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Cynicism, Joy, and Baloo the Bear
I don’t often speak about joy; I think it’s silly. (I don’t know why I think this.) But recently I’ve been troubled by troubles of my own making, and this coincided fortuitously with my daughter’s discovery of Disney’s The Jungle Book and with that Baloo the bear. What a picture of a Cynic: contentedly resting at ease with just the bare necessities. It’s a healthy correction.
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Diogenes the Cynic
Diogenes sees a mouse, happily running about, not looking for money or prestige, and finds a lesson in the mouse’s behaviour: Nature has given us a relatively easy life, but we’ve overlaid it with nonsense. We make life difficult for ourselves by wanting more than our nature needs. Diogenes implores us to realise this, offering us a walking talking living breathing lesson with his own example. […]
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Properly Basic Moral Belief
According to Alvin Plantinga, religious belief is properly basic because it is involuntary and it arises from a properly functioning natural faculty that, if its origin story is true, grants the belief epistemological warrant. Is there any reason to suppose moral belief, especially at its limits, is any different from a properly basic religious belief? […]
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The Proper Time to Eat
‘What is the proper time to eat?’, someone asks Diogenes the Cynic. ‘When rich, whenever you want; when poor, whenever you can.’ A pithy phrase, apparently saying little. It is a seed. Perhaps you might remember it and reflect on it from time to time. At first glance it conveys a certain sense of living […]
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Craft Your Nature
As natural as it should be to live in accordance with nature, we don’t take to it naturally. It takes practice and training and an amount of philosophical education to understand what nature requires and to align your will with those requirements. Our untrained nature often leads us astray. We’re naturally inclined to follow our […]
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Align Your Will with Nature
Diogenes the Cynic sees a mouse, happily running about, not looking for money or prestige, and finds a lesson in the mouse’s behaviour: Diogenes says the gods have given us an easy life but we’ve made it difficult for ourselves by overlaying it with nonsense. Even in Diogenes’ time, to talk of ‘the gods providing’ […]
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Philosophy is a Magic Spell
Philosophy is like a kind of magic spell: you only need to say the right words in the right order and with the right intent you can change your world. Philosophy can turn poverty into wealth and sickness into health; it can free you from constraints, from the power of tyrants, from the fear of […]
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The Courage of Cynicism
I love the Cynics and I wish I were courageous enough to be one. I think they are essentially right in everything they say. A student once expressed surprise at this, when I said as much in a lecture, pointing out that I had celebrated Socrates’ prioritisation of the ethical. Weren’t the two incompatible? Socrates […]
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Shouting from the Sidelines
I’ve often thought there’s something absurd about a philosopher shouting from the sidelines of society, accusing everyone of being miserable. Most people seem quite content to go about their business; they don’t seem particularly tormented by being in ordinary society; it’s only the philosopher that is. Who is more miserable here? The one who is […]
An experiment with philosophy as a way of life
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