Enjoying the view from Limbo
We are currently witnessing the unilateral, completely unprovoked surrender of the United States before every significant world dictator, terrorist organization, and angrily pointed finger. (They sometimes call it “withdrawal” and send out their representatives to say stunningly conscienceless things like, “I think Kabul will hold. The question is, can it hold long enough to create a political solution between the sides?”) And the...
Language and politics.– One man believes the central question of practical politics is, “Which powers should the government use?” Another man believes the central question is, “Which powers should the government have?” One word of difference is all that separates these two men — one small word that holds within it all their respective premises about human nature, the individual, and the value of...
Life in the fullest sense is not a race. It is a search. A race is fast, and by definition everyone in a race has agreed to run in the same direction. A search, by contrast, is slow, and the best searchers are the ones who have the courage to depart from the standard path sometimes and walk into the woods alone. One...
Montaigne wore a medallion around his neck engraved with the words, “What do I know?” It was his way of continually reminding himself of the necessary humility at the heart of the sometimes hubristic philosophic quest. My version of Montaigne’s medallion is the home screen of my cell phone, which, for about six months, has been adorned with my customized welcome message, “I...
The schoolyard sore loser as international pitchman. Donald Trump has just announced that he is suing Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Jack Dorsey (Twitter) for “censorship.” For a man who serially threatens lawsuits (and a lot of other things) and then backs away, this definitive step forward is quite noteworthy. Here is what it shows me: Donald Trump, a lifelong grifter and name salesman...
Fascist demagoguery proclaiming itself the only bulwark against communism. Communist thuggery declaring itself the only bulwark against fascist demagoguery. America 2021. Germany 1930. Everyone who warned of these echoes for decades — and was mocked out of both polite society and the ivory tower for so warning — appears to have been fully vindicated. The question is, why would any American have expected...
Reputation. The most important book in philosophy, Plato’s Republic, is at its core an elaborate answer to this question: Who will have the happier life, the completely just man who is hated, reviled, punished, and dies without a friend, or the completely unjust man who is loved, respected, rewarded, and dies with a hero’s reputation? It is necessary to remind yourself of this...
A few more ways that I am at odds with today: I would rather live in a world with many things to fear than in a world with nothing to fear, because the opposite preference represents the emotional state of a child — and implies the practical conditions of a slave. It is preferable to live in a society in which people care...
The United States of America, a society of business and diligence, was never temperamentally suited to be a land of great authors and composers — and yet Igor Stravinsky and Aldous Huxley, men from very different backgrounds and sensibilities, immigrated to America and became great friends there. Ralph Waldo Emerson is the one writer Nietzsche mentions with unqualified deference; Herman Melville invented the...
Pleasure ameliorates pain. Pain is a condition of growth. Therefore, pleasure either interrupts or thwarts growth. The only possible exception to this conclusion would be a pleasure that was specific to the process or achievement of growth itself. This latter pleasure — the pleasure that accompanies or rewards growth as such — would thus be the only pleasure consistent with the life impulse....
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