Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Aphorisms and Observations

  • Truth and Institutions

    The truth is too magnificent a thing to be the the property of any one institution.  Too magnificent a thing, and too elusive a thing to be owned or housed or patented or reduced to the formulas of a sect or finitized or fought over.

  • Spiritual Visibility

    In the course of life one meets thousands.  But one is visible to only one or two.

  • The Pointlessness of Worry

    The dreaded event will either occur or it will not. If it occurs, then the worrier suffers twice, once from the event, and once from the worry. If it does not occur, then the person suffers from neither.    Therefore, worry is irrational.  Make provision for the future, be aware of the possibilities of mishap, take…

  • The Modal Asymmetry of Birth and Death

    Our births were contingent, our deaths will be necessary. (The literary value of this aphorism, if you care to assign it any, trades on an equivocation, which I leave to the reader to detect.)

  • ‘Superb’

    'Superb' is still able to convey a hint of the Latin, superbia, pride. A thoughtful writer bears this in mind.  But in a world of thoughtless readers, there is not much call for thoughtful writers. This reflection occasioned by a sentence from a secondary source on Pascal: "[The extrinsic proofs of Christianity] are humiliating to the…

  • Bucket List

    Give some thought to the question whether the entries on it just might precipitate an early kicking of it.

  • On Exercise in Nature

    There is the beauty, the silence, the peace, the nonsocial reality of nature, but there is also the shift away from the mind back to the sweating, toiling body on earth. Exercise in an artificial environment is not the same, nor is 'windshield tourism.' You should take your Nature straight, in a direct encounter, boots…

  • History

    History is as much  a projection of politics into the past as it is a knowledge of the past. 

  • George Carlin

    The poor guy died in adolescence.

  • Life’s Sandwich

    All of life's uncertainties are sandwiched between two certainties.  We were born and we shall die.

  • Death Bed Reading

    What will you have on your death stand? Whose thoughts will occupy your mind in your final moments in the dying of the light, as the breath comes short and the cancer cells conquer organ after organ?   Speaking for myself, I'll take Plato over Putnam, Boethius over Butchvarov, Aquinas over Quine, the Psalms over Sartre.…

  • Wrong Division of Philosophical Labor

    The most important questions, the existential ones, should not be left to the sloppiest and least able thinkers. Equally, careful and rigorous thinkers should not confine themselves to unworthy or merely preliminary topics. For example, some of the best heads in philosophy work exclusively in the philosophy of science. But for a philosopher to be a…

  • The Tip of the Iceberg

    An aphorism that states its reasons is no aphorism at all.  But the reasons are there, though submerged, like the iceberg whose tip alone is visible. An aphorism, then, is the tip of an iceberg of thought. 

  • Why I Like Parties

    I like parties. I derive considerable satisfaction from not attending them. There is such a thing as the pleasure of conscious avoidance, of knowing that one has wisely escaped a situation likely to be frustrating and unpleasant.  If others are offended by my nonattendance, that I regret.  But peace of mind is a higher value…

  • Partners in Crime

    The will suborns the intellect, while the intellect rationalizes the will.