Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Human Predicament

  • Another Reason Why Defunding the Police is Idiotic

    Government is by its very nature coercive. To be effective, it has to have the power to force people to do what they might not want to do, and to refrain from doing what they might want to do, such as drive drunk, loot, and rape. It follows straightaway that eliminating enforcement agencies eliminates government.…

  • Is Philosophy Justified in a Time of Crisis?

    The country is unraveling, and you sit in your ivory tower pondering arcane questions about time and existence?  How is that a justifiable use of your time, energy, and brain power? Here is my answer. Or rather one of them. There have always been crises.  Human history is just one crisis after another.  The 20th…

  • No Fool Like an Old Fool

    Ed is an 80-year-old neighbor of mine. We've been casual acquaintances for years, running into each other on the trails, exchanging greetings and snatches of conversation. The other day politics came up for the first time, and to my surprise I learned that Ed, originally a Republican, had become an Independent, and was now a…

  • Carpe Diem!

    Seize the day,  my friends, the hour of death is near for young and old alike.  How would you like death to find you?  In what condition, and immersed in which activity?  Contemplating the eternal or stuck in the mud of the mundane or lost in the diaspora of sensuous indulgence? The clock is running,…

  • Plague in an Ancient City

    "Plague in an Ancient City" by Michiel Sweerts (1618-1664 AD) is believed to depict the Plague of Athens (430-427 BC). Oil on canvas. Painted c. 1652-1654 AD. 118.7 cm (46.7 in) x 170.8 cm (67.2 in). (Courtesy of Los Angeles County Museum of Art) Now read the outstanding essay by Victor Davis Hanson, The Scab…

  • Cold and Hard

    We become cold and hard to survive in a world cold and hard, one not of our making, thereby contributing to the coldness and hardness from which we set out to protect ourselves. And so, paradoxically, the world is of our making.

  • A Limit to Self-Reliance

    Among our fellows, and in relation to the government, we ought to be as self-reliant as possible.  But in matters moral and spiritual we ought freely to confess our exigency  and ultimate inability to help ourselves.  Honesty demands it. To appreciate properly the need for outside help, however, one ought first to try to go…

  • Our Pyrrhonian Predicament

    It is widely admitted that there is something deeply unsatisfactory about the human condition.  One aspect of our wretched state is recognized and addressed by the Pyrrhonists: we want certain knowledge but it eludes us. And so we must content ourselves with belief. But beliefs are in conflict and this conflict causes suffering which ranges…

  • A Cure for Infatuation?

    One of the very best is marriage.  Infatuation is a form of idolatry that cannot last long in a marriage. Marriage cures it. That's an argument for marriage. There was no cure for Don Quixote's romantic fantasies because their object, the fair Dulcinea del Toboso, existed only in his imagination.* But while infatuation lasts, it…

  • Richard Peck, Seeker of Lost Gold

    (A re-post, with corrections and additions, from 13 January 2010) Living as I do in the foothills of the Superstition Mountains, I am familiar with the legends and lore of the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. Out on the trails or around town I sometimes run into those characters called Dutchman Hunters. One I came close to…

  • Coming Together and Moving Apart

    Is it an unalloyed good that people be 'brought together'? I rather doubt it. Mark Zuckerberg would seem to agree by his actions if not by his words. The man who touts his Facebook as bringing people together has had a huge wall built around his Hawaiian compound. Apparently, those who engineer 'bringing together' think…

  • Custody of the Eyes

    You look at unworthy objects, objects that debase. Or you view worthy things through the distorting lenses of concupiscence and greed.

  • Trump’s Space Force

    "I will not weaponize space," said Barack Obama while a candidate in 2008. That empty promise came too late, and is irresponsible to boot: if our weapons are not there, theirs will be. Some warn of the militarization of space as if it has not already been militarized. It has been, and for a long…

  • Richard Crashaw (1612-1649)

    But Men Loved Darkness rather than Light By Richard Crashaw   The world’s light shines, shine as it will, The world will love its darkness still. I doubt though when the world’s in hell, It will not love its darkness half so well.   Source: Poetry Foundation

  • Superficial Acquaintances

    We need them, but we need to keep them superficial. Two reasons. First, if you try to go deep with the superficial, you will only frustrate yourself. Second, superficial relations hide faults and  allow for idealization.  Ignorance aids admiration.