Category: Aphorisms and Observations

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 when they ought to pursue money for the sake of philosophy. Doubly perverse, they turn an end into a means, and a means into an end. I like the Turkish word for human being, Insan, because it reminds me of ‘insane.’

You will tell me that there are exceptions. No doubt. But they prove the rule.

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 same goes for the windshield tourists who, seated in air-conditioned comfort, merely look upon nature as upon a pretty picture. The true acolyte of nature must combine in one person a robust and energetic physique, a contemplative mind, and a healthy measure of contempt for the world of the human-all-too-human. One thinks of Henry David Thoreau. Of the same type, but not on the same lofty plane: Edward Abbey.

It may not be possible for me to force you rationally to accept my view, but it may be possible to force you rationally to accept the proposition that our views are rationally unenforceable on each other. But even that is not clear.

The philosophy of the later Wittgenstein: A philosophical justification for being unphilosophical.

Wanting to be praised for one’s contempt of the world shows a lack of it.