Small acts of kindness have the power to transfigure the bleak face of existence. While gratefully remembering the words and gestures I have been fortunate to receive, I also regret the occasions I let slip where, at no cost to myself, I could have offered a word of encouragement or support to someone in need.
Category: Aphorisms and Observations
Intellectual Hypertrophy
Weight lifters and body builders in their advanced states of muscular development appear ridiculous to us. All that time and money spent on the grotesque overdevelopment of one's merely physical attributes ___ when in a few short years one will be dust and ashes. But isn't the intellectual equally unbalanced who overdevelops his logical and analytical skills to the neglect of body, emotions, and spirit? Is the intellectual wrestler all that superior to the physical one? Is one kind of hypertrophy better than another? What good is discursive hypertrophy if it is paid for in the coin of mystical and moral and physical atrophy?
Gerede
Conversation about trivial matters can be idle and useless, and usually is. But the same is true of conversation about 'deep matters.' In some moods, intellectual and spiritual conversation is more offensive to me than mundane chit-chat. Talk can degenerate into profanation. We need periodic recuperation from it in the form of entry into silence.
Meditation Better Than Travel
It is better to dive below the surface of consciousness than to move around on the surface of the earth.
In the Interests of Prandial Harmony
Some of you will be at table with relatives today. Experientia docet: Such occasions of putative conviviality can easily degenerate into nastiness. A prophylactic to consider is the avoidance of all talk of politics and religion. But to paraphrase G. K. Chesterton, What else is there to talk about? An exaggeration, no doubt, but God and Man in relation to the State does cover a lot of ground.
Socialism and Ambition
Like a commitment to socialism, worldly ambition is natural and appropriate in the young, but a sign of foolishness in the old.
Ambition and Disillusion
The young, astride their steeds of ambition, should gallop boldly into the fray. But the old should know when to quit the game and dismount into dis-illusion. Homo ludens, when sapient, knows when to become de-luded.
Modesty and Vanity
I hope that this site amounts to more than an exercise in vanity, though modesty demands that vanity be recognized as a motivation!
Philosophical Vulgarity
Is it not vulgarity in a philosopher to think that he will settle the ultimate questions in short order? One thinks of the Tractarian Wittgenstein and of Ayn Rand. Connected with this is the philistinism of certain forms of clarity such as that of the logical positivist. One recalls Rudolf Carnap's pathetic refutation of Heidegger. And then there is the vulgarity of the later Wittgenstein's speleo-conservatism which, leaving everything in the Cave just as it was, takes the form, not of facile solutions to problems, but of their very denial.
Why Physical Culture?
In part it is about control. I can't control your body, but I can control mine. Control is good. Power is good. Physical culture as the gaining and maintaining of power over that part of the physical world which is one's physical self. Self-mastery, as the highest mastery, must involve mastery of the vehicle of one's subjectivity. Control of one's vehicle is a clear desideratum. So stretch, run, hike, bike, swim, put the shot, lift the weight. In short: rouse your sorry ass from the couch of sloth and attend to your vehicle. 'Ass' here refers to Frate Asino, Brother Jackass, St Francis' name for his body. Keep him in good shape and he will carry you and many a prodigious load over many a pons asinorum.
(Interesting that Ger. Arsch, when it crossed the English Channel became 'arse,' but in the trans-Atlantic trip it transmogrified into the polyvalent 'ass.' Whatever you call it, get it off the couch.)
The Paltry Mentality of the Copy Editor
The copy editor, like a testosterone-crazed male cat, likes to mark his territory. His territory is your manuscript. But like a cat, he is lazy and easily bored, which leads to inconsistency. He starts out changing every occurrence of ‘identical with’ to ‘identical to,’ but then tires of this game so that the end result is a mishmash. He would have spared himself the bother had he appreciated the simple fact that in the English language ‘identical with’ and ‘identical to’ are stylistic variants of each other.
My advice to editors: stick to questions of formatting, and to the correction of obvious spelling and grammatical errors. Keep your political correctness to yourself. Don't replace the gender neutral 'his' with the abomination 'his/her.' Keep your stinking leftist politics out of my manuscript. And don’t try to be what the Germans call a Besserwisser: don’t presume to know better what I want to say and how I want to say it. My writing is an exacting labor of love; your editing is a lousy chore you can’t wait to be done with.
Now, having vented my spleen, I look at the other side of the question. Where would the journals, and we who publish in them, be without editors and their grunt work? May they be adequately compensated! May their teaching loads be reduced! May 72 black-eyed virgins greet them at the portals of paradise!
Travel Disruptive but Good for the Soul
For me travel is disruptive and desolating. A little desolation, however, is good for the soul, whose tendency is to sink into complacency. Daheim, empfindet man nicht so sehr die Unheimlichkeit des Seins. Travel knocks me out of my natural orbit. Even an overnighter can have this effect. And then time is wasted getting back on track. I am not cut out to be a vagabond. I Kant hack it. I do it more from duty than from inclination. But I'm less homebound than the Sage of Koenigsberg.
Adding Insult to Injury
That we are formed and malformed by our environments from birth on is bad enough. It is made worse by those who want to see us as nothing but products of environment. These reductionists of course make an exception in their own cases. It is as if they say to us: "We are able to discern truth, but you are not. What we say expresses our insight, but what you say only expresses your conditioning." That is the injustice of the psychologizer.
Coraggio
One can always get through one day to the next — except for one day. And one will get through that one too.
First Impressions
You will find it difficult to undo the damage of a bad first impression. One must realize that too many people base lasting judgments on them. This is folly of course, but it may be even worse folly to attempt to disembarrass them of their folly. The world runs on appearances, a fact made worse by the pseudo-authority of first appearances. One eventually learns that this world of seeming not only really is a world of seeming but is necessarily one. One learns to deal with it and abandons the attempt to find plenary reality where it can exist only fitfully and in fragments.