Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Aphorisms and Observations

  • Toeing the Party Line

    He who toes the party line will sometimes be kept from error.  It depends on the party. (Note on usage: one toes the party line; one does not tow it!)

  • Thinking for Oneself

    Thinking for oneself, one ought eventually to arrive at the conclusion that so doing can lead one into a ditch as surely as thoughtlessly adhering to the dogmas of a sect.

  • The Advice of Others

    Given how bad the advice of others can be, one is well-advised to keep one's own counsel.

  • Keeping One’s Own Counsel

    Keeping one's own counsel, one realizes that sometimes two heads are better than one.

  • Intellectual Maturity

    A mark of intellectual maturity is the ability to tolerate uncertainty without fleeing to dogmas that make false certainties of objective uncertainties, but also without falling into a self-vitiating relativism.  The ideal is a love of truth that does not flag but also accepts no substitutes.

  • Reminded of the Eternal

    We are 'reminded' (Plato) of the eternal both by the most transient and the least transient of things.  The most transient teaches the ultimate ephemerality of all things finite.  The least transient teaches that it is no substitute for the eternal.

  • Realpolitik

    The weak invite attack.  That is a law of nature.  Nations are in the state of nature with respect to each other.  Talk of international law is empty verbiage without an enforcement mechanism.  There is none.  Or at least there is none distinct from every extant state.  The same goes for diplomacy.  There needs be…

  • Measurement by Regrets

    We are measurable by the nature of our regrets.  What do you regret?  Not having drunk enough good wine?  Not having amassed more wealth?  Not having given in to the temptation to commit adultery with willing women or men in faraway places?  Or is it rather your intellectual mistakes and moral failures that you regret?…

  • Read Old Books

    Old books are sovereign antidotes to the idiocies of the age, both the idiocies of style and those of content.

  • Magnificent yet Miserable

    The magnificence and misery of philosophy is but a reflection of the magnificence and misery of its author man, who, neither animal nor angel, is the tension between the two.

  • The Proper Order of Things

    First caffeination, then ratiocination.

  • The ‘Floaters’ of Memory

    We should look past useless memories to present realities in the way we look past the floaters in our visual field.  To concentrate on the detritus of memory is only to enliven what ought to be left to slumber.

  • A Way to Live

    Live as if life's chiaroscuro will resolve itself, not one day, but beyond time, into clear light.

  • Delicious Obscurity

    We who are obscure ought to be grateful for it.  It is wonderful to be able to walk down the street and be taken, and left, for an average schlep.  A little recognition from a few high-quality individuals is all one needs.  Fame can be a curse.   The unhinged Mark David Chapman, animated by Holden…

  • Ignorabimus

    We are ignorant about ultimates and we will remain ignorant  in this life. Perhaps on the Far Side we will learn what we cannot learn here.  But whether there is survival of bodily death, and whether it will improve our epistemic position, are again things about which — we will remain ignorant in this life.…