Enjoying the view from Limbo
The following is from a written exchange with a student who has been reading Plato recently. Why should I love wisdom? Loving wisdom and being wise are helpful for a truly good life? No, loving wisdom and being wise are not helpful for a truly good life. They are the truly good life. Loving wisdom is the truly good life for a human....
What does it mean to be open-minded, in the sense required for serious learning and self-development? It certainly does not mean assuming that every idea is as good as every other, or that no one’s perspective is truer than anyone else’s. That is not openness; it is relativism. Relativism is the death of thinking, philosophy, and self-development, because it suffocates the desire that motivates…
Fact vs. Fiction.– No one thinks or invents anything important due to the influence of alcohol or other drugs. But everyone who feels an immoderate attachment to a drug of choice has a vested interest in telling himself that these artificial intoxicants enhance thought and inventiveness. And every…
by Daren Jonescu · Published July 14, 2025 · Last modified July 16, 2025
If your most important contribution to the world was something you did for material gain, then you have not contributed anything of great importance to the world. The profit motive exists, and works well, but what profit motivates is not of a higher nature. Or rather, even the most potentially beautiful activity becomes pedestrian and merely practical to the extent that profit is...
Books / Ideas and Reflections / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published February 25, 2025 · Last modified February 26, 2025
A question from an ambitious student, paraphrased: What makes poetry poetry? In other words, what are the defining features of a poem that distinguish it from other forms of verbal or written communication? The easiest answer, and probably the one you would find most often in any quick internet search of this question, is that poetry, unlike non-poetry, is written in verse form,...
by Daren Jonescu · Published February 6, 2025 · Last modified February 8, 2025
The annoying thing about unrestrained government authority is that it does not magically become beneficial when it happens to fall into the hands of the faction you prefer. The insidious thing about unrestrained government authority is that it invariably appears to have become a beneficial thing when in the hands of the faction you prefer. Everything political leaders do is questionable, because only...
There is no art without limits. Absolute freedom of expression, attractive as it may be as a theoretical principle, ought never to be allowed into the arena of artistic endeavor. Art thrives on finding ways to imply what cannot be said and to reveal new beauty within the constraints of existing forms — and existing norms. Even the artists whom we have come...
I have occasionally been asked over the years why I chose Limbo as the defining theme of this website. It seems quite self-evident to me, because the notion of Limbo — and I take my notes on this concept primarily from Dante Alighieri — encapsulates so much about me, on so many levels. I belong among the in-between people: the unsaved who are...
“Say things as simply as possible” — in order to be understood as widely as possible. “Live in accordance with the norms of your society” — in order to be accepted. “Do not do what will be seen as inappropriate, foolish, or out of step by the people around you” — lest one be rejected or even condemned by others. “Keep up with...
Nothing gets deeper under the skin of feminists and their right-thinking progressive allies than the once- and long-honored notion of female modesty. This, of course, explains why the entire progressive program, from public policy and historical reinterpretation to education and popular moral messaging, has made the debunking of the “so-called differences” between men and women, and the obscuring of the very definitions of...
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