Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Aphorisms and Observations

  • Seductive, but Fallacious

    For an anarchist to claim that without laws there would be no criminals would be like claiming that without chemists there would be no chemicals.

  • Be Glad there is no Physiognomy of Belief

    If the faces of people were as radically different as their beliefs, how few of our fellows would we recognize as human!

  • Inversions

    The bad weans us from this world and is therefore in that measure good; the good ties us to it and is in that measure bad.

  • Affinity

    True affinity is not that of consanguinity or of propinquity.  True affinity is spiritual similarity.

  • Time

    Time is a goddess of healing — for a time.  She heals the wounds that come inevitably to those who must march to her beat.  She brings us ill and makes us well again until such time as she does us in for good.

  • Doubt

    An engine can be used for braking, even though an engine is not a brake, but a motor.  Similarly with doubt. The main use of it is as an engine of inquiry, not as a brake on belief.

  • Who Needs Sex?

    We the living do not need sex.   Only the ones not yet living need it.

  • Civic Engagement

    One use of civic engagement is to help bring about an arrangement in which one needn't civically engage with people one finds morally and politically repellent.

  • The Leftist

    A leftist is a person who can justify unspeakably evil deeds to advance a worldview according to which people are basically good and evil does not exist.

  • The Need for Outside Help

    A human life is too short for the acquisition by oneself of the wisdom needed to live it well — or to end it well.  And the same goes for the appropriation of the hard-won wisdom of one's predecessors: the brevity of life militates against the needed appropriation as much as against the needed acquisition. …

  • Philosophy, Pride, and Humility

    Philosophy can fuel intellectual pride. And it manifestly does in far too many of its practitioners.  But pursued far enough and deep enough it may lead to insight into the infirmity of reason, an insight one salutary benefit of which is intellectual humility.  Our patron saint was known for his knowing nescience, his learned ignorance. …

  • Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

    When I asked Harry if he uses the Internet to look up old friends, "Let sleeping dogs lie" was his reply.  His attitude, qualified, recommends itself.    The friendships of old were many of them mere friendships of propinquity.  They were born of time and place and circumstance, and they died the death of distance, whether temporal…

  • The Compartmentalizer

    He keeps his head together by keeping his head compartments apart. Related articles What is to be Done?

  • Overheard Among Old Men

    As we slow down, time speeds up!

  • Pray to Pray Well

    And this in two senses.  Pray to become good at praying.  And pray for assistance in getting good at it.