Category: Human Predicament
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The Noble and the Base
If a noble man becomes aware of my moral defects, he is saddened, disappointed, disillusioned perhaps. But the base man reacts differently: he is gleeful, pleased, reassured. "So he isn't better than me after all! Good!" The noble seek those who are above them so that they can become like them. The base deny that anyone could be…
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A Life Spent Making Repairs
Psychologically damaged early on by parents, relatives, teachers, circumstances, and blows of fate, one spends the rest of one's life making repairs.
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Both Weak and Strong
Reason is weak in the discernment of reasons, strong in the crafting of rationalizations. But the strength of rationalizing reason derives not from reason but from passion and her subornation of reason.
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On Prejudice
Hector writes, It seems he [John McWhorter] is not aware that 'prejudice' does not necessarily require a negative attitude towards that concerning which one is prejudiced and is therefore actually not an ideal replacement for 'racist'. Surely, 'bigoted' would be better. I agree. 'Prejudice' admits of pejorative but also non-pejorative uses. 'Bigot' does not. Note…
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Memory: Content and Affect
The trick is to retain the content so that one can rehearse it if one wishes, but without re-enacting the affect, unless one wishes. Let me explain. Suppose one recalls a long-past insult to oneself, and feels anger in the present as a result. The anger is followed by regret at not having responded in…
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Attributed to Robert Frost
Here: "A liberal is a man too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel” is usually credited to American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963). Frost used the quote in January 1961 (discussing John F. Kennedy, who Frost thought was not this type of liberal) and Frost used it again in January 1962. A popular…
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To Be Human
To be human is to be flawed; to be conservative is to know this.
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Crises There Always Will Be
So buck up and fight on. Philosophy is a great consolation. We lesser lights ought to look up to the luminaries, and their example. Boethius wrote in prison, Nicolai Hartmann in Berlin in 1945 in the midst of the Allied assault. In February 1945, the university building in which Hartmann used to lecture was destroyed…
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Inter faeces et urinam nascimur
Recalling our miserably indigent origin in the the wombs of our mothers and the subsequent helplessness of infancy, how did we get to be so arrogant and self-important? We criticize and condemn one another hurling epithets and anathemas. How did we get to be so harsh and judgmental? In a line often (mis)attributed to Augustine,…
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Compensations of Old Age
You now have money enough and you now have time. The time left is shrinking, but it is your own. There is little left to prove. What needed proving has been proven by now or will forever remain unproved. And now it doesn't much matter one way or the other. You are free to be…
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Hospitals and Torture Chambers
We are strangely, insanely, conflicted. We care lovingly, or at least dutifully, for the sick, the injured, and the dying. But we also torture people to death in ways that inspire envy in demons. The belief that humans are inherently good is one of the deepest of human delusions. Paradoxically, those who succumb to it…
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A Dawning at Dusk
Only those near the end of it can sufficiently fathom this life's insufficiency.
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What is Man?
He is an animal, but also a spirit — and thus a riddle to himself. He reasons and speaks, he objectifies, he says 'I' and he means it. He does not parrot the word 'I' in the manner of a parrot or a voice synthesizer; uttering 'I' he expresses self-awareness. Man has a world (Welt),…
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People and Their Works
This from a reader: Your comment about Husserl's picture on your wall reminded me of a line from my notes: "I try to admire works but never people, as people invariably let you down." It's, I think, a line from Peter Hitchens. People regularly, though not invariably, let one down. True. But being a person,…
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Pearls before Swine
Beware of casting them. Beware also of the conceit that one has them to cast.