Short Philosophical Musing

 

I used to think, influenced by the world, that Nietzsche was the polar opposite of Christianity. Now, I don’t think so.

Consider these quotes:

  

“Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”

“You are – your life, and nothing else.”

“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”

“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

“Life has no meaning a priori … it is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.”

“Better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees.”

 

These are the words of a man whose book I have behind me. I spent $20 of my slave wages on it seven years ago but have yet to crack it. This man’s thought was presented to me in several college courses, and I have had to write essays on said words for a grade. The man is a philosopher called Jean-Paul Sartre, and he is one of the founders of a school of thought known as existentialism, a philosophy that both attracts and repels me in equal measures.

The last quote, about living on one’s knees, struck me. I went to confession this morning. I spoke to a kindly old priest anonymously through a veiled window and listed my sins, in kind and in frequency (and often in embarrassment) and was absolved by a man acting in persona Christi. Then I went out in front of the tabernacle and did my penance and spoke internally from my heart to the Lord of the Universe, on my knees.

How utterly pitiable this man Sartre never encountered something like this. True, he lived through World War II in occupied France, a thing I cannot conceive, yet so did millions of others who survived, if only by the fact they fell to their knees before God. A man named Karol Wojtyla, who lived through World War II in occupied Poland, provides a perfect example of this.

But life is a mysterious thing, and so many aspects of it are not privy to us. Sartre allegedly had a death-bed conversion. And I may read Being and Nothingness, the book stacked in the pile behind me, at some undetermined point in the future.

 

Synchronicity or Syzygy?

 

“God teaches the soul by pains and obstacles, not by ideas.” – Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence

 

“What stands in the way becomes the way.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

 

S = ∫ (t1 to t2) L dt

 

Measured in joules / second, or accomplishments per unit of life.

 

Philosophy with Patch

 

SCENE: The Honda Accord this morning, doing errands, to culminate in dropping off Patch, age 15, at the soccer field for her reffing gig.

ME: I can prove to you that the universe HAS to exist.

PATCH: (groaning) Not more philosophy, Dad.

ME: Listen, this is cool. I’ll try to say it slowly. It took me a little while to get it down myself.

PATCH: Do I have to?

ME: Yes, if you want me to continue my duties as chauffeur.

PATCH: Ugh. Alright.

ME: This will prove that the universe must exist. Assume there is nothing. No universe, nothing. Then there would be no laws, because laws are something. If there are no laws, then everything is permitted. If everything is permitted, that means that nothing is forbidden. If nothing is forbidden, well, that means that nothing can not be. It can’t exist. Therefore, something must exist. That something is what we call the universe.

PATCH: I hate philosophy! Just a bunch of old nerds living in their parent’s basements trying to make everything more complicated!

ME: What do you mean? They’re trying to explain things.

PATCH: Well, maybe some philosophers are okay. Maybe someone like Socrates was able to figure things out and explain them in new ways.

ME: So would you lump Socrates in with all these old nerds?

PATCH: Dad, I didn’t say Socrates lived in his parent’s basement!

 

I think Socrates would have loved Patch. Whether she’d love him is a different story …

 

The Far Right ...

 

Kinda like this meme … been seeing it around a lot lately.

Philosophy Discussion with my 14-Year-Old

 

At the dinner table last night could be summarized thusly:

 

DESCARTES: I think, therefore I am.

HUME: Your Mom!

 

It reminded me of this classic little bit of humor – what if Twitter existed 2,500 years ago?

The Plato Project

Lately I’ve been toying – toying! – with the idea of reading through Plato’s works at the beginning of the new year.

Now, this is not for the faint of heart. But I’ve been very discontented with the stuff I’ve been reading of late, and I’m looking for something harder and heartier to chew on. I have the series The Great Books of the Western World in two storage bins in a closet. One volume, Volume 7, is devoted exclusively to Plato. It contains 23 dialogues, 1 letter, and The Republic. It’s a hardcover gnarled with age but not use, and weighs about five pounds.

I would divide my project into two phases: The dialogues and the one letter, and The Republic. Volume 7 is roughly a thousand pages; Republic alone is 40% of that. In January and February I’d tackle either the first or second phase, take a month or two off, and then read through the other phase. It’s doable, and it would be immensely intellectually satisfying.

Way, way back in my night school college days, er, nights, I guess, if you spare me the redundancy, I had to take two philosophy classes, Intro 101 and 102. It was my first real experience with the subject, and it ignited a lifetime of dancing around the issue. I’d read and not understand, or understand but not read (called, ahem, Cliff Notes), buy books that were only skimmed, lurk online on philosophy bulletin boards. I guess I have a street education about philosophy. My knowledge of Plato and $5 would get you a cup of coffee.

