Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Aphorisms and Observations

  • Personal Immortality

    If you wait until you have proven that there is personal immortality before you live as if there is, then you will never live as if there is. But if you live as if there is, then it will not matter whether you ever prove that there is.

  • Mistakes

    We have all made mistakes. But if we have learned their lessons, they have served a good purpose. Let us not compound our blunders by dwelling on them. Do not forget them, but do not dwell on them. Retention in memory subserves a salutary humility; to dwell on them impedes the project of one's life…

  • Paltry

    In the measure that we are satisfied by the paltry, in that same measure we are shown to be paltry. But there is both hope and comfort in the thought that no mere animal could take cognizance of its paltry life and be disturbed by it.

  • Troubles

    There are the troubles that come to us and there are those we bring upon ourselves. But death doesn't care to distinguish them. It will end both equally. "Are you quite sure? Mightn't there be post-mortem troubles consequent upon bad behavior here below?  Can you confidently rule out that possibility?"

  • Infatuation

    What saves infatuation from being merely that? Its being a love of God that doesn't understand itself.

  • The Conservative

    A conservative is one who harbors no illusions about human nature. His is an unblinking view into the depths of human depravity, and especially the depravity let loose by those in the grip of utopian, world-transforming schemes.

  • Solitude

    The measure of spiritual depth is the ability, not merely to tolerate, but to enjoy and profit from solitude.

  • Quality and Equality

    Quality of life is what counts, not equality of outcome. Enforce the latter, destroy the former.

  • Do You Seek Name and Fame?

    The world's too shallow a pond to justify one's wanting to 'make a splash.'

  • “History is written by the victors.”

    The cynicism of the saying presupposes the reality of the past.

  • An Advantage of Youth

    A joke tired and old to the old and tired can be fresh and young to the young and fresh.

  • Musing and Using

    "Your problems are artifacts of musing about language. Stop musing and stick to using." Could be, Ludwig, but I doubt it.

  • Skin in the Game

    One alone has 'skin in the game' of one's own life. This helps explain why the advice of others, however well-intentioned, is often useless or worse.  Listen to the advice of others, but  at last keep one's own counsel.

  • Socrates Supplemented

    We have it on good authority that the unexamined life is not worth living. It is equally true that the unlived life is not worth examining.

  • Perspective

    To be well thought of is good. It is as good as to be ill thought of is bad. But how bad is that?