Tagged: Locke

The Writer, The Past, and The Progressive

The writer’s primary goal is not to appeal to readers, nor even to appeal to good readers, but rather to be worthy of good readers. He cannot control whether any such readers will exist, or whether, if they do exist, they will ever discover or appreciate his writing. He must concern himself only with what he can control — though even that only...

The Enlightenment Against Reason: Two Cases

Plato presents his teacher, Socrates, as the foremost expert on love and the most erotic of all men, on the grounds that Eros is at base the longing for immortality, thus defining a natural hierarchy of human fulfillments, at the peak of which resides the search for eternal truths, i.e., philosophy. Aristotle, taking the cosmic view, explains the relationship between the world of...

Reflections Out of Season

Fast talk usually means weak thought. Speed, as a rule, is superficiality’s colorful mask. In rhetoric, whether political, legal, or academic, the fast talker hopes to mesmerize your senses with how many words he can spew forth without a pause, in lieu of engaging your reason with the profundity of his ideas. The incessant and rapid flow disrupts sober attention and evades hard...