Aphorisms and Observations – Page 42

Preacher and Slacker

There is someone worse than the preacher who falls into hypocrisy, namely, the moral slacker who is not even to the point where hypocrisy is possible.

We must learn to accept people's love, good wishes, and benevolence as gifts without worrying whether we deserve these things or not, and without worrying whether we will ever be in a position to compensate the donors. Similarly, we must learn to accept people's hate and malevolence as a sort of reverse gratuitous donation whether we deserve them or not.

We are often unjustly loved and admired. So why should it bother us that we are often unjustly hated and contemned? Try to see the latter as balancing the former.

Body as Temple

The secular too think of the body as a temple, a temple of the ego.

Knowledge, Belief, Action: Three Maxims

1. Don't claim to know what you merely believe even on good evidence.

2. Don't claim to believe what you are not prepared to act upon.

3. Don't let insufficient evidence prevent you from believing what you are better off believing in the long run than not believing in the long run.

A Reason to Take Care of Oneself

It may be that moral and intellectual progress is possible only here. After death it may be too late, either because one no longer exists, or because one continues to exist but in a state that does not permit further progress.

It is foolish to think that believers in post-mortem survival could have no reason to value their physical health and seek longevity. Even a Platonist who believes that he is his soul and not a composite of soul and body has reason to prolong the discipline of the Cave. For it may be that the best progress or the only progress is possible only in the midst of its speluncar chiaroscuro.

Philosophia longa, vita brevis. It is precisely because philosophy is long that one ought to extend one's earthly tenure for as long as one can make progress intellectually and morally. And this, whether or not one has the hope that Vita mutatur non tollitur.

The Afterlife of Habit upon the Death of Desire

Desire leads to the gratification of desire, which in turn leads to the repetition of the gratification. Repeated gratification in turn leads to the formation of an intensely pleasurable habit, one that persists even after the desire wanes and disappears, the very desire without whose gratification the habit wouldn't exist in the first place. Memories of pleasure conspire in the maintenance of habit. The ancient rake, exhausted and infirm, is not up for another round of debauchery, but the memories haunt him, of pleasures past. The memories keep alive the habit after the desire has fled the decrepit body that refuses to serve as an engine of pleasure.

And that puts me in mind of Schopenhauer's advice. "Abandon your vices before they abandon you."