Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Emotions

  • Courage and Content

    There are courageous souls who will say publically what others think but are afraid to say.  True.  But the courageousness of the saying does not underwrite the truth of what is said.  Courage does not validate content. Muhammad Atta and the 9/11 terrorists had the courage of their false and murderous convictions. As a corollary,…

  • Can One Forgive Oneself? An Aporetic Triad

    I pointed out earlier that forgiving is triadic: x forgives y for z.  There is the forgiver, the one to whom forgiveness is proffered, and that which is forgiven.   Nominative, dative, accusative.   It is of course correct English to say 'I forgive you,' but this fact about usage cuts no ice since 'I forgive you'  is elliptical for…

  • An Analysis of the Concept of Forgiveness

    In my last post on this topic I advanced a double-barreled thesis to the effect that (i) unconditional forgiveness is in most cases morally objectionable, and (ii) in most cases conditional forgiveness is genuine forgiveness.  But now we need to back up and focus on the very concept of forgiveness since deciding whether (i) and…

  • More on the Putative Paradox of Forgiveness

    This just over the transom:  Finally, a post on forgiveness. 🙂 But my spirit within me won't permit me to forgo responding to what you've written. You characterize the paradox this way: It is morally objectionable to forgive those who will not admit wrongdoing, show no remorse, make no amends, do not pay restitution, etc. …

  • Marriage and Admiration

    What makes for a good marriage?  It is not enough to like your spouse.  It is not enough to love her.  The partners must also admire one another.  There has to be some attribute  in your spouse that you don't find in yourself (or not in the same measure) and that you aspire to possess or…

  • Admiration and Contempt

    Your first mistake was to admire him inordinately, your second, after he proved less than wholly admirable, was to swing over to contempt.  No one is worthy of unqualified admiration, and no one is wholly contemptible.

  • Self-Deprecation

    There is usually more of self than of deprecation in self-deprecation.

  • Differences Between Wishing and Hoping

    I wish, I wish, I wish in vainThat we could sit simply in that room againTen thousand dollars at the drop of a hatI'd give it all gladlyIf our lives could be like that. Bob Dylan's Dream Wishing and hoping are both intentional attitudes: they take an object.  One cannot just wish, or just hope,…

  • Can a Thin Theorist Experience Wonder at Existence?

    Existence elicited nausea from Sartre's Roquentin, but wonder from Bryan Magee:  . . . no matter what it was that existed, it seemed to me extraordinary beyond all wonderment that it should. It was astounding that anything existed at all. Why wasn't there nothing? By all the normal rules of expectation — the least unlikely…

  • Dennis Prager on High Self Esteem

    I like Dennis Prager, but he is sometimes sloppy in his use of language.  He will often say that high self esteem is not a value, or words to that effect. It sounds as if he is against people having high self esteem.  But what he really wants to oppose, or rather what he ought to oppose, is…

  • Grief: Three Solutions

    That we grieve over the loss of a finite good shows our wretchedness. But the cure for grief is not the substitution of attachment to another finite good. We should not distract ourselves from our grief, but experience it and try to grasp the root of it, which is our inner emptiness, rather than the loss…

  • What, Me Worry?

    The evil event will either occur or it will not.  If it occurs, and one worries beforehand, then one suffers twice, from the event and from the worry.  If the evil event does not occur, and one worries beforehand, one suffers once, but needlessly.  If the event does not occur, and one does not worry beforehand, then one suffers…

  • The Foolishness of Envy

    You envy me?  What a wretch you must be to feel diminished in your sense of self-worth by comparison to me!  I have something you lack?  Why isn't that compensated for by what you have that I lack?  You feel bad that I have achieved something by my hard work?  Don't you realize that you…

  • Unreasonable Disappointment

    I cannot be reasonably disappointed if I fail to achieve what was never in my power to achieve.

  • Compassion

    Feeling compassion for the earthquake victims, he was pleased by his sensitivity, but his warm feeling did not motivate him to do anything such as make a monetary contribution to the Red Cross.  His feeling remained mere sentiment and to that extent mere self-indulgence. Better to feel compassion than to define it. Better still to…