One who strives for the ideal but falls short is no hypocrite, but at a certain point the quantity and the quality of his fallings short must plant in his mind a seed of doubt as to whether he really avoids hypocrisy. He preaches continence, say, but finds it hard to contain his thoughts, which are not particularly seminal, let alone his sap, which is.
Category: Aphorisms and Observations
More Than an Animal
Both the realization that one is an animal and the realization that one is more than an animal show that one is — more than an animal.
One Root of Leftist Intolerance of Religion
Religions make a totalitarian claim, and the Left, being totalitarian, cannot abide competitors.
A Divine Activity
Philosophy is a divine activity because only a god has the time and the peace of mind for it. The full-time mortal, embroiled in the flux and shove of material life, is too much in need of guiding convictions to be much of a pursuer of the impersonal truth.
In auspicious circumstances, with the right interlocutors, or embraced in the bliss of solitude, the mortal ascends for a time into the ether of pure thought and becomes for a time a god, a part-time god.
But although philosophy is god-like, God himself has no need for it. Wisdom itself, in plenary possession of itself, needn't seek itself. It is itself.
Dreaming and Waking
When I wake up from a dream I realize I was dreaming; but when I go to sleep and dream there is no parallel recognition that I was awake.
Serious philosophical juice can be squeezed from this observation. Some other time.
Anarchism and Eliminativism
Anarchism is to political philosophy as eliminative materialism is to the philosophy of mind. But untenable positions have their uses. They serve as foils for the development of sensible theories.
Charity Before Obituary
If we were as charitable to our fellows when they were alive as we are when we write their obituaries — what a different world it would be!
Partiality
All partiality is philosophically suspect. Das Wahre ist das Ganze. (Hegel) But how live without it?
The Solid Bourgeois
The solid bourgeois may dismiss as so much nonsense philosophy, poetry, and other products of questers and romantics — all the while subscribing to the socially sanctioned nonsense of some respectable established church.
Be neither bourgeois nor bohemian, the one to the exclusion of the other. The true maverick is that dialectical blend, the sublatedness (Aufgehobensein) of both, that blend known as the BoBo, the bourgeois bohemian.
Life is Hard
Even if your life is easy physically, economically, psychologically, and socially, it is bound to be difficult ethically, religiously, and philosophically. Having solved the lower problems, the higher problems loom.
Two misfortunes. One is to be so burdened with the lower problems that one is never in a position to tackle the higher. Think of those whose energies are spent battling debt or obesity or substance abuse. The other misfortune, or rather mistake, is to have solved the lower problems but to remain at their level without advancing. Think of those who pile up loot far in excess of their needs while ignoring the condition of their souls, or the jocks who worship at the shrine of physical hypertrophy while allowing their minds to atrophy.
The higher his problems, the higher the man.
There is no escaping problems here below. Life is a riddle and a predicament.
Pole or Soul?
Peary and Cook fought over who got to the North Pole first — as if the goal were worth attaining. What doth it profit a man to attain the Pole if in the process he lose his soul?
Grateful for Gratitude
Be grateful for whatever gratitude you can muster. It is the sovereign antidote to resentment. Why, among the preponderance of so much that is positive in your life do you focus on the little that is negative?
On Postponing Self Mastery
Wait too long to develop self-control and you may find that your vices have abandoned you before you have had a chance to abandon them. In divorces of all kinds it is better to be the one who sends packing rather than the one sent packing.
Truth and Consolation
Nothing is true because it is consoling, but that does not preclude certain truths from being consoling. So one cannot refute a position by showing that some derive consolation from it. Equally, no support for a position is forthcoming from the fact that it thwarts our interests or dashes our hopes.
Against Best Play
It may be that in philosophy it is as in chess: against best play one can only hope for a draw.