Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Aphorisms and Observations

  • Travel

    Travel is no alleviation of travail but a form of it.

  • Under the Aspect of Eternity

    A man who is temporarily strong is weak if his strength does not extend to the indefinite maintenance of his strength.

  • Spiritual Practices versus Theological Dogmas

    It would be foolish to let the dubiousness of theological dogmas distract you from spiritual exercises and the good achievable by their exercise. Don't let the apparent absurdities of the Chalcedonian definition stop you from saying the Jesus Prayer.

  • Years Pass, Dates Repeat

    You were born only once but every year you have a birthday. Equally, you will die only once but every year you have a death day, the date on which you will die. It is just that you don't know what it is. Suppose you could know the date of your death but not the…

  • Evening and Morning

    The quality of the first will affect the quality of the second. An evening of drinking and dancing  is no preparation for a morning of thinking and trancing. Related: Suggestions on How to Study

  • Primum Vivere, Deinde Philosophari

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

  • One Reason the Present Matters

    The present is the matter of future memories. So live that one's memories will not be regrets.

  • The Ambiguity of Death

    Death is ineluctable and irrevocable, but still equivocal this side of the divide. It presents itself, by turns, as the worst of calamities and as a welcome release from an untenable predicament.

  • A Death Paradox

    The prospect of death, especially one's own, puts paid to frivolity. It makes us serious. The paradox, however, is that death, ineluctable and final, 'proves' the absurdity of human existence. Death imparts seriousness to a life that it also suggests is a joke.

  • What It Takes to Appreciate the Brevity and Vanity of Life

    Live a long life to appreciate that life is short; live a full life to appreciate that it is empty.

  • Knowing Less

    Knowing less of a person is often better for good relations than knowing more. The old forms and formalities have their uses. They come from a time when human nature was better understood, and it was understood that civility is better served by reserve than by 'letting it all hang out.' They come from a…

  • A Modest View of Oneself

    A modest view of oneself may reflect self-knowledge or lack of self-confidence. But to know which requires self-knowledge.

  • Strange Unbalanced Creatures

    One and the same person at one time unjustly mocks, belittles, ridicules, blasphemes, denigrates, scorns, and contemns. At another time he idolizes, unjustly places on a pedestal, engages in inordinate praise, and prostrates himself before a pseudo-god.

  • Brain and Space

    Searching the brain to find the mind is like searching outer space to find God.

  • The Believing Philosopher

    The religious belief of a believing philosopher is a reasoned belief, and even if his belief extends to the acceptance of mysteries that to the discursive intellect must appear contradictory, his is a reasoned mysterianism.