“I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.” (Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 1) “It is the mark of a free man not to live at another’s beck and call.” (Aristotle, Rhetoric 1367a30) “One profits more by the mistakes one makes off one’s own bat than by doing the right thing on […]
The soul of adventure — quotations Read More »
Reprising this post from 2016, using this very clear and representative list of experiences that one can check off or not. Some are positive, others are irritating, and some are infuriating for those who experience them. The purpose of the list is (in part) to help one realize how good/challenged/frustrated/damaged one’s life is. But note
*Privilege* as a bundled anti-concept Read More »
Reprising this fascinating short article in the British Journal of Medicine by Robert N. Proctor, professor of the history of medicine at Penn State University: “The anti-smoking campaigns of the Nazis: a little known aspect of public health in Germany, 1933-1945” [pdf]. The campaign was mounted despite the arguments that (1) taxes on tobacco were
Famous anti-smoking activists from history Read More »
Reprising this classic from the Department of Collegial Zingers: here is W. K. Clifford on an intellectual acquaintance: “He is writing a book on metaphysics, and is really cut out for it; the clearness with which he thinks he understands things and his total inability to express what little he knows will make his fortune
W. K. Clifford on philosophical writing style Read More »
Reprising this intriguing passage from Berel Dov Lerner’s review of Moshe Halbertal’s On Sacrifice (2012): ‘Halbertal claims that despite all its transcendent glory, adoption of the notion of “sacrifice for” can generate especially terrible consequences: “misguided self-transcendence is morally more problematic and lethal than a disproportionate attachment to self-interest” (78, italics in original). How does
Self-sacrifice as more threatening than self-interest Read More »
In his 1932 The Doctrine of Fascism, Benito Mussolini quotes approvingly historian Ernst Renan for his “pre-fascist intuitions”: “The maxim that society exists only for the well-being and freedom of the individuals composing it does not seem to be in conformity with nature’s plans, which care only for the species and seem ready to sacrifice
Mussolini and Kant on war and the sacrifice of individuals Read More »
Like many other people, I am troubled by this phrase when I hear it. The usual scenario: A successful person makes a donation to a worthy cause but downplays any praise by saying “I’m only giving back.” The usual gentle rejoinder is to point out that the phrase assumes that the giver has taken something
In his notebooks, Walt Whitman wrote: “I never yet knew how it felt to think I stood in the presence of my superior.—If the presence of God were made visible immediately before me, I could not abase myself.” In his Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote: “The real test of being in the presence of
Self-esteem in Walt Whitman and C. S. Lewis Read More »