Category: Aphorisms and Observations
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An Open Question
G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica was very influential. But is it good?
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The Noble and the Base
If a noble man becomes aware of my moral defects, he is saddened, disappointed, disillusioned perhaps. But the base man reacts differently: he is gleeful, pleased, reassured. "So he isn't better than me after all! Good!" The noble seek those who are above them so that they can become like them. The base deny that anyone could be…
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Sexual Indulgence
"Sexual indulgence de-realizes the Transcendent for us." My first thought upon awakening from a strange sexual dream. "First thought, best thought," Kerouac used to say.
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Double Contractions
Scowled upon by schoolmarms for generations, contractions are now seen in formal writing. But formal writing, or what passes for such, has not yet sunk to the use of what I will call double contractions such as 'shouldn't've' and 'couldn't've.' But the times they are a changin' and with them the language.
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In Loco Parentis
When parents, teachers, clergy and others in the private sector abdicate authority, the authority of the state takes their place. Time was when universities were in loco parentis. No longer. Now it is the nanny state that is in loco parentis.
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The Euphemism of Obituary
How wonderful people are made to appear in death and how different from how they appeared in life.
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This Life
We sometimes speak of this life. For example, some assert that this life is all there is. The ability to thematize and question the whole of life may not prove, but it does suggest, that we are more than beings confined to this life. Even the average schlep, enmired in the mundane, his fledgling metaphysical…
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Internalize Cautiously
There must be no uncritical internalization of the norms and expectations of others. Internalize cautiously. Live your own life by your own lights from your own inner resources.
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Which Is Worse?
Which is worse? To deny that there is truth or to suppose that one is in secure possession of it? Either way inquiry is at an end and the road to truth blocked.
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House and Home
You can buy a house but not a home, the blather of realtors notwithstanding.
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Misplaced Religious Enthusiasm
In our day the asceticism of old has vanished to be replaced by athletic and dietary 'asceticism' hitched to the cart of vanity.
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Left-Wing Racial McCarthyism
Contemporary liberals hunt for racists the way McCarthyites in the '50s and early '60s hunted for commies, and they use their terms of opprobrium with the same sort of irresponsible semantic latitude. You could say that they are extreme semantic latitudinarians when it comes to their verbal bludgeons of choice. But a witch hunt by any other name…
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Moral Failure
Repeated moral failure has at least this salutary effect: it teaches us to be humble. Moral success can have the opposite effect of conducing toward spiritual pride — which undermines the very success of which it is the upshot. So, while regretting one's failures, one can derive a little consolation from the realization that they are…
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On Praise
We do not like to be praised if (a) the praiser is beneath us; (b) what is praised is something insignificant or common; (c) the praise is insincere, perhaps by having an ulterior motive; (d) the praise is mistaken in that we lack the excellence attributed to us. Particularly annoying is to be praised for…