Category: Aphorisms and Observations
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We Annoy Ourselves
There are not a few situations in life in which we are tempted to say or think of another, 'Your behavior is annoying!' Thinking this, we only make ourselves more annoyed. Saying it is even worse. For then two are annoyed. Instead of saying or thinking of something external to oneself that he, she, or…
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Friends and Enemies
Making enemies is worse than making friends is good.
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Three Kinds of Idle Talk
Intellectual talk can be as bad as mundane trivial talk, an empty posturing, a vain showmanship without roots or results. But worst of all is ‘spiritual talk’ which can distract us from both action and (what is better) contemplative inaction.
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Can You Get Through the Next Hour?
The present can always be borne – if sliced thinly enough – and it is only the present that must be borne. This aphorism of mine is in the Stoic spirit. It illustrates the Stoic method of division. Any process or procedure or undertaking which seems overwhelming or unbearable when surveyed as a whole can…
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Fool, Philosopher, Sage
The fool is never satisfied with what he has, but is quite satisfied with what he is. The philosopher is never satisfied with what he is, but is satisfied with what he has. The sage is satisfied with both, with what he is and what he has. Unfortunately, there are no sages, few philosophers, and…
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On the Suffering of Animals
Animal life is “poor, solitary, nasty, brutish, and short.” But this gloomy Hobbesian description must be balanced by the recognition that a suffering animal is not a man suffering as an animal. We must discipline our tendency to project and imagine. To imagine that a cat dying of cancer suffers as a man dying of…
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Suffering Pleasure
We suffer pain, but we also suffer pleasure. Fundamentally, to suffer is to be passive, to be acted upon, to be at the mercy of what is not oneself. Excessive pleasure and pain should both be avoided as one avoids heteronomy, the heteronomy of the not-self. Compare Plato, Timaeus 86c: . . . excessive pains…
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How Not to Begin the Day
A thoroughly bad way to begin the day is by reading a newspaper. For it is not only the hands that get dirty, and the house cluttered; the mind in its early morning freshness is degraded by useless facts, polluted with badly written opinions, and suborned by seductive advertising. There is plenty of time later…
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A Contradictory Being Who Issues Contradictory Demands
We want a subordinate, a friend, a spouse to do our bidding, to embody in action our intention, but also to show initiative, to anticipate our unstated wants and needs. Not content to command the other’s body, making of it an extension of our will, we want also to command the other’s freedom, making of…
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The Joy of Teaching and the Case of Santayana
Here are some negative assessments of the worth of teaching from my own experience. There are good things about teaching too. I’ll leave them for the reader to supply if he can. Teaching is the feeding of people who aren’t hungry. Teaching philosophy is the feeding of people who neither hunger nor know what food…
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Stumbling Block or Stepping Stone?
One man’s stumbling block is another’s stepping stone. The cross for example.
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First Live, Then Philosophize
Primum vivere deinde philosophari. But if after and while living one neglects to philosophize, then one is like the vintner who gathers grapes but neglects to press them for their wine. What is the point of gathering the grapes of experience if one fails to press them for the wine of wisdom?
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Nature’s Jealousy and Modesty
During almost any solitary hike through the wild there comes a moment of enchantment when the beauty of nature stands forth as if enframed. But the qualifier ‘solitary’ is necessary. Bring along a companion and you bring along society – and drive away nature. She is both jealous and modest: she doesn’t like to share…
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The Perversity of the Philosophy Professors
The philosophy professors treat philosophy as a means to an end when it is an end in itself. And they treat it as a means to something, whether money, social status, or whatever, which cannot be an end in itself but only a means to an end. They pursue philosophy for the sake of money…
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What It Takes to Appreciate Nature
Those who must wrest a living from nature by hard toil are not likely to see her beauty, let alone appreciate it. But her charms are also lost on the sedentary city-dwellers for whom nature is little more than backdrop and stage-setting for what they take to be the really real, the social tragi-comedy. The…