Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Autobiographical

  • Kerouac October Quotation #11: For the Sake of Absolute Freedom

    It's October 11th today, Columbus Day.  This is a month to be savored day by day, hour by hour.  To aid in the savoring, here is today's Kerouac quotation, from "The Vanishing American Hobo" in Lonesome Traveler, p. 173 of the 1970 Black Cat edition.  (Purchased my copy in a shop on Bourbon Street in…

  • Buddhism on Suffering and One Reason I am Not a Buddhist

    (This entry touches upon some themes discussed with greater rigor, thoroughness, and scholarliness in my "No Self? A Look at a Buddhist Argument," International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 4 (December 2002), pp. 453-466.) For Buddhism, all is dukkha, suffering.  All is unsatisfactory.  This, the First Noble Truth, runs contrary to ordinary modes of thinking:  doesn't life…

  • The Two Kinds of People and the Manifold Uses of Blogging

    I once worked as a mail handler at the huge Terminal Annex postal facility in downtown Los Angeles. I was twenty or twenty one. An old black man, thinking to instruct me in the ways of the world, once said to me, "Beell, dey is basically two kahnds a people in dis world, the fuckahs…

  • Where Were You on 9/11/01?

    I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I first of heard about the acts of 9/11 Islamoterrorism.  It was a cool and bright Arizona morning, dry and delightful as only the desert can be.  I had just returned from a long hard bike ride.  Preliminary to some after-ride calisthenics I…

  • The Most Boring Philosophers

    Nowadays philosophy so absorbs me in all its branches and movements that I find no philosopher boring. Indeed,  no subject is boring except to the bored who make it  so. Dry texts, like dry wines, are often delightfully subtle and simply require an educable and educated palate. Although no philosophers now bore me, here is…

  • My Angelic Wife

    One indicator of her angelicity is her support of my chess activities — in stark contrast to the wives of two acquaintances both of whose 'better' halves destroyed their chess libraries in fits of rage at time spent sporting with Caissa. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," wrote old Will. I'm no bard,…

  • Dawkins, Divine Simplicity and The New York Times

    Gary Gutting in his NYT Opinionator piece, On Dawkins's Atheism, links to my recently revised Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the divine simplicity.  I'll wager that this is the first time there has ever been a reference to the doctrine in question in the Grey Lady's pages.  Thanks to Keith Burgess-Jackson for the heads-up.

  • Bear Canyon Trail in the San Gabriel Mountains

    The Bear Canyon Trail (Old Mt. Baldly Trail) is one way to the top of Mt. Baldy (Mount San Antonio) in the San Gabriel Mountains.  My childhood friend John Ingvar Odegaard (the heftier of the two guys depicted below) and I got nowhere near the peak, but we did saunter up to Bear Flat in…

  • We Philosophize Best With Friends

    Aristotle says that somewhere, but I forgot where.  In any case, it is true as I verified once again yesterday in Tempe, where I met up with Steven Nemes, Mike Valle, Peter Lupu and his student Scott.  Before joining them I stopped at the library where I borrowed Thomas McKay's Plural Predication and Douglas Hyde's I Believed. …

  • A Day on the Salt River

    Mike Valle and I spent four and a half hours floating down the Rio Salado on truck tire inner tubes yesterday.  That's Mike and a bit of my left knee in the first shot.  The second depicts some thirsty wild horses.  The third offers a fine view of Red Mountain.

  • The Monterey Pop Festival, June 1967

    It transpired 43 summers ago, this June, the grandaddy of rock festivals, two years before Woodstock, in what is known as the Summer of Love. Your humble correspondent was on the scene. Some high school friends and I drove up from Los Angeles along Pacific Coast Highway. I can still call up olfactory memories of patchouli,…

  • Crude or Earthy?

    A past inamorata once offered, with some justice, that I am crude. "Not crude, but earthy," was my reply. A colleague once described my eyes as "beady." "Do you mean penetrating?" Am I pigheaded in my opinions, or admirably firm? Monomaniacal or single-minded? Open-minded or empty-headed? Well-rounded or scattered? Am I precise or obsessive-compulsive? Is…

  • Maverick Philosopher 6th Blogiversary

    Some say that blogging is dead.  Read or unread, whether by sages or fools, I shall blog on.  A post beats a twit tweet any day, and no day without a post.  Nulla dies sine linea.   It is too early to say of blogging what Etienne Gilson said of philosophy, namely, that it always buries its undertakers,…

  • Why I Like Parties

    I like parties. I derive considerable satisfaction from not attending them. There is such a thing as the pleasure of conscious avoidance, of knowing that one has wisely escaped a situation likely to be frustrating and unpleasant.  If others are offended by my nonattendance, that I regret.  But peace of mind is a higher value…

  • A Strange Experience in the Charles Doughty Memorial Suite

    I had a strange experience in the late 1980's. Although my  main residence at the time was in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, near the bohemian district called Coventry, I was teaching at the University of Dayton and during the school year rented rooms not far from the University. One night, spirited philosophical   conversation with a graduate student aroused…