{"id":9191,"date":"2012-11-27T05:04:35","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T05:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/11\/27\/the-insolubility-of-philosophical-problems-the-augustine-story-adapted\/"},"modified":"2012-11-27T05:04:35","modified_gmt":"2012-11-27T05:04:35","slug":"the-insolubility-of-philosophical-problems-the-augustine-story-adapted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/11\/27\/the-insolubility-of-philosophical-problems-the-augustine-story-adapted\/","title":{"rendered":"The Insolubility of Philosophical Problems: The Augustine Story Adapted"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long ago I was told the following story by a nun. One day St. Augustine was walking along the seashore, thinking about the Trinity. He came upon a child who had dug a hole in the sand and was busy filling it with buckets of seawater. <\/span><\/p>\n

Augustine: "What are you doing?" <\/span><\/p>\n

Child: "I am trying to empty the ocean into this hole." <\/span><\/p>\n

Augustine: "But that\u2019s impossible!" <\/span><\/p>\n

Child: "No more impossible than your comprehending the Trinity." <\/span><\/p>\n

What holds for the Trinity holds for the great problems of philosophy: we can no more solve them than the child could empty the sea into a hole on the seashore.  Our minds are not large enough for these problems, not strong enough, not free enough from distorting, distracting, suborning factors.  We know that from experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Philosophy teaches us humility.  This is one of its most important uses.  And this despite the fact that too many paid professors of it are the exact opposite of humble truth-seekers.  But worse still are the scientistic scientists whose arrogance is fueled by profound ignorance of the questions and traditions that made their own enterprise possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Long ago I was told the following story by a nun. One day St. Augustine was walking along the seashore, thinking about the Trinity. He came upon a child who had dug a hole in the sand and was busy filling it with buckets of seawater. Augustine: "What are you doing?" Child: "I am trying to empty … Continue reading “The Insolubility of Philosophical Problems: The Augustine Story Adapted”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[335,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-augustine","category-metaphilosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9191","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=9191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}