Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Spiritual Hygiene

A Part-Time Monk’s Solution to Suggestibility

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September 21, 2021
Suffering Pleasure

We suffer pain, but we also suffer pleasure. Fundamentally, to suffer is to be passive, to be patient rather than agent, to be acted upon, to be in the thrall of another, to be at the mercy of what is not oneself. Excessive pleasure and pain should both be avoided as one avoids heteronomy, the…

September 16, 2021
Can Rigorous Philosophy be Therapeutic?

Is philosophical analysis relevant to life as she is lived? Richard Sorabji: Stoic cognitive therapy consists of a package which is in part a philosophical analysis of what the emotions are and in part a battery of cognitive devices for attacking those aspects of emotion which the philosophical analysis suggests can be attacked. The devices…

September 2, 2021
Alypius and the Gladiators

Substack latest. A note on the soul and its toxins on the feast of St. Augustine.

August 28, 2021