Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Athens and Jerusalem

  • The Question of Private Judgment

    I have commented critically on the Roman Catholic teaching on indulgences. One who refuses to accept, or questions, a teaching of the Church on faith or morals may be accused of reliance upon private judgment and failure to submit to the Magisterium or teaching authority of the Church.  Two quick observations on this accusation. First, for…

  • Michael Liccione on Private and Collective Judgment

    Herewith, some comments on an excerpt from Michael Liccione, Faith, Private Judgment, Doubt, and Dissent. So understood, private judgment can yield at least a measure of certitude, but not in any fashion certainty. I agree that private judgment cannot deliver certainty, if objective certainty is in question. But I should think that the same is…

  • Paul Ludwig Landsberg on Two Types of Philosophy

    The following quotation is from John M. Oesterreicher, The Walls are Crumbling: Seven Jewish Philosophers Discover Christ, London: Hollis and Carter, 1953, p. 195. Oesterreicher is glossing Landsberg's doctoral thesis Wesen und Bedeutung der Platonischen Akademie, 1923:  . . . there are two types of philosophy: the autonomous, patterned after Plato's, which undertakes to bring about man's…

  • Czeslaw Milosz on Lev Shestov

    Shestov, or the Purity of Despair

  • The Philosopher and the Christian

    For Vito Caiati ………………….. George W. Bush once referred to Jesus Christ as his favorite political philosopher, thereby betraying both a failure to grasp what a philosopher is and who Jesus claimed to be. Jesus Christ is not a philosopher.  The philosopher is a mere lover of wisdom.  His love is desirous and needy; it…

  • Is the Christian the True Philosopher?

    Steven Nemes makes two main points in his Christian Life as Philosophy.  The first I agree with entirely: Jesus Christ is not a philosopher.  The philosopher is a mere lover of wisdom.  His love is desirous and needy; it is eros, the love of one who lacks for that which he lacks.  But Jesus Christ…

  • Like Being the Chief Rabbi in Mecca

    I heard David Brooks on C-Span 2 last night.  He uncorked a very funny line. "I am the conservative at The New York Times, which is like being the chief rabbi in Mecca." By the way, it was a mention by Brooks in his latest book that got my friend Lupu onto Soloveitchik.  Now I…

  • Pascal, Buber, and the God of the Philosophers

    "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob — not of the philosophers and scholars."  Thus exclaimed Blaise Pascal in the famous memorial in which  he recorded the overwhelming religious/mystical experience of the night of 23 November 1654.  Martin Buber comments (Eclipse of God, Humanity Books, 1952, p. 49): These words represent Pascal's change…

  • Soloveitchik on Proving the Existence of God

    Joseph B. Soloveitchik's The Lonely Man of Faith (Doubleday 2006) is rich and stimulating and packed with insights.  I thank Peter Lupu for having a copy sent to me.  But there is a long footnote on p. 49 with which I heartily disagree. Here is part of it: The trouble with all rational demonstrations of the…

  • What Does It Mean to Say that Nothing is Sacred?

    Yesterday I quoted Christopher Hitchens as saying that nothing is sacred.  I now ask what it means to say that nothing is sacred.  I think it means something like the following. Nothing, nothing at all, is holy, venerable, worthy of worship; nothing is an appropriate object of reverence.  (One cannot appropriately revere one's spouse, 'worship…

  • How Much Time Should be Spent on Philosophy?

    Our Czech friend Vlastimil Vohanka writes, You blogged that doing philosophy has great value in itself; even if philosophy is aporetic. But how often, or how long per day or month, should one devote to it? Doing philosophy seems (to me at least) to have diminishing returns, if philosophy is aporetic. Or has your experience been different?…

  • In the Absence of Knowledge, May One Believe? Remarks on Magee

    According to Bryan Magee ("What I Believe," Philosophy 77 (2002), 407- 419), nobody knows the answers to such questions as whether we survive our bodily deaths or whether God exists. Citing Xenophanes and Kant, Magee further suggests that the answers to these questions are not only unknown but impossible for us to know. Assuming that…

  • Theology Wagging the Ontological Dog?

    Dennis M. writes, On Ockham and supposita: A little perplexity at the end, when you write that “[w]hat is curious here is how very specific theological doctrines are allowed to drive the general ontology.” One man’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens, I suppose, but if Ockham is trying to maintain theological orthodoxy it doesn’t…

  • Anthony Flood on Philosophy as Misosophy, Part I

    I wrote an entry on the main sorts of motive that might lead one who takes religion seriously to take up the  study of philosophy.  I distinguished five main motives: the apologetic, the critical, the debunking, the transcensive, and the substitutional.  But there is also the move away from philosophy to religion and its motives.…

  • Mature Religion is Open-Ended Too: More Quest Than Conclusions

    The following is from an interview with A. C. Grayling who is speaking of the open mind and open inquiry: It’s a mindset, he reveals, that “loves the open-endedness and the continuing character of the conversation that humankind has with itself about all these things that really matter.” It’s also a way of thinking that…