{"id":12142,"date":"2009-11-25T06:56:20","date_gmt":"2009-11-25T06:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/11\/25\/george-santayana-on-the-three-traps-that-strangle-philosophy\/"},"modified":"2009-11-25T06:56:20","modified_gmt":"2009-11-25T06:56:20","slug":"george-santayana-on-the-three-traps-that-strangle-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/11\/25\/george-santayana-on-the-three-traps-that-strangle-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"George Santayana on the Three Traps that Strangle Philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Animal Faith and Spiritual Life<\/em>, ed. John Lachs, Meredith, 1967, p. 168:<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

There are three traps that strangle philosophy: the Church, the marriage-bed, and the professor's chair. I escaped from the first in my youth; the second I never entered, and as soon as possible I got out of the third.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps we could call them the theological trap, the tender trap, and the tenure trap. But are they truly traps? That might be disputed.<\/font><\/p>\n

\"George_santayana\"<\/font><\/a> Nietzsche might be brought in as a witness concerning the marriage trap, not that he had any experience in the matter. Somewhere in his Nachlass<\/em> he compares the philosopher burdened by Weib und Kind, Haus und Hof<\/em> with an astronomer who interposes a piece of filthy glass between eye and telescope. The philosopher's vocation charges him with the answering of the ultimate questions; pressing foreground concerns, however, make it difficult for him to take these questions with the seriousness they deserve, let alone to answer them.<\/font><\/p>\n

But in another place Nietzsche balances this harsh observation by noting that the man without Haus und Hof, Weib und Kind<\/em> is like a ship with insufficient ballast: he rides too high on the seas of life and does not pass through her storms with the steadiness of the solid bourgeois weighted down with property and reputation, wife and children. The judgments of such a high-rider on matters local and temporal should not be taken too seriously.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Animal Faith and Spiritual Life, ed. John Lachs, Meredith, 1967, p. 168: There are three traps that strangle philosophy: the Church, the marriage-bed, and the professor's chair. I escaped from the first in my youth; the second I never entered, and as soon as possible I got out of the third. Perhaps we could … Continue reading “George Santayana on the Three Traps that Strangle Philosophy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,599],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metaphilosophy","category-santayana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}