But I loved the classes, and could listen to my professors for hours. The first was a young man in his mid-twenties (my age at the time) with a heavy Czech name but an American accent. The second was a mailman who moonlighted as a college philosophy professor. Go figure. For the latter’s class I had to read the last couple of dialogues known as the Trial of Socrates, which include, if I remember correctly, The Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. It was very, very moving. It was also very, very many years ago. It deserves another re-reading.

Along with a first reading of the rest of Plato.

That is what I am slowly trying to convince myself to do come the New Year. I dunno if I’ll do it. Yet. Probably will. Or maybe I won’t. Oh, and a lot of this has to do with keeping pace with Little One, who’s studying the classics at her college this freshman year.

So this January you might find some posts here about me dipping my toes into the waters of Forms, of Allegorical Caves and Rings of Gyges-es. Philosopher Kings and a curmudgeonly old gadfly willingly taking the cup of hemlock as opposed to modifying and mollifying his codes and ideals.

As a side note, I’ve read – don’t remember where, it was so long ago – that everyone’s either a born Platonist or a born Aristotelian. After much thought, I classify myself as a Platonist in an Aristotelian cloak, which he wears out of doors when walking about amongst the citizens of the polis but discards as he enters his warm home, draws a pipe, and sits down with an old book in front of a roaring fireplace.

 

Words of Wisdom

  

Don’t think I posted this here before; I was going through some notes, miscellanea, and saved stuff in an old folder and found these words of wisdom. Whose lips they originated from I know not, but these pearls deserve to be blown to the wind, cast wide and far to the ends of the earth. Indeed, they probably have, since the aged ol’ gadfly gadded about those craggy, olive-treed ravines fifty decades before the Savior.

 

The Law of Individuality:

 

“Always remember you are unique. Just like everyone else.”

 

The Law of Concern for Fellow Man:

 

“Make it idiot proof and someone will build a better idiot.”

 

And the Law of Averages, applied to Mankind:

 

“The average man is just a little bit below average.”

 

That is all. Now I need to clock in eight hours of work, then it’s the Hopper family weekend of birthday bashes! Scores to follow on Monday!

 

Emo Philosopher

 

“Even Aristotle was emo as a teenager.”

 

  - Hopper, Armchair philosopher and father of two teenage daughters

 

Mocking the Woke

 

The Courage Pledge

* I believe in the inherent dignity of all people.

* I will not submit to outrage mobs.

* I will stand for the truth, not your truth or my truth.

* I will not hang that sign on my office door, make that symbolic gesture and so on if I don’t believe in its message.

* I will not denounce my friend.

* I am not ashamed of traditional faith or the American flag.

Drafted by Sohrad Ahmari

#CouragePledge

The One Warrior

“Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”

― Heraclitus

Witticism of the Day

Pre-Christian (i.e., pagan) societies and philosophies are like virgins.

Post-Christian (i.e., modern) societies and philosophies are like divorcees.

Nice quote from my favorite living Catholic philosopher, Peter Kreeft.

That must make pre-Vatican II Catholicism one smoothly harmonious marriage.

Government and the Economy

“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

- Ronald Reagan

Another great quote from one of my top-five presidents.

If I was a conservative running for president of the United States (which would never happen: I can literally list a thousand things I’d rather do instead, including undergoing a root canal), I would mine Reagan’s speeches and steal – ahem, borrow – liberally. (How’s that for an ironic adverb?)

Despisers of the Body

I wish to speak to the despisers of the body. Let them not learn differently nor teach differently, but only bid farewell to their own bodies – and so become dumb.

“I am body and soul” – so speaks the child. And why should one not speak like children?

But the awakened, the enlightened man says: I am body entirely, and nothing beside; and soul is only a word for something in the body.

The body is a great intelligence, a multiplicity with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a herdsman.

You say “I” and you are proud of this word. But greater than this – although you will not believe in it – is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say “I” but performs “I”.

- Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Needless to say, I am coming around to this viewpoint more and more, especially of late.

As one who has been at war with my body – or shall I say my body has been at war with me over what I’ve done to it – I am feeling stronger every day that I need to have a physical metanoia, a come-to-Zarathustra moment. A lot of the spiritual blockage I feel may just very well be due to the physical blockage that’s been building up over the years, a dam threatening to burst, held together by spit and dirt and a little Dutch boy’s unspoken prayers.

