{"id":9735,"date":"2012-05-02T11:37:39","date_gmt":"2012-05-02T11:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/05\/02\/politics-would-that-i-could-avoid-it\/"},"modified":"2012-05-02T11:37:39","modified_gmt":"2012-05-02T11:37:39","slug":"politics-would-that-i-could-avoid-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/05\/02\/politics-would-that-i-could-avoid-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics: Would That I Could Avoid It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Using 'quietist' in a broad sense as opposed to the Molinos-Fenelon-Guyon sense<\/a>, 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. (I mean 'thinking' in a very broad sense that embraces all forms of intentionality as well as meditative non-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 Josef Pieper.  I recommend his Leisure: The Basis of Culture<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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 abortion, illegal immigration, social security, misuse of eminent domain, leftist race-baiting, 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.<\/span><\/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 <\/span>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.  Besides, the issues of the day all have roots in the Big Questions.  So an assiduous and deep-going application to the issues of the day will lead one to the Big Questions.  An excellent example is abortion<\/a>.<\/span><\/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. (I mean 'thinking' in a very broad sense that embraces all forms of intentionality as well as meditative non-thinking.)  … 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":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[306,92,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism-and-quietism","category-autobiographical","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9735","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=9735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}