Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Psychology and Personality Typology

  • Malcolm Pollack on ‘Mass Formation’

    Our old friend Malcolm Pollack has an article in American Greatness entitled "'Mass Formation' is a Two-Headed Coin." Pollack offers the following characterization of mass formation: “Mass formation” . . . is a newish term for an age-old and long-studied phenomenon: the occasional, and usually quite sudden, arising of passionate and sometimes completely irrational fixations…

  • The Mighty Tetrad: Money, Power, Sex, and Recognition

    Money, power, sex, and recognition form the Mighty Tetrad of human motivators, the chief goads to action here below. But none of the four is evil or the root of all evil. People thoughtlessly and falsely repeat, time and again, that money is the root of all evil. Why not say that about power, sex,…

  • Study history to know yourself and what you are capable of

    In this important video, Jordan Peterson explains how history describes you. Part of what he is doing is railing against the pernicious leftist displacement of evil onto external conditions, social and economic, and its removal from its original and true locus, the foul and diseased heart of the human animal. For your own good, please…

  • Recognition, Attention, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Alexander

    As social animals we have a legitimate need for recognition by others. This need is not a mere desire for attention. Parents and teachers harm a child when they dismiss the legitimate need for recognition and respect as a bid for attention. A child so maligned may father a man who is more monster than…

  • 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…

  • The Old Soul

    The old soul sees, while his body is yet young, that this world has nothing to offer us that is finally satisfactory.

  • The Introvert Advantage

    Social distancing?  I've been doing it all my life. O beata solitudo, sola beatitudo!  Happy solitude, the sole beatitude. How sweet it is, and made sweeter still by a little socializing. Full lockdown?  I could easily take it, and put it to good use.  It provides an excellent excuse to avoid meaningless holiday socializing with…

  • Why are Lawyers so Unhappy?

    Martin P. Seligman explains. 'Seligman'! Now there's an aptronym for you. Selig is German for happy, blessed, blissful, although it can also mean late (verstorben) and tipsy (betrunken). So Seligman is the happy man or happy one. Nomen est omen? Give some careful thought to what you name your kid. 'Chastity' may have an anti-aptronymic effect.…

  • 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,…

  • Moving from Religion to Philosophy: A Typology of Motives

    People come to philosophy from various 'places.'  Some come from religion, others from mathematics and the natural sciences, still others from literature and the arts.  There are other termini a quis as well.  In this post I am concerned only with the move from religion to philosophy.  What are the main types of reasons for those who are…

  • Are You an Introvert? Take this Test!

    This is a re-post from April 2012 with minor edits and additions. ………………………… The bolded material below is taken verbatim from Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking (Crown 2012), p. 13.  I then give my responses.  The more affirmative responses, the more of an introvert you are. 1. I prefer one-on-one…

  • The Introvert Advantage

    We introverts make up about a quarter of the population. No surprise, then, that we are poorly understood.  We are not shy or anti-social. Extroverts abuse us, but there is no need to reply in kind since the present turn of events will do the job for us. They will suffer. We will have no…

  • Clinical Depression and the Moral Permissibility of Suicide

    I detect a cri du coeur in the following  question to me from a reader: Do you believe it is morally permissible for an unmarried person who is now middle-aged (late 40's) and who has no children to care for and who has battled clinical depression and anxiety for many years to commit suicide? Since this is an…

  • “I Will Pray for You”

    In many but not all contexts, to say "I will pray for you" to a person manifests the following passive-aggressive attitude on the part of the speaker: (a) I have strongly negative feelings toward you but I will not directly express them, either because I fear a confrontation, or fancy myself above such negative feelings,…

  • Tom and Van: A Tale of Two Idealists and their Disillusionment

    Thomas Merton and Jean van Heijenoort were both studies in youthful idealism. Both made drastic life decisions early on, and both sacrificed much for their respective ideals. Van joined Leon Trotsky to save the world rather than attend the prestigious Ecole Normale in pursuit of a bourgeois career. While Van was motivated by a desire…