Maverick Philosopher

Homo Faber

Man is homo faber. Among the things he makes: fake certainties.

Spiritual Myopia

Our eyes on the distant, we become far-sighted; our fingers clutching the paltry, petty and myopic.

Lunar Virtue

The Moon shares what she has received with all, not fully, but in phases. She waxes and she wanes, but regularity rules her diversity.

Solar Virtue

The Sun sheds his light on all and sundry and from none does he expect a return.

The Mother Tongue

The wings of thought need a tongue to bring to earth their lofty load. Honor thy Mother!

The Worldling

The worldling has no time for eternity.

The Converse Alinskyite Tactic

When our political enemies use our virtues against us, we should use their vices against them.

Speaking Truth to Power

A phrase beloved by leftists, but never deployed by them when it is apropos, that is, when they are in power.

Socratic Progress

The older I get the more I realize how little I know, even about subjects I have long pondered.  That realization is progress of a sort. We might call it Socratic progress, progress in the knowledge of one's ignorance.

The 'Gordian' Solution to the World-Knot

If the mind-body problem is the world-knot, as Schopenhauer is supposed to have said, then eliminative materialism is the 'Gordian' solution.  

Memo to Zennists

You can't get beyond the discursive intellect until you get to it.

Intellect and Will

An intellectual may become a handwringer. But he whose will is strong may become willful and obstinate.  Intellect and will need to check and balance each other.

Self-Satisfaction

A modicum thereof is surely justified, but it is best enjoyed in solitude.

Unseen Warfare

Because unseen, easy to doubt, dismiss, deny.  At your own risk.

Vincit qui se vincit

"He conquers who conquers himself." Or as a cognate aphorism of mine has it:

Self-mastery is the highest mastery.

Self-mastery requires the mastery of both desire and aversion, not unto their extirpation as in Pali Buddhism, but sufficiently to render ordinate what is inordinate. The problem is not desire as such, but inordinate desire. Similarly for aversion.

Along the same line, and in paraphrase of Augustine,

The vicious man has as many masters as he has vices.

Or as I say, with maximal pith and precision:

Vices vitiate.

Peace through Strength: A Variation on the Theme

Your willingness to be conciliatory will be taken for weakness unless you are perceived to be dangerous.

Political Desideratum

As much liberty as possible under as little law as is necessary.

Vehicles

I knew a man who knew all about his truck, its engine displacement, gear ratios, you name it. But when I asked him about his blood pressure, he replied that the doctor said it was OK. I thought to myself: Ken needs to get his vehicular priorities straight lest the via dolorosa through this vale of soul-making be more dolorous than it needs to be. 

Dark Moods

Like dark thoughts, dark moods are more or less oppressive depending on the hospitality with which we entertain them.

Institutions

Institutions too often value their own perpetuation over the fulfillment of their legitimate mandates. Examples are legion.

(This aphorism inspired by Chip Roy's grilling of the prevaricating FBI director Christopher Wray.)

Novus Ordo?

Giving a  Latin name to the destruction of the ancient Latin rite smacks of mockery.

On Settling: Political and Marital

In politics, as in marriage, at some point you have to settle on the best available candidate, not the best. Politics is about better and worse, not about perfect and imperfect.

Qui habet aures audiendi audiat. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."  

"It Takes One to Know One"

Half of the time.

It takes intelligence to recognize intelligence in others. But the stupid cannot see the stupidity in others -- or in themselves. 

Needs

One needs food, but not sex; money, but not fame; ancestors, but not progeny.

Life in Duality

We think in opposites and we perceive by contrasts.

Marital Vows

The more seriously you take them, the more careful you will be in the selection of a spouse. Herewith, then, an argument for taking them seriously.

Becoming Educated

Part of becoming educated is becoming aware of how poorly one has been educated.

On Travel

Travel introduces a salutary perturbation into one's quotidian orbit. It reduces self-satisfied complacency, putting in its place a useful unease.  Useful for what? For a renewed seriousness in pursuit of what finally matters. This is why it is good for the soul.