The last worthy effort I made to reclaim my body, the summer of 2015, changed my life more powerfully than anything since that conversion experience I had back in the spring of 1992 when I renounced hedonism and read every jot and tittle of the Good Book. (And, also like that spring of 1992, my renaissance lasted four or five months until my old evil habits – “the despisers of the body” – came in to reclaim the house.)

I’m gonna lift some weights now.

Racist

So, after reading a whole bunch of news articles during lunch today, I realized that the definition of the word racist must not mean what I’ve always thought it meant. You know, a racist being someone who believes that races other than his are inherently inferior. But that doesn’t seem to be the way most of the media apply it.

Unfortunately, I believe the following has to be clearly stated, based on and contrary to contemporary popular usage:

Racist =/= Conservative

Racist =/= Someone critical of Progressive policies

An example? Okay.

I’d much rather the Supreme Court consisted of nine black conservative women as opposed to nine white liberal males.

Does that make Hopper a racist?

N.B. “=/=” means “does not equal”

Adhimutta’s Confession

My teacher is the conqueror knowing all

And seeing all, the Master infinite

In pity, all the world’s physician, he.

And he it is by whom these truths are taught,

Norm to Nibbana leading unsurpassed.

Within his rule I’ve won this grieflessness.

* * * * * * *

Now when the robbers heard 

the well-spoke utterance of the sage,

They laid aside their knives, their arms, 

and some forsook that trade,

And some besought that they might leave 

the world for holy life …

- Buddhist Songs of the Wayfarers

I am Pro-Choice

It’s official, and it’s a fact:

I am Pro-Choice.

Four choices, actually.

1) Abstinence

2) Contraception

3) Adoption

and

4) Motherhood.

That’s it. Those are the only acceptable choices I’m willing to concede.

Hat tip to Steven Crowder.

N.B.: Even more official, as a Catholic, I would change Choice #2 from Contraception to Natural Family Planning. But as it stands writ above, I think this is a good position to lay groundwork to undermine the evil rationale of the Pro-Choice” euphemism.

The Dangers of Philosophy

Yikers! I have three texts by Kant on the shelf behind me …

A Conscious Metaphor

Came across this neat little idea on the internet while researching a bit on the introduction to Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (okay, I was looking for help understanding what the hell I just read 20 pages of)

To paraphrase what I heard …

Consciousness is like a hole in a wall. It’s an absence, a void, a bit of nothingness – until something moves behind the wall, past the hole. Then you can see it. You can grasp it. Rather, this thing called consciousness does.

Still not sure I grasp it. But I like it.

Hopper at 51

A metaphor:

“The Good Brahmin” by Voltaire

In my travels I once happened to meet with an aged Brahmin. “I wish,” said the Brahmin to me one day, “I had never been born!”

“Why so?” said I.

“Because,” replied he, “I have been studying these forty years, and I find it has been so much time lost. While I teach others I know nothing myself. The sense of my condition is so humiliating, it makes all things so distasteful to me, that life has become a burden. I have been born, and I exist in time, without knowing what time is. I am placed, as our wise men say, in the confines between two eternities, and yet I have no idea of eternity. I am composed of matter, I think, but have never been able to satisfy myself what it is that produces thought. I even am ignorant whether my understanding is a simple faculty I possess, like that of walking and digesting, or if I think with my head in the same manner as I take hold of a thing with my hands. I am not only thus in the dark with relation to the principles of thought, but the principles of my motions are entirely unknown to me. I do not know why I exist, and yet I am applied to every day for a solution of the enigma. I must return an answer, but can say nothing satisfactory on the subject. I talk a great deal, and when I have done speaking remain confounded and ashamed of what I have said.”

The condition in which I saw this good man gave me real concern. No one could be more rational, no one more open and honest. It appeared to me that the force of his understanding and the sensibility of his heart were the causes of his misery.

The same day I had a conversation with an old woman, his neighbor. I asked her if she had ever been unhappy for not understanding how her soul was made. She did not even comprehend my question. She had not, for the briefest moment in her life, had a thought about these subjects with which the good Brahmin had so tormented himself. She believed from the bottom of her heart in the metamorphoses of her god Vishnu, and, provided she could get some of the sacred water of the Ganges in which to make her ablutions, she thought herself the happiest of women.

Struck with the happiness of this poor creature, I returned to my philosopher, whom I thus addressed:

“Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when, not fifty yards from you, there is an old automaton who thinks of nothing and lives contented?”

“You are right,” he replied. “I have said to myself a thousand times that I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my old neighbor, and yet it is a happiness I do not desire.”

This reply of the Brahmin made a greater impression on me than any thing that had passed.