the exposure to the brevity of life.
To Be Human
To be human is to be flawed; to be conservative is to know this.
As the World Grows Dark
The darkening of the world has this advantage: it inspires us to seek for light where it is more likely to be found.
Fruitful Disagreement
When there is an excess of agreement, discussions in politics and elsewhere are often tiresome and boring: the parties are as if in competition to see who can express the most outrage. One is preaching to the preachers. But an excess of agreement is better than a paucity thereof. The ideal discussion, however, is one in which broad agreement on fundamentals leaves room for disagreement on details. We are farther from that ideal than we have ever been in these no longer United States.
Husserl and Heidegger
Husserl seems to think that everything can be brought into the light of adequate, indeed apodictic, evidence. The dark and hidden get their revenge in his most distinguished student, Heidegger.
Double Pleasure
He who writes enjoys a double pleasure, that of writing, and that of reading what he has written.
Allergy to Unclarity
Philosophers who are allergic to unclarity make the mistake of thinking that anything that cannot be made totally clear is meaningless and can be dismissed, as if all and only the clear is real.
The Old Soul
The old soul sees, while his body is yet young, that this world has nothing to offer us that is finally satisfactory.
Memory
Memory is the brake to time's onrush. Brakes sometimes fail. Do these metaphors fail too?
But I have never met a more scintillating interlocutor!
Talking to oneself is often idle talk too.
Procedural Liberalism
The law ought to be both protective of rights and directive of duties. This requirement rules out a purely procedural liberalism.