Category: Human Predicament
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Sunday Morning Sermon: Like a Moth to the Flame
Jean van Heijenoort was drawn to Anne-Marie Zamora like a moth to the flame. He firmly believed she wanted to kill him and yet he travelled thousands of miles to Mexico City to visit her where kill him she did by pumping three rounds from her Colt .38 Special into his head while he slept.…
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Concupiscence
If we were just animals, no problem. If we were pure spirits, no problem. Concupiscence is a problem because we are spiritual animals. Neither angels nor beasts, we 'enjoy' dual residency in opposing spheres. The problem is not that the flesh is weak while the spirit is willing. The problem is that the spirit is…
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In the Cave
Troppe cose non sono chiare. Too many things are not clear. But all is not dark. So perhaps we can say: La grotta è chiaroscuro.The cave is clear-dark.E noi siamo abitanti delle grotte.And we are cave dwellers. E così siamo chiaroscuro.And so we are clear-dark.Questa è la situazione umana.This is the human predicament.
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Intimacy, Reserve, and Bukowski’s Bluebird
We desire intimacy with human others but we must combine it with reserve. And this for three reasons: out of respect for the Other and her inwardness; from a sober recognition of our fallen tendency to dominate; and out of a need to protect ourselves. The wise do not wear their hearts on their sleeves,…
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The Epicurean Cure
Here is Epicurus as quoted by Pierre Hadot in a book I highly recommend, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Blackwell 1995, p. 87): We must concern ourselves with the healing of our own lives. He proposes a TETRAPHARMAKOS, a four-fold healing formula: God presents no fears, death no worries. And…
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If Less Horrifying . . .
. . . would this world and the people in it be as intellectually stimulating? Men and women of my stripe love to beat their heads against puzzles, problems, mysteries, and every type of conundrum. Well, Lord, you have certainly given us fodder for brain-bashing. And if this world is, as your top reps maintain,…
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Human Perversity
One seizes upon a present good, sensuous pleasure, even though it is transient and ultimately unsatisfactory, over a merely possible lasting future good to be had by foregoing the present good.
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Joseph Epstein on Leon Wieseltier
Ouch!
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Deformative Influences
We speak of formative influences; why not also of deformative influences? Parents and siblings, family and friends, church and school, the rude impacts of nature, the softer ones of language and culture — all contribute to our formation but to our deformation as well. The learning of a craft is a formation, but as Nietzsche…
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David Benatar, The Human Predicament, Chapter 2, Meaning
This is the second in a series of entries on Benatar's new book. The entries are collected here. Herewith, some notes on pp. 13-34. Summary does not constitute endorsement. Note also that my summary involves interpretation and extension and embellishments: I take the ball and run with it on occasion. The sense that one's life…
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Sympathy for Hillary
To be competitive and indeed successful in this world often demands a level of self-assurance and inner certainty that is incompatible with acknowledgment of the sober truth about oneself. This is especially the case in the upper reaches of the political game. So perhaps we should forgive Hillary her pathetic, self-serving book, What Happened. She…
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The Relativity of Lived Time
Cesare Pavese (1908-1950), This Business of Living, Diaries 1935-1950, Transaction Publishers, 2009, p. 126, from the entry of 10 December 1939: Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours seem short and the years long. A very sharp observation. Unfortunately, most of Pavese's diary is not at this level of objective insight.…
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At Funerals
At funerals one hears pious claptrap about the dearly departed going home to the Lord. In many cases, this provokes a smile. Why should one who has spent his whole life on the make be eager to meet his Maker? Why the sudden interest in the Lord when, in the bloom of life, one gave him…
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Accept No Substitutes!
The ersatz immortality of progeny is a poor substitute for the genuine article, as is 'literary' immortality. Ditto for the miserable after-existence of a merely intentional object in the fallible and flickering memories of a few acquaintances not known for the justice of their assessments, acquaintances themselves slated for the Reaper's scythe.
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Bondage
George MacDonald: An Anthology, ed. C. S. Lewis, Macmillan 1960, p. 41, #57: A man is in bondage to whatever he cannot part with that is less than himself.