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The Allegory of the Cave in Plato’s Republic
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates paints a strange picture. Imagine a cave, underground (as caves are), with no natural light. In this cave are people chained up and chained down; they can’t move a muscle, not even their heads from left to right, and they’ve been stuck like that forever. They’ve never known any different. They […]
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Minds over Matter
Francis Bacon, in urging the introduction of the then-new science, complained that universities produced ‘minds empty and unfraught with matter’ having not ‘gathered that which Cicero calleth sylva and supellex, stuff and variety’. Now I complain that universities produce minds fraught with matter but empty of what matters. Their heads are full of stuff but incapable of judgement.
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Lovers of Wisdom
We are not lovers of wisdom but adulterers. We say we love wisdom but we are always pursuing something else: a job, a publication, a citation. These are our affairs.
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Cleverness and Wisdom
Cleverness does not correlate with wisdom. For many clever people have not even tried to be wise, and how wise is that?
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Luxuries
Luxuries are a creeping and relative thing. The more you have the more it seems reasonable to have. And the more it seems reasonable to have, the more it seems unreasonable to go without. Soon you will call them necessities.
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Reflections
I use the word ‘reflections’, and reflections is exactly the correct word. I reflect, philosophically, and give serious thought to my own thoughts. But these thoughts ought also to be a reflection of what is in you; they ought to show only what you already know but have forgotten.
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Healthy Cynicism
I’m not sure if Cynicism is healthy because I’m not sure what health is. But I do think that Cynicism has a healthy role to play: it is a healthy corrective to the nonsense of this world, the world that we have made for ourselves. My doubt serves as an introduction to a typically philosopher’s […]
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The Maxim Writer
The maxim writer: all wit but no substance. For all their craft, they vacillate and go against themselves. Would you choose to be one of them? And are they good guidance? But if I were to, I would do so in the spirit of Socrates and write only for the purposes of improvement, in myself and the reader. Then they are powerful things.
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Rochefoucauld’s Troubles
Rochefoucauld observes: ‘Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.’ But I say: Where philosophy is, troubles are not; and where troubles are, philosophy is not.
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No Experts
There are no experts in my field because those who understand the most would say that they know the least, and those who understand least say they know most.
An experiment with philosophy as a way of life
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