Category: Human Predicament
-
Knowing Less
Knowing less of a person is often better for good relations than knowing more. The old forms and formalities have their uses. They come from a time when human nature was better understood, and it was understood that civility is better served by reserve than by 'letting it all hang out.' They come from a…
-
Strange Unbalanced Creatures
One and the same person at one time unjustly mocks, belittles, ridicules, blasphemes, denigrates, scorns, and contemns. At another time he idolizes, unjustly places on a pedestal, engages in inordinate praise, and prostrates himself before a pseudo-god.
-
The Cautionary Tale of Pippa Bacca
Conservatives take a sober and realistic view of the world and the people in it. They are reality-based, and put no faith in utopian schemes. Like good Aristotelians, they take the actualities of the present and the past as a reliable guide to what is possible, rather than the future-oriented fabrications of a high-flying reason…
-
Institutional Corruption
Without institutions, where would we be? But they are all corrupt, potentially if not actually, in part if not in whole, and constantly in need of reform. The Roman Catholic Church is no exception despite its claim to divine sanction and guidance. You should be skeptical of all institutions. Like the houses out here, they…
-
The Higher Hypocrisy
A man is only a man. If he tries to live like an angel, he may end up a hypocrite attempting the impossible. A man ought to live up to his highest possibilities. But what they are and where they lie is unknown until he seeks them out, risking hypocrisy as he does so. There…
-
The Afterlife of Habit Upon the Death of Desire
Desire leads to the gratification of desire, which in turn leads to the repetition of the gratification. Repeated gratification in turn leads to the formation of an intensely pleasurable habit, one that persists even after the desire wanes and disappears, the very desire without whose gratification the habit wouldn't exist in the first place. Memories…
-
Friendships Superficially Satisfying
I had known him for years. Our friendship was an acquaintanceship that remained on the surface. Never having gone deep, it never drifted toward the hazards the deep waters hide: the differences that most truly define and distinguish us, but also oppose us to others. And so when he died I could not bring to…
-
The Childless as Anthropological Danglers
The Austrian philosopher and Vienna Circle member Herbert Feigl wrote about nomological danglers. Mental states as the epiphenomenalist conceives them have causes, but no effects. They are caused by physical states of the body and brain, but dangle nomologically in that there are no laws that relate mental states to physical states. The childless are…
-
Evasive Scrupulosity
The scrupulous examination and correction of minor faults can subserve the evasion of major ones.
-
Man as Onion?
Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms (New York: Harper & Bros., 1955), p. 62, Aph. # 96: Man's being is neither profound nor sublime. To search for something deep underneath the surface in order to explain human phenomena is to discard the nutritious outer layer for a nonexistent core. Like a…
-
On Making a Splash and Making a Dent
Years ago an acquaintance wrote me about a book he had published which, he said, had "made quite a splash." The metaphor is unfortunately double-edged. When an object hits the water it makes a splash. But only moments later the water returns to its quiescent state as if nothing had happened. Perhaps it would have…
-
On Taking Pleasure in the Death of Enemies
Is it Schadenfreude to take pleasure in the death of an enemy? Only if it is bad to be dead. But it is not clear that it is bad to be dead. On the other hand, if it is bad to be dead, it might still not be Schadenfreude to take pleasure in the death…
-
No Enemies? Then No Spine
No one with a spine passes through this world without making enemies. So, while one must not multiply enemies beyond necessity, it is not possible for one with character to avoid them entirely.
-
David Benatar on the Quality of Human Life, Part II
This is the fifth in a series on David Benatar's The Human Predicament (Oxford UP, 2017). This entry covers pp. 71-83 of Chapter Four, pp. 64-91, entitled "Quality." In our last installment we discussed whether Benatar is justified in his claim that the quality of life is in most cases objectively worse than we think it is. (I cast…
-
Institutional Corruption and the Death of Cardinal Law
Without institutions, where would we be? But they are all corrupt, potentially if not actually, in part if not in whole. The Roman Catholic Church is no exception despite its claim to divine sanction and guidance. Bernard Law died yesterday in Rome at the age of 86, a pariah who was granted a kind of…