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Shadow Chasing
Over the past few years – having made an attempt to pursue philosophy as a way of life, to take it seriously and digest its lessons and not only treat it as an academic discipline – I’ve come to see new depths in old ideas. One example of this is the cynical little detail in Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’. There, Plato suggests that these poor souls – imprisoned in a dark cave of ignorance and only able to look at the shadows on the wall in front of them – would esteem those who are best at discerning the…
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Dirty Water
If you think you are swimming in dirty water, you get out. You don’t keep swimming, adding to the filth.
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A Philosopher’s Difference
Philosophers chase what matters and so neglect what doesn’t. Most people neglect what matters and so chase what doesn’t.
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The Musician Allegory
As a musician, to play out of tune and not realise it is one thing. But to realise that you are playing out of tune and to keep playing: that is absurd. Such a person is ridiculous. If you realise that you are playing out of tune, you stop playing. You don’t start playing again until you have tuned yourself up.
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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 are stuck in a dark cave looking at the wall directly in front of them. On this wall are shadows cast from a fire behind them. Between the fire and the people and the wall is a little runway with a kind of shadow-puppet theatre.…
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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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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 question. Not ‘is this or that thing healthy?’, which is a question we leave to the scientists, but ‘what is healthy’? What is the essence or best idea that we have of ‘health’? Here are some paradoxical answers characteristic of a Cynic’s idea: It is…
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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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Can Virtue Be Taught?
Why do the Cynics shout over the choir? Why do they so visibly show themselves walking the walk of the philosopher’s life? It is to teach us a lesson. What lesson? That virtue is all that really matters and everything else is a matter of indifference. In this they presume an important idea: that virtue can be taught. In their case they think it is something best taught by example and learnt through experience. Whether or not virtue can be taught was a hotly-debated topic in ancient philosophy. It is an idea that can be challenged. Ancient philosophers would point…
An experiment with philosophy as a way of life
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