Enjoying the view from Limbo
Do you believe that there are certain fundamental tensions in human nature, that these tensions are intractable, that the challenge of surviving these tensions reasonably well is essentially what living a good life means, and that finding one’s way through these incongruities of our nature is possible only or primarily at the individual level, which is not to say in isolation, but rather...
To treat what we moderns call “culture” as an absolute — as we do when we speak of multiculturalism or cultural appropriation — is to reduce humanity as a species to its social conventions and habits, which means to deny the existence of any underlying human nature, which nature may, under varying conditions, manifest itself in alternative conventions and habits. In other words,...
Two climbers in different fields can understand and respect one another, and perhaps even be friends — with a wink. Two climbers in the same field can understand and respect one another, and may even appear to like one another, albeit with a slight sneer. But to the climber, nothing is more offensive, more viscerally disruptive, than the presence of a non-climber within...
When theoretical reason is forsaken in favor of practical reason as the human standard — or, to say the same thing, when the theoretical is reduced to the status of handmaiden of the practical — this will necessarily have certain verifiable and visible effects on life in the civilization in which this reversed perspective takes hold. In brief, this reversal reduces thinking to...
Any age, society, or political regime requires a justification for its existence, which is to say it needs a justifying person — a type or example of something great and enduring which was made possible, or rather more possible, by the prevailing conditions of that age, society, or regime. A human being who is recognizably of his time but also unqualifiedly for all...
There are three types of people whom we commonly call friends, namely those who have proved useful to us in our practical lives, those who share pleasant activities with us, and those who mirror our virtues. Accordingly, the three types of relationships may be referred to, by way of analyzing the general notion into its constituent parts, as friendships of utility, friendships of...
No one who sincerely espoused an attitude worthy of the name “multiculturalism” would ever imagine that multiple cultures — let alone all cultures — could or should coexist under an umbrella of mutual love and acceptance; for this would be to denigrate the very notion of culture. As though the various ways of human living, developed over centuries of survival, poetry, and faith,...
We all know less than we think we know — and more than we are willing to admit to ourselves.
There is no other known species with the ability to recast its weakness as strength and its defeat as swagger. Humans are uniquely resourceful at enslaving themselves and calling it freedom….
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” says the proverb. And so it is — or nearly so. For it would be more precise to say perceived necessity. That is, invention is born of the subjective sense of need, rather than only of actual, natural needs, a truth which may easily be observed by considering the kind of invention typical of our age, most...
A student who has been investigating the subject of “identity” informs me that she became somewhat lost amid all the diverse explanations of this notion that one encounters from various sources, until at last she settled on an approach reminiscent of Socrates’ famous “second sailing” (Phaedo, 99dff), a path she explains as follows: I just thought, after talking with you about this topic,...
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