I am attracted to Nietzsche’s thought because he pursues as a cheetah on the savanna, question after question, wrestling each in turn into submission. Without assumptions about answers, he is interested to seize the main, root question, in order to clarify the alternatives inscribed within such a question. Several evenings earlier I attended a…
A voice whispers, the sound of my conscience, that I am no exception to this mad scenario. All will choose seduction over prosaic substance, if we have opportunity. We cannot help ourselves — but believe that “someone to lie to me” must also be “someone to watch over me”… Nations are deceived so often…
Today is Halloween. Who doesn’t enjoy a ghost story, especially those classic movies which portray a tale of haunting? We recently viewed George Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead. Viewing the movie for the first time, I appreciated that in 1968 the tale absolutely induced fear. We love a haunting… Is a haunting…
A friend read the ‘hidden god’ quotation of yesterday. He responded by text that he wanted to think more about the quotation. We plan to talk by phone this afternoon. Nietzsche reveals in subsequent lines that he is referring to Dionysus, the god of reverie, of wine, of inadvertent discovery. The thought of such…
How could it be otherwise? Our sense of time, of the texture of change, – is of-our-species of mammal. When I was a child with my sister in the back seat of our car, I remember those trips to visit with my grand parents. The hour and a half drive felt interminable. More than…
Another poem from the concluding appendix to The Gay Science. I like the sardonic note of this one, a surreal description of a professional religionist, of a man-of-the-cloth. Beppa is the pious priest, the first to benefit from forgiveness-at-a-discount offered by the church. “With another sin, one wipes old sins away.” Another phrasing that…
I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in everything he did, said, — and did not say. This mocking and enamored monster and pied piper of Athens, who made the most overweening youths tremble and sob, was not only the wisest chatterer of all time: he was equally great in silence. I wish…
Easter. Images of Pope Francis performing the “foot washing” ritual, – a reminder of Easter as a religious commemoration… That was yesterday, Maundy Thursday. The image reminds me that Christianity promotes servility. Is there any evolutionary advantage to servility? Are the survival odds of one’s fellowman improved? I think, offering to others the self-that-I-am…
LITTLE GIDDING By T. S. Eliot (No. 4 of ‘Four Quartets’) II Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age To set a crown upon your lifetime’s effort. First, the cold friction of expiring sense Without enchantment, offering no promise But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit As body and soul begin to fall asunder….
Uncertain, what to write this morning. Tom, stopped by for several minutes and we exchanged our impressions about “philosophy.” Tom mentioned the slog of reading John Stewart Mill. I agreed with him. Mill was as inaccessible to me as well. I said, that one must pick and choose among the philosophers, selecting material that…
