Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Credo

  • A Life Goal

    Full self-integration, maximal self-individuation. Aim high. You won't be able to achieve the goal in this life. So believe beyond the sublunary. Live as if your life does not end at death. What harm could it do? No harm at all, and indeed the opposite. We live better here and now when we believe that…

  • Reason’s Ultimate Purpose

    Karlfried Graf Durckheim, Absolute Living, p 127: ". . . reason's ultimate purpose is to clear the way for something that transcends it . . . ."

  • Credo

    It is my belief that there is no better and more noble way to spend the best hours of one's brief time here below than by living the Great Questions, reverentially but critically.  And that includes the question of the possibility and actuality of divine revelation and all the rest of the theological and philosophical…

  • CREDO: Agency and Spectatorship

    Whether or not God and the soul are real, and whether or not this life has any final meaning, we are free to live as if they are and as if it does.  And this is how we ought to live. We can go around and around on the Big Questions, and to do so…

  • On Suicide

    My knowledge of my ignorance regarding the ultimate disposition of things keeps me from viewing suicide as a live option should the going get tough. I lack the complacent assurance of those atheists and mortalists who are quite sure that there is no afterlife. I also lack the complacent assurance of those theists and immortalists…

  • Apologia Pro Vita Mea: A Reply to a Friendly Critic

    Vito Caiati responds to yesterday's Could it be like this? In yesterday's post, you write, “So I say: if you have the aptitude and the stamina, you live best by seeking the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters with your whole heart and mind and soul, with everything else you do subordinate to that quest…

  • Could it be like this?

    I find the following scenario exceedingly strange. We die and become nothing and no question gets answered. Could it be like this? It is epistemically possible, possible for all we know. All we know is damned little. But then what would have been the point of the evolution of animals that pose unanswerable questions? No…

  • Ten Political-Economic Theses

    Here are ten theses to which I subscribe in the critical way of the philosopher, not the dogmatic way of the ideologue. 1.  There is nothing wrong with money.  It is absolutely not the root of all evil.  The most we can say is that the inordinate desire for money is at the root of some evils.  I develop this theme in Radix…

  • I Renew My Vow

    My traffic has been insanely high over the past week or so.  Can I now make money by selling advertising?  But I stand by my pledge, and if I ever violate it you may shoot me. My pledge: You will never see advertising on this site.  You will never see anything that jumps around in…

  • What I Believe About Free Will

    My position, bluntly stated, is that we are libertarianly free (L-free).  One is L-free just in case (i) one is the agent cause or unsourced source of some of one's actions, and (ii) with respect to an action of which one is the agent cause, one unconditionally could have done otherwise.  As far as I'm…

  • Sunday Morning Sermon: Life Well Lived

    To make good use of your time in this world, think of your life above all as a quest, a seeking, a searching, a striving.  For what?  For the ultimate in reality, truth, value, and for their existential appropriation.   One appropriates reality by being authentic, truth by being truthful, values and norms by living…

  • Twelfth Anniversary Pledge

    This weblog commenced operations on 4 May 2004.  I thank you for reading. My pledge: You will never see advertising on this site.  You will never see anything that jumps around in your visual field.  You will not be assaulted with unwanted sounds.  I will not beg for money with a 'tip jar.'  This is…

  • Life Without Views

    Could one live well without views, 'long' views?  I address the question in Long Views and Short Views: Is Shorter Better?

  • The Big Unplug Starts Today

    Starting now, I will unplug from this hyperkinetic modern world for a period of days or weeks.  How long remains to be seen.  I will devote myself to such spiritual exercises as prayer, meditation, spiritual reading, hard-core philosophy and theology pursued for truth as opposed to professional gain, and the exploration of nature. I will…

  • A Partial Philosophical Defense of the Monastic Life

    The suggestion was made that I give a little talk to the monks of Christ in the Desert, a Benedictine monastery outside of Abiqui, New Mexico.  I thought I would offer a few words in defense of the monastic life, not that such an ancient and venerable tradition needs any defense from me, but just…