{"id":12629,"date":"2009-05-18T14:13:21","date_gmt":"2009-05-18T14:13:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/05\/18\/politics-would-that-i-could-avoid-it-2\/"},"modified":"2009-05-18T14:13:21","modified_gmt":"2009-05-18T14:13:21","slug":"politics-would-that-i-could-avoid-it-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/05\/18\/politics-would-that-i-could-avoid-it-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics: Would That I Could Avoid It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Using 'quietist' in a broad sense as opposed to the <\/font>Molinos-Fenelon-Guyon<\/font><\/a> sense, I would describe myself as a quietist rather than as an activist. The point of life is not action, but contemplation, not doing, but thinking. The vita activa<\/em> is of course necessary (for some all of the time, and for people like me some of the time), but it is necessary as a means only. Its whole purpose is to subserve the vita contemplativa<\/em>. To make of action an end in itself is absurd, and demonstrably so, though I will spare you the demonstration. If you are assiduous you can dig it out of Aristotle, Aquinas and <\/font>Josef Pieper<\/font>.<\/font><\/p>\n

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So the dominant note of my personality is quietism in the sense just sketched. The Big Questions turn my crank, not this foreground rubbish about illegal immigration, social security, eminent domain, etc. It would be nice to be able to let the world and its violent nonsense go to hell while cultivating my garden in peace. <\/font><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, my garden and stoa are in the world and exposed to its threats. So politics, which has too little to do with truth and too much to do with power, cannot be ignored. This world is not ultimately real, but it is no illusion either, pace<\/em> some sophists of the New Age, and so some battling within it, ideological or otherwise, cannot be avoided.<\/font><\/p>\n

But philosophy is not battling, nor is it ideology.  There is no place in philosophy for polemics, though polemics has its place.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Using 'quietist' in a broad sense as opposed to the Molinos-Fenelon-Guyon sense, I would describe myself as a quietist rather than as an activist. The point of life is not action, but contemplation, not doing, but thinking. The vita activa is of course necessary (for some all of the time, and for people like me … Continue reading “Politics: Would That I Could Avoid It”<\/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":[92,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12629","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=12629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}