Category: Aphorisms and Observations

Inappropriate Niceness

Most of us prefer nice people to surly pricks. And no doubt we should all try to be nicer to our world-mates. But there is such a thing as inappropriate niceness.

I am following at a safe distance the motorist in front of me. Then said motorist brakes for a jaywalker, not to avoid hitting him, but to allow him to cross. The jaywalker is violating the law; why aid and abet his lawbreaking? Why be nice to someone who shows no respect for the rules of the road? Why risk causing an accident? These are some questions the inappropriately nice should ask themselves.

Slow Thoughts in a Fast Medium

There is a bit of a paradox in my project, the blogging of philosophy. Sauntering along life's byways, cooling his heels at the margins of society, the philosopher bids us slow down! Whither the headlong mad rush? Quo vadis? Take thought, he suggests, take heed. Socrates knew how to stand stock still in the scene of strife and consult with his daimon. Wittgenstein, denounced in these pages as a Cave philosopher, yet had the good sense to recommend as salutation among philosophers, "Take your time!" (Der Gruß der Philosophen untereinander sollte sein: Laß dir Zeit! Vermischte Bemerkungen.) And in a place unknown to me, Franz Brentano, once a Catholic priest and no stranger to the contemplative disciplines, observes that "He who hurries is not proceeding on a scientific basis." (Wer eilt, bewegt sich nicht auf dem Boden der Wissenschaft.)

So in the belly of the blogospheric beast I too do my bit to slow things down.

Whittaker Chambers on Beethoven

Whittaker Chambers (Witness, p. 19) on the Third Movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony:

. . . that music was the moment at which Beethoven finally passed beyond the suffering of his life on earth and reached for the hand of God, as God reaches for the hand of Adam in Michaelangelo's vison of the creation.

Well, either the adagio movement of the 9th or the late piano sonatas, in particular, Opus 109, Opus 110, and Opus 111. To my ear, those late compositions are unsurpassed in depth and beauty.

In these and a few other compositions of the great composers we achieve a glimpse of what music is capable of.  Just as one will never appreciate the possibilities of genuine philosophy by reading hacks such as Ayn Rand or positivist philistines (philosophistines?) such as David Stove, one will never appreciate the possibilities of great music and its power of speaking to what is deepest in us if one listens only to contemporary popular music.

The Urge to Scribble

You got out of bed to write down another of your wretched aphorisms?  Thereby compromising your rest?  Is not sleep's oblivion superior to the pseudo-reality reachable by words?  And will you make of that an aphorism?  Well, now that you're up you may as well relieve the pressure on your bladder too.