We easily get used to our own faults, foibles, and fatuities . . .

. . . why not then also those of others?

Marginal Notes

Used books often come with notes in the margin, notes almost always of marginal value.

Money

Whether or not the U. S. dollar remains the world's currency of choice, money itself will always be the ultimate currency and criterion of human seriousness and human understanding.  Money matters. "Money doesn't talk, it swears." (Bob Dylan) "When money talks, ideology walks." (Lee Iacocca) Just ask Traitor Joe.

As if in illustration of Lee's line, Anheuser-Busch walked back their Dylan Mulvaney wokery when their bottom line felt the sag.

Awake yet? Crank this one up. 

Getting Tough with Our Political Enemies

If we get tough with them politically, then we may be able to avoid having to get tough with them extra-politically. Let's hope and pray that we only have to prepare to enter the extra-political and not actually go there. For it won't be pretty.

But I see no good reason to be particularly sanguine. The Muse of Blog must be with me this morning: 'sanguine' is exactly the right word. 

The Demand Exceeds the Supply

The demand to feel aggrieved exceeds the supply of grievances. Hence the invention of 'micro-aggressions.' 

The Paradox of Privacy

As privacy perishes, privacy policies proliferate.

A Twitterized Attention Span . . .

. . . is one that has been X-ed out.

(Crossposted at Twitter.)

Distaff Tribalism

You may complain, with justification, that women are more tribal than men, but the point needs to be balanced by the observation that they are also more familial, social, communal, helpful, group-oriented, and nurturing. Where would we be without them?

You Know You Love Her . . .

. . .  when you find charming in her what would be annoying in others.  

Political Parsimony

Do not multiply enemies beyond necessity.

William of Ockham: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

William of Alhambra: Inimici non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

Enemies are worse than friends are good. The enmity of the enemy is more to be feared than the friendship of the friend is to be desired. But show me a man with no enemies, and I'll show you a man with no character. We of the Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable are distinguished by our enemies, in two senses of 'distinguish':  we are set apart from them and we are set above them.  A man is judged by the nature of his enemies — and by the nature of his friends.

Susan Sontag on the Art of the Aphorism

Top o' the Stack

Grievance and a Life Well-Lived

A life well-lived cannot have grievance as its organizing principle.

Consolation

There is some consolation in the thought that Rome did not fall in a day.  The older you are, the greater the consolation.

A Philosopher's Last Words

What I haven't been able to learn by living, I now hope to learn by dying.

An Extreme Form of Preaching to the Choir

Talking to oneself in the wee hours, rehearsing a rant, as the caffeine kicks in.

Kitsch

Kitsch is art's comfort food: familiar, reliable in its satisfactions, readily available, not particularly nourishing, but also not challenging to its consumers, remunerative for its producers.

Dialogue and Monologue

A dialogue is not a confrontation between two monologues. (Inspired by Frithjof Schuon)

Against Specialization

"Specialization is for insects." (Robert A. Heinlein)

If so, there is no 'insect' like the hyper-specialized analytic philosopher. (See here for quotation and context.)

The true philosopher is "a spectator of all time and existence," (Plato) and of everything sublunary and superlunary.

Panoptics and synoptics are the optics of the true philosopher.  Spinoza the lens-grinder would agree. 

Juvenilia

I pulled out my scribblings from the summer of '66.  Puerile stuff from a half-century ago. Painful in places.  But earnest and sincere with a good line here and there.  The old man honors the adolescent he was.

I wrote for posterity, though I didn't realize it at the time.  And I still do.  The posterity of self. 

One Man's Pedantry . . .

. . . is another man's precision.

Continence

There is continence sexual and gustatory. Custody of the eyes and of the heart are forms of continence.  Continence should also extend to rebuttals, replies, ripostes, rejoinders, responses, and reactions. Deny yourself the desire for vindication, and getting in the last word. Better retraction than self-serving reaction. The self denied is the ego; the self that denies is the soul.

The Main Argument against Secular Humanism

Humans.