Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Emotions

  • Agapic Love

    It is rare are among humans, but common in relation to our pets.

  • Carl Schmitt on Compassion

    I'm on a Schmitt jag. Top o' the Stack.

  • Pet Love as Idolatry?

    Problems of attachment and grief. Substack latest.

  • Envy, Jealousy, Schadenfreude

    Some distinctions. Top o' the Stack.

  • Self-Deprecation

    A little self-deprecation is good, but more is not better. Nobody likes the boaster. Take self-deprecation too far, however, and people will have contempt for you.

  • The Fearful are Easy to Control

    Is the sheep your totemic animal? A sheep in a mask? A dose of Emerson may help if it is not too late. "He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear." (Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay "Courage") (I note that the pronoun as it functions in…

  • On Reverence

    Substack latest.

  • The Tree and the House

    A parable about envy. Substack latest.  Opening: A man planted a tree to shade his house from the desert sun. The tree, a palo verde, grew like a weed and was soon taller than the house. The house became envious, feeling diminished by the tree’s stature. The house said to the tree: "How dare you…

  • Once More on Envy

    His mother wanted him to amount to something. His father was afraid that he might — and make the father look small.

  • Envy Again

    How little you must know about me to envy me! Would you envy me had you trod my paths and had thereby come to appreciate the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" (Hamlet, Act III, Scene I) that found in me their target? Your envy, an ugly sin and deadly, is bred in ignorance which,…

  • Envy

    How little you must be to envy me!

  • Can Rigorous Philosophy be Therapeutic?

    Is philosophical analysis relevant to life as she is lived?  Richard Sorabji: Stoic cognitive therapy consists of a package which is in part a philosophical analysis of what the emotions are and in part a battery of cognitive devices for attacking those aspects of emotion which the philosophical analysis suggests can be attacked. The devices…

  • Braggadocio, Self-Deprecation, Contempt

    Brag and your peers will hate you. A little self-deprecation may win their hearts. Too much will earn their contempt. We learn these things by living. 

  • Righteous Anger

    There is righteous anger. But how much of what is called 'righteous anger' is righteousness and how much anger?  The righteous know; the merely angry fool themselves.

  • Infatuation

    What saves infatuation from being merely that? Its being a love of God that doesn't understand itself.