Enjoying the view from Limbo
The single most indispensable explanation of what a philosopher is comes in the context of the most famous trial in legal history. Socrates, who in Plato’s presentation of him was and remains the definitive philosopher, the embodied essence of the philosophic life, was tried, convicted, and executed on two charges: impiety and corrupting the youth. The philosopher is thus, by definition and essential...
You do not have to like or choose any of them. You can dislike, distrust, and reject them all. It is not your duty to choose. It is your duty to think. “Opinion is for the many, truth for the few. Therefore, the truth seeker has an obligation not to publicly corrupt or undermine the opinions on which society depends.” This principle or...
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...
Everything that indicates human greatness, to the extent that it does so, is an obstacle to immediate popular appeal. For greatness is by definition not of its time, and therefore intrinsically too detached from current norms — theoretical, moral, political — to be either fully visible or fully comprehensible to those who are immersed in, and thus collectively definitive of, the present. One...
Many people walk regularly, but we do not all walk for the same reasons. If you walk primarily for your bodily health, or to “get your blood flowing,” then your walking is not similiar to mine. I walk every day, as much as possible, and often for hours. And I do so, in the final analysis and in ultimate effect, for one reason...
Recently, a serious student who has embarked with gusto on the path of philosophy mused, in an e-mail, about what it means, definitionally speaking, to “be who she is.” Let’s say this is a note for the future, in case I might lose myself someday. What if I lose myself and forget who I was? Read this: “From myself in the past (2022)...
Kafka’s burden — the bureaucrat of practical necessity suffocated by life in the bureau — embodies in its tortured anxieties the modern diminution of the raging Heracles: Why must I, a soul full of passion, strength, and cravings for eternity, succumb to these expectations of others, to these odious priorities of daily life, to the duties of my lot, my status, my family,...
In this age of social media, social thought, and social truth, the richest man in the world, a pot-smoking cool kid with his hands deep in the government cookie jar, is now the controlling owner of the world’s dominant social discussion forum. Meanwhile, in this age of ubiquitous internet addiction, online surveillance, and the dubious boons of universal interconnectedness, the most influential and...
Everything today is for stupid people. If anything exists today that is not fundamentally aimed at the stupid, then it falls entirely outside the public eye, resides beyond social discourse, has no connection to the quasi-life that the society around you is engaged in. Hence, if anything you like, do, or care about does fall within the public eye, occupy a corner of...
To interpret a thing is to categorize it. We may categorize only in accordance with existing categories, of course, which in practice — an obvious point but one easily forgotten — means in accordance with categories we know. Hence, the limits of interpretation, for each man, are determined by the modes of existence that he himself has previously recognized or intuited from his...
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