Give some thought to the question whether the entries on it just might precipitate an early kicking of it.
Category: Maxims, Mottoes, Epitaphs, etc.
Hic Rhodus, Hic Salta
"Here is Rhodes, jump here." From Aesop's Fables #209, "The Boastful Athlete." A man who had been off in foreign lands, returns home. He brags of his exploits. He claims that in Rhodes he made a long jump the likes of which had never been seen. A skeptical bystander calls him on his boast: Here's your Rhodes, jump here!
The moral? Put your money where your mouth is. Don't talk about it, do it!
This post is a stub. Perhaps an erudite classicist such as Mike Gilleland could complete it. He would have to do at least the following: dig up all the ancient sources in Greek and Latin; trace the saying in Erasmus and Goethe; comment on Hegel's variation on the saying in the Vorrede zur Philosophie des Rechts, explaining why he has saltus for salta; find and comment on Marx's comment on Hegel's employment of the saying.
Finally, if Alan Rhoda were to rename his cleverly titled weblog Alanyzer — and I'm not saying he should — he might consider Hic Rhoda, Hic Salta. He is a very tall man; I'm 6' 1'' and had to look up to see his face when I met him in Las Vegas some years back. To jump over him would be quite a feat.
Wer Schreibt, Der Bleibt
I fondly recall my late German neighbor, Günter Scheer, from whom I learned this expression. "He who writes, remains."
Write on!
Primum Non Nocere
"First of all, do no harm." Not just for medicos. Also for the benighted politicos who would 'fix' health care. Their approach is a bit like fixing a roof leak by tearing down the house and building a new one.
And don't you just love the way these idiots use 'fix' and broken'? Talk like a first-grader and you'll think like one too. And these fools are our rulers?
Memory and Happiness
It is we who supply the blood that enlivens the spectral vampires that haunt us from our past. A part of mind control is purgation of memory, and without mind control happiness is achieved with difficulty, if at all.
Balık baştan kokar
Balık baştan kokar is Turkish for "The fish stinks from the head." Quite apropos of the Obama administration the corruption, incompetence, and stupidity of which boggles the mind. He's done everything wrong. But there is hope: Obama's fiscal irresponsibility and liberty-destroying socialist malfeasance has suffered a massive rebuke in, of all places, the People's Republic of Taxachusetts. Here are the precinct-by-precinct statistics of Brown's win over Coakley in the Bay State. (Perhaps it should be called the Pay State.) The results for Cambridge precinct show a whopping 84% for Coakley (DEM) and a paltry 15% for Brown (GOP). No surprise there, of course. You know what Cambridge is home to.
The Citadel of the Here and Now
Retreat ever and again into the citadel of the Here and Now, and the dragons of elsewhere and elsewhen will turn to chimeras.
It Is What It Is
Maybe not. It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is.
Seriously, though, this saying is seeing quite a lot of use lately. It is a sort of present-tensed Que sera, sera. Things are the way they are. Don't kick against the pricks. Acceptance and resignation are the appropriate attitudes.
From a philosophy-of-language point of view, what is interesting is the use of a tautological form of words to express a non-tautological proposition. What the words mean is not what the speaker means in uttering the words. Sentence meaning and speaker's meaning come apart. The speaker does not literally mean that things are what they are — for what the hell else could they be? Not what they are? What the speaker means is that (certain) things can't be changed and so must be accepted with resignation. Your dead-end job for example. 'It is what it is.'
There are many examples of the use of tautological sentences to express non-tautological propositions. 'What will be, will be' is an example, as is 'Beer is beer.' When Ayn Rand proclaimed that Existence exists! she did not mean to assert the tautological proposition that each existing thing exists; she was ineptly employing a tautological sentence to express a non-tautological and not uncontroversial thesis of metaphysical realism according to which what exists exists independently of any mind, finite or infinite.
'What will be will be' is tautologically true and thus necessarily true. What the sentence is typically used to express, however, is the non-tautological, and arguably false, proposition that what will be, will necessarily be, that it cannot be otherwise. So not only do sentence meaning and speaker's meaning come apart in this case; a modal fallacy is lurking in the background as well, the ancient fallacy of confusing the necessitas consequentiae with the necessitas consequentiis.
Now you know what I think about on those long training runs (3 hours, 18 minutes last Sunday). Running is marvelous for 'jogging' one's thoughts.
Antagonize Parsimoniously
Do not multiply enemies beyond necessity.
A Philosopher’s Motto
Distinguo ergo sum.
Political Action and the Principle of Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien
Attributed to Voltaire. "The best is the enemy of the good."
Meditation on this truth may help conservatives contain their revulsion at their lousy choices. Obama, who has proven that he is a disaster for the country, got in in part because of conservatives who could not abide McCain.
Politics is a practical business. It is always about the lesser of evils, except when it is about the least of evils. It is not about being ideologically pure. It is about accomplishing something in a concrete situation in which holding out for the best is tantamount to acquiescing in the bad. Political choices are forced options in roughly William James' sense: he who abstains chooses willy-nilly. His not choosing the better amounts to a choice of the worse.
Continue reading “Political Action and the Principle of Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien“
The Tal and the Short of It
Why, with so many painful losses to my 'credit,' do I continue to submit my aging self to the rigors of tournament chess? Because the strenuous life has a property Bobby Fischer once ascribed to 1. P-K4: it is "best by test."
Feeble Stuff
Another motto for this weblog:
What I am writing here may be feeble stuff; well, then I am just not capable of bringing the big, important thing to light. But hidden in these feeble remarks are great prospects. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 65)
Serious Conversation
It is best avoided with ordinary folk. Serious conversation about matters beyond the mundane demands effort and people resent being made to work. Besides, ordinary folk do not 'believe in conversation' the way some philosophers do. They don't believe that truth can be attained by dialectical means. They might not believe in truth at all, or in its value. Or they may have the notion that 'truth is relative.' Thoughtlessly, many dismiss all thought with 'It's all relative.' So if you try to engage them on a serious topic, they may interpret your overture as an initial move in an ego game whereby you are trying to dominate them, even if that is the farthest thing from your mind. Not believing in truth, they believe in power, and interpret everything as a power ploy and a power play. And this goes double if, like me, you are intense of mien. For your seriousness will appear either threatening or comical to those for whom nothing matters except life's surfaces.
A good maxim, then: Among regular guys be a regular guy.
Never Buy a Book You Haven’t Read
It's a good maxim. But I hear an objection coming. "If you've already read a book, why do you need to buy it?" Because the only books worth owning are the ones worth reading more than once.