Too Old to Lead

Bede, History of the Abbots, 16 (on Abbot Ceolfrith; tr. Christopher Grocock):

Now he saw that, being old and full of days, he could no longer prove to be an appropriate model of spiritual exercise for those under him either by teaching or by example because he was so aged and infirm. He thought over the matter long and hard, and decided that it would be more appropriate for an instruction to be given to the brothers that they should choose a more suitable father-abbot for themselves from among their own number, following the statutes of their privilege and the rule of the holy abbot Benedict.

uidit se iam senior et plenus dierum non ultra posse subditis, ob impedimentum supremae aetatis, debitam spiritalis exercitii, uel docendo uel uiuendo, praefigere formam; multa diu secum mente uersans, utilius decreuit, dato fratribus praecepto, ut iuxta sui statuta priuilegii iuxtaque regulam sancti abbatis Benedicti, de suis sibi ipsi patrem, qui aptior esset, eligerent.

Reproduced verbatim from classicist Michael Gilleland's Laudator Temporis Acti weblog. Commentary unnecessary.

No One is Above the Law!

No one is above the law, but only if the law is above everyone, impartial and uninfluenced by partisan will.

But that is not now the case with terminally mendacious, anti-civilizational leftists hard at work destroying our constitutional republic. And yet these brazen, serial liars never leave off posturing as defenders of 'democracy,' 'the Constitution,' and the 'rule of law.'

For these Orwellian subverters of language, 'rule of law' means rule of lawfare, 'democracy' means oligarchy, and the Constitution has no fixed meaning, but whatever meaning leftists wish to assign to it.

Unfortunately, conservatives and old-time Democrats are slow on the uptake, unable or perhaps unwilling to see what is happening in plain view. But the times they are a'changin.'

Right-Wing Bob approximates to the Biblical in the following lines.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

Around the ‘Stackosphere’

I just now coined the word. Who's going to stop me? If there is a blogoshere, then there is a stackosphere. 

You send traffic to me, I send traffic to you. Free speech! Open inquiry! Death to DEI! Down with the Dems and all the reprobable forces of anti-civilization!  Long live the Republic!

Philosophical Micro Notes

Knowland Knows.  Especially recommended for you young guys.

The Journal of Absolute Truth

Linkage does not constitute plenary endorsement.

Happiness

I am happy. I am living my kind of life in my kind of way, the life I envisaged and aspired to when I was 20 years old and wrote in my journal, "To live a philosophical life in a tumultuous, uncertain world is my goal." I am pulling it off, and have been for over half a century. But the task of self-individuation is not yet complete. There is work yet to be done in becoming in act and fact what I am  in potency and possibility. A human life is a project, a task, not something given but something to be accomplished.  Be who you are becoming; become who you are.

Buona fortuna has played her part, but also personal focus and determination and the willingness to renounce what is incompatible with a steady advance along a single line. "A no, a yes, a straight line, a goal." (Nietzsche) I have always had a horror of an unfocused existence, of the lives of companions afloat rudderless, at the mercy of social winds and currents, or else drifting in the horse latitudes of  Sargassian despond.

…………………

Dmitri writes, and I respond:

I was glad for you after reading your today's entry on happiness. I needed to look up Sargassian despond and horse latitudes to understand the ending, which was, as always, stimulating and enriching for me. Even if I completely missed your intended meaning, as I suspect I did, this entry was a great find.
The site to which you link is a curious one, and I cannot at the moment comment on it. But I will comment on "the horse latitudes of Sargassian despond."  'Sargassian' is an adjectival reference to the Sargasso Sea. But what does this have to do with horses and latitudes?
The horse latitudes are a region of the North Atlantic Ocean, located between 20° and 35° north latitude, where the winds are often calm and the sea is relatively still. This area is also known as the Sargasso Sea. (A.I. generated.) Further:
 
There is one such place renowned for its disquieting calms – the Sargasso Sea, a shoreless oval of water in the North Atlantic measuring some 2,000 by 700 miles. Bounded by ocean currents on all sides, the water rotates clockwise in an ocean gyre, slowly revolving like the eye of a hurricane. The area has struck terror into the minds of sailors for centuries. It was once known as the Horse Latitudes, after becalmed Spanish ships were forced to throw their horses overboard to save drinking water. Tales of ghost ships abound, their skeleton crews left to starve or go insane while their sails hung listlessly.
I became aware of the Horse Latitudes years ago via Jim Morrison's eponymous song.
 
As for my use of 'despond,' it is an allusion to the Slough of Despond  in Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress:
The Slough of Despond is a metaphorical place of spiritual despair, first introduced in John Bunyan’s allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress. It is a deep, miry bog where Christian, the protagonist, sinks under the weight of his sins and guilt. The Slough represents the doubts, fears, and discouraging thoughts that can overcome a person, causing them to feel hopeless and trapped. (A.I. generated)
So what I was complaining about were those erstwhile companions of mine who were either without the means of self-direction ("afloat rudderless") or else had the means of self-direction but had drifted into a social environment lacking the right kinds of external stimulation ("drifting in the horse latitudes of Sargassian despond").
 
Dmitri continues:
Going back to the existence thread — I decided to buy and read your book as I do want to understand the notion of existence you argue for. If not too difficult and time consuming, I'd be grateful to wire the payment directly to you for the book and the shipment. An autograph would be a deeply appreciated bonus. If you don't have the time for this stuff, I get it and will buy my copy from Amazon.
If I had a spare copy, I'd sent it to you gratis. But hold off from paying the outrageous Kluwer asking price.  Perhaps someone has a copy they he will part with for a reasonable amount.  Another reason to hold off is that I am trying to finish my response to John Cottingham which I will post on the blog and solicit his comments. That may well answer the questions you have.

Four Attitudes Toward Embodiment

Am I ineluctably trapped in a dying animal? Is embodiment an axiologically negative state of affairs or is it an axiologically positive one?  Here are four possible attitudes toward having a material body. They may be loosely associated, respectively, with the names Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Benatar.

a) To exist is good, but it would be better to exist without a gross material body subject to decay and dissolution. The body is an impediment, a vehicle for sublunary roads that it would be better not to have to travel.  I am neither identical to my body, nor dependent on it for my existence; I am a soul temporarily incarcerated in a body from which I will be released upon death. I have fallen from a topos ouranios into a spatiotemporal matrix and meat grinder extrication from which is both possible and desirable.

b) To exist is good, but a gross material body is necessary to exist as a conscious and self-conscious being, whence it follows that embodiment is at least instrumentally  good. I am not (identically) a soul; I am a soul-body composite, both components of which are necessary to exist at all.  

c) To exist is good, but only with a 'resurrected' and perfected body supplied by a divine being that needs no body to exist.

d) To exist is not good because possible only with a gross body.  (See my Benatar category.)

Moral Progress: Our Tantalusian Predicament

If I drive to Santa Fe, the town stays put while I get closer and closer. Moral progress is different. A good part of the moral journey involves the recession of the destination. This morning I discovered that C. S. Lewis had had a similar thought. 

"No man knows how bad he is until he tries very hard to be good." (Mere Christianity, 124)

Allowance made for  a bit of exaggeration, our moral predicament is describable as Tantalusian.  Remember your Greek mythology?

Tantalus (Ancient Greek: Τάνταλος Tántalos), also called Atys, was a Greek mythological figure, most famous for his punishment in Tartarus: for trying to trick the gods into eating his son, he was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink. (Wikipedia)

Something of a stretch, but a tantalizing conceit that I couldn't resist.