Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Human Predicament

  • Accept Love, Accept Aversion

    We must learn to accept people's love, good wishes, and benevolence as gifts without worrying whether we deserve these things or not, and without worrying whether we will ever be in a position to compensate the donors. Similarly, we must learn to accept people's hate and malevolence as a sort of reverse gratuitous donation whether we…

  • The Science of Older and Wiser

    A worthwhile NYT piece and a good counter to Susan Jacoby's Never Say Die which I criticize in one of my better posts, appropriately entitled Never Say Die.  An excerpt  from the former: An impediment to wisdom is thinking, “I can’t stand who I am now because I’m not who I used to be,” said…

  • Abstain the Night Before, Feel Better the Morning After

    Do you regret in the morning the spare supper of the night before or the foregoing of the useless dessert?  Do you feel bad that you now feel good and are not hung over?  You missed the party and with it the  ambiguity and unseriousness and dissipation of idle talk.  Are you now troubled by…

  • Putin’s Sudetenland?

    It occurred to me this morning that there is an ominous parallel between  Putin's occupation of the Ukraine and Hitler's of the Sudetenland, and on a similar pretext, namely, the protecting of ethnic Russians/Germans.  The Sudetenland was the German-speaking region of Czechoslovakia whose annexation by Hitler in 1938 was part of the run-up to the…

  • A Reason to Take Care of Oneself

    It may be that moral and intellectual progress is possible only here.  After death it may be too late, either because one no longer exists, or because one continues to exist but in a state that does not permit further progress. It is foolish to think that believers in post-mortem survival could have no reason…

  • 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…

  • On Buying a Homeless Man a Sandwich

    Daniel Greenfield: You can buy a homeless man a sandwich, but you can't buy them all sandwiches because once you do that, you are no longer engaging in a personal interaction, but building an organization and the organization perpetuates itself. You don't need a homeless man to exist so that you can buy him a…

  • The Parable of the Tree and the House

    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 outstrip me, you who were once so…

  • Homo Homini Lupus

    A 28 year-old Gypsy girl from the Tene Bimbo crime family 'befriends' an 85 year-old single man, marries him, and then poisons him, causing his death, in an attempt to steal his assets.  The two were made for each other, the evil cunning of the woman finding its outlet in the utter foolishness of the…

  • Machiavelli, Arendt, and Virtues Private and Public

    An important but troubling thought is conveyed in a recent NYT op-ed (emphasis added): Machiavelli teaches that in a world where so many are not good, you must learn to be able to not be good. The virtues taught in our secular and religious schools are incompatible with the virtues one must practice to safeguard…

  • Human Predicament

    Standing on the corner of Flesh and Spirit, deciding which  way to go . . . .

  • More than an Animal

    An animal that knows it's one is more than one.

  • Dubious Compensation

    Memory compensates us for the passage of time, but it also ensures that we will never forget that we are subject to it.  Yet better to be a man than an animal held hostage to the passing moment but oblivious of the fact.

  • A Moral Paradox

    Moral success can lead to pride, a form of moral failure. Moral failure can lead to humility, a form of moral success. Related articles True Detachment Moral Responsibility in Dreams The Putative Paradox of Forgiveness

  • Made for Thinking

    Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Krailsheimer #620: Man is obviously made for thinking.  Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.  Now the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our author, and our end. Now what does the world think about?  Never about…