Many are the goddesses that tempt the young, the romantic, the idealistic. Time's alchemy will cause the masks of some to slip and reveal the bitch Impecunia. Cirmcumstances straitened by devotion to one's art or one's cause are better tolerated in the days of youth. I do not advise that you abandon your high aspirations: they may be what is best in you. Just realize that you have to pay your dues if you want to play the blues. It don't come easy.
Category: Aphorisms and Observations
Boredom and Bores
To the intellectually awake, nothing is boring except the palaver of bores.
Striving
Striving, we find what we can accomplish. But we also experience our limits, some of which are not merely ours but humanity's. Both upshots of striving are salutary. Learning what we can and cannot do we learn the extent of our powers and thereby who and what we are. Self-knowledge is good. So strive.
People Are What They Are . . .
. . . and they don't change. No doubt there are exceptions. Few and far between, they prove the rule. As a rule of thumb, one most useful in the art of living, assume that Schopenhauer was right in his doctrine of the unalterability of character. Never enter into an important relationship with a person, marriage for example, with the thought that you will change the person to your liking. That is highly unlikely. What will happen is that you will induce a change in yourself, one in the direction of frustration and disappointment.
The Good Life
People think they know what the good life is. Do they? I know one thing about the good life: the inquiry into what it is is essential to it.
The Cowardice of One’s Convictions
Some are praised for having the courage of their convictions. But if one has the wrong convictions, it would be better were one to have the cowardice of one's convictions.
On Reading Philosophers For the Beauty of Their Prose
To read a philosopher for the beauty of his prose alone is like ordering a delicacy in a world-class restaurant for its wonderful aroma and artful presentation — but then not eating it.
I had that thought one morning while re-reading for the fifth time William James' magisterial essay, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life. So rich in thought, and yet so distracting in its beauty the prose in which the thoughts are couched. James and a few other philosophers are great writers — Schopenhauer and Santayana come to mind — but the thought's the thing.
Clarity is Not Enough
This scribbler has penned paragraphs which, upon re-reading, not even he could make head nor tail of. That is often a sign of bad writing. It can also indicate sloppy thinking. But it may also show a noble attempt to press against the bounds of sense and the limits of intelligibility. And if philosophy does not make that attempt, what good is it?
There is, after all, such a thing as superficial clarity. (He said with a sidelong glance in the direction of Rudolf and Ludwig.)
Living Right While Thinking Left
Liberals who have amounted to something in life through advanced study, hard work, deferral of gratification, self-control, accepting responsibility for their actions and the rest of the old-fashioned virtues are often strangely hesitant to preach those same conservative virtues to those most in need of them. These liberals live Right and garner the benefits, but think Left. They do not make excuses for themselves, but they do for others. And what has worked for them they do not think will work for others. Their attitude is curiously condescending. If we conservatives used 'racist' as loosely and irresponsibly as they do, we might even tag their attitude 'racist.'
Care for the Future
So live in the present that the future's memories won't be regrets.
Paradox and Contradiction
Philosophers love a paradox but hate a contradiction. They love that which stimulates thought but are understandably averse to that which stops it dead in its tracks.
Sacrificium Intellectus
No thank you. A God that would demand the sacrifice of the intellect or even the crucifixion of the intellect is not a God worthy of worship. Imagine moving at death from the shadow lands of this life into the divine presence only to find that God is nothing but irrational power personified, the apotheosis of arbitrarity. What could be more horrible? Far, far better would be to be annihlated at death.
Ersatz Eternity
What has been, though it needn't have been, always will have been. What time has mothered, no future time can touch. What you were and that you were stands forever inscribed in the roster of being whether or not anyone will read the record. You will die, but your having lived will never die. But how paltry the ersatz eternity of time's progeny! Time has made you and will unmake you. In compensation, she allows your having been to rise above the reach of the flux. Thanks a lot, bitch! You are one mater dolorosa whose consolation is as petty as your penance is hard.
Our Humble Port of Entry
We humans are surprisingly proud given our lowly and inauspicious entrance into the world. In a line often attributed to St. Augustine, Inter faeces et urinam nascimur: we are born between feces and urine. And we revert soon enough to something of equal value: dust and ashes. Entry through a vagina, exit through a smokestack. On and off the stage in a manner most unbecoming and most unlike our proud strut upon it.
Courtesy
I suggest that we think of courtesy as a mean between rudeness and obsequiousness. The courteous are neither churls nor courtiers. This despite the etymology of 'courtesy.' (As a separate post could argue, there is no such thing as the true meaning of a word, and even if there were, etymology would not guide us to it.) To put it crudely, so that even a contemporary can get the point: the courteous neither show, nor kiss, ass.