Enjoying the view from Limbo
Hypocrisy.– Beware all public voices who cite the profit motive as evidence that someone or some organization is acting dishonorably, disingenuously, or without sincere regard for the public good — and who make these claims on a for-profit basis. Treat with extreme skepticism the motives or reasoning of anyone who preaches, with a material vested interest, about the vested interests behind someone else’s...
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)...
“I see you are alone, so you are not busy.” False. One is never busier than when alone, for then one is surrounded by the incessant demands of all those complex ideas and secret projects that tend to sit quietly in dark corners and leave you to your own devices when you are in the company of humans. “Are you busy this weekend?”...
The philosopher eschews the crowd, knowing that neither will his lone, strange voice be heard above the crowd’s incessant and familiar din, nor will his pointed questions and logical complexities penetrate minds caked in the mire of the tribe’s roiling certainties. This has been axiomatic among thinkers from the earliest times: The crowd is the enemy of thought, and hence of conversation, and...
A student who is about to move away from home to begin graduate studies in philosophy was ruminating about the value and significance of detaching oneself from relationships and sentimental entanglements which distort or limit independent thought. As a young man deeply interested in both Eastern and Western thought, he mentioned having recently heard a Buddhist monk explaining the spiritual benefits of cutting...
“If I have 80% understanding and 20% ignorance about a topic, then I think it will be easy to form questions about my ignorance, but in this case, I think I have 10% understanding and 90% ignorance, so it is not easy to even form a proper question, because I’m not sure if it is a good question to help my understanding.”
The only thoughts that ultimately matter much are those which we may, following Nietzsche, call “thoughts out of season.” This is true in part because seasonal thoughts, by definition, do little to advance the discussion, and tend to merely amplify the ambient noise, but mainly because such thoughts, being reflections of one’s time and surroundings, are often difficult even to classify as thoughts...
Everything in our experience can be divided in two. After all, that most basic division explains why we have our world of experience in the first place: the primordial world-egg was split in half, or God created heaven and earth, or the Yin and Yang were distinguished — as you please. And this is why we rational animals are so naturally apt to...
In Part One of this discussion, I included the following among my principles: Profit. Never seek material gain from the best thing you can do; for that is the literal meaning of selling one’s soul. You will not get it back. Upon reading this particular principle, a serious student who is trying to work out her own life priorities at this time offered...
The best writer writes as the most intimate friend speaks, namely as though he were talking to himself, and for himself. He also hesitates to take his writing too seriously, and may even be suspicious of it. The best teacher is not the one who can answer all your questions, but rather the one who knows how to ask questions, and what the...
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