THE SHORT VERSION of
A GUIDE FOR THE PHILOSOPHICALLY PERPLEXED
OR
A COMMON SENSE APPROACH TO PHILOSOPHY
ALSO
A COLLECTION OF FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS
AND
APHORISMS FOR LIBERAL EDUCATION
A Word of Caution
Few statements are true in all respects or for all plausible interpretations. This is especially true of interesting or significant statements and arises from the vague and ambiguous nature of language. The only way we know of surmounting this problem is to look for proportion in a set of statements or ideas. To this end and to make discussion more interesting the following quotes and aphorisms have been grouped into sets of two, three or more. Successive items within each set have then been connected with an italicized word or phrase which suggests a relationship.
Copyright © MCMLXXXXVII
Table of Contents
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY
Intellectual Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Happiness & Unhappiness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Love & Friendship. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
Romance & The Opposite Sex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Human Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
Human Frailty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60
Egotism & Self-Deception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Feelings & Emotional Energy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .90
Education & Virtue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106
Ideas, Thinking & Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126
Religion & Philosophy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Philosophical Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Politics, Government & Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Science, Technology & Capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Work & Leisure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .188
Miscellaneous. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .199
LOGIC; Certainty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .218
FAITH; Freedom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
COMMON SENSE; Limitation; Dogma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
MYSTERY; Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
PARADOX; Subjectivism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
LANGUAGE; Analogy; Fundamentalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .458
WESTERN PHILOSOPHY
Have you ever wanted to read the classics of Western philosophy, but shuddered to think of how much time that would involve? Glyn Hughes has created a website called ‘Squashed Philosophers’ that is the answer to your (perhaps unconscious) prayer. His brilliant idea was to take the works of the great philosophers from Plato to Karl Popper and to condense them to a fraction of their original length—the Confessions of St. Augustine was reduced from 160,000 words to 10,119—while trying to retain their styles and famous maxims. Hughes also provides a short introduction to each philosopher and his work, a glossary, and sometimes a Very Squashed Version of only a few paragraphs. He even gives an estimate of the time required to read the squashed version, as well as its length as a percentage of the original work. I have made extensive use of this time-saving website and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
[1]
THE PARADOX OF CAUSATION
An effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely.
George Orwell
for example
A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks.
for example
If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
George Orwell
for example
We act as we do because we are what we are: and what we are is the result very largely of the use we have made of our freedom to act as we will.
INTELLECTUAL TOOLS
[2]
THE PARADOX OF EXTREMES
When a thing is pushed to its extreme, it moves to its opposite.
for example
Beyond a certain level of intensity, medicine engenders helplessness and disease.
Ivan Illich
for example
Beware the fury of a patient man.
John Dryden
for example
In every age of transition men are never so firmly bound to one way of life as when they are about to abandon it.
Bernard Levin
INTELLECTUAL TOOLS
[3]
LANGUAGE DEALS IN HALF-TRUTHS
There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
A. N. Whitehead
in fact
Every heresy is a truth taught out of proportion.
G. K. Chesterton
for example
The ego or the self is a social construct.
for example
There is no such thing as objectivity in anything involving human interpretation.
for example
In personal and public life, in kitchen, bedroom and halls of parliament, men wage unremitting war against women.
Marilyn French
for example
Love is what we call the situation which occurs when two people who are sexually compatible discover that they can also tolerate one another in various other circumstances.
Marc Maihueird
for example
Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt
...nevertheless
There are no entirely false opinions. The listener, then, must proceed from what is valid in the opinions of the speaker to the fuller and purer truth as he, the listener, understands it.
Josef Pieper
HAPPINESS & UNHAPPINESS
[9]
THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS
The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded upon a fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts, and we grow happier as we grow older.
William Lyon Phelps
consequently
I have known some quite good people who were unhappy, but never an interested person who was unhappy.
A. C. Benson
yet
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
Charles Kingsley
on the other hand
If we could have just one thing, it would be energy.
John F. Kennedy
HAPPINESS & UNHAPPINESS
[11]
CHRONIC BOREDOM IS SOMETHING
TO BE AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS
Nothing is as fatiguing as boredom.
for example
Speaking of the public school at which he boarded C. S. Lewis wrote: I think that this feigning, this ceaseless pretence of interest in matters [school games] to me supremely boring, was what wore me out more than anything else... Never, except in the front line trenches (and not always there) do I remember such aching and continuous weariness as at Malvern.
consequently
When a thing bores you do not do it. Do not pursue a fruitless perfection.
Eugène Delacroix
for example
Speaking about her work a former female associate of a prestigious Manhattan law-firm said, "At best it’s tedious, and at worst the tedium will kill you. It deadened my senses. I’d go out at lunch and find myself envying people who scooped ice cream for a living. At least they could daydream all day."
in conclusion
The enlightened person is not easily bored. Nonetheless the enlightened person knows when he or she is being bored and knows for sure when she or he is not. No amount of spectacle or surface glamour should ever persuade you that you are not being bored when, in fact, you are.
Lister Sinclair (of CBC’s Ideas)
LOVE & FRIENDSHIP
[19]
IS LOVE A FEELING OR AN ACT?
Love is a matter of feeling, not of will or volition. Hence there is no such thing as a duty to love.
Immanuel Kant
rather
It is obviously impossible to love all men in any strict and true sense. What is meant by loving all men, is to feel well disposed towards all men, to be ready to assist them, and to act towards those who come in our way as if we loved them.
John Henry Newman
in other words
Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional.
M. Scott Peck
for example
Love seeks to make happy rather than to be happy.
Ralph Connor
for example
Love is an act of endless forgiveness.
Peter Ustinov
often
To love is to suffer; to be loved is to cause suffering.
Comtesse Diane
LOVE & FRIENDSHIP
[20]
IS FRIENDSHIP THE HIGHEST LOVE?
You can’t love what you don’t know.
but
We only know someone through friendship.
St. Augustine
and
The bond of companionship, both in marriage and friendship, is conversation.
Oscar Wilde
LOVE & FRIENDSHIP
[21]
TO LOVE IS TO LISTEN
Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.
Simone Weil
in fact
Attention is, in many ways, the heart of charity.
whereas
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that’s the essence of inhumanity.
George Bernard Shaw
consequently
The first duty of love is to listen.
LOVE & FRIENDSHIP
[22]
IS LOVE’S PATIENCE INEXHAUSTIBLE?
Men have to be reminded that things must be loved first and improved afterwards.
G. K. Chesterton
however that may be
If you treat men the way they are you never improve them. If you treat them the way you want them to be, you do.
Goethe
consequently
Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself.
St. Francis de Sales
LOVE & FRIENDSHIP
[23]
SHOULD FRIENDSHIP BE THE MAIN
COURSE IN LIFE’S BANQUET?
You almost don’t know you exist until someone else receives you. Our friends create us in lots of ways.
however that may be
Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence.
Sydney Smith
whereas
He that has no one to love or confide in, has little to hope. He wants the radical principle of happiness.
Samuel Johnson
LOVE & FRIENDSHIP
[25]
SOMETIMES TRYING TO BREAK DOWN
BARRIERS IS A MISTAKE
A different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
George Eliot
perhaps
There is a certain distance at which each person we know is naturally placed from us. It varies with each, and we must not attempt to alter it. We may clasp him who is close, and we are not to pull closer him who is more remote.
Mark Rutherford
LOVE & FRIENDSHIP
[27]
DOES FRIENDSHIP HAVE THE
RIGHT TO EXCLUDE?
I have no duty to be anyone’s friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine.
C. S. Lewis
because
In friendship ‘Do you love me?’ means ‘Do you see the same truth?’—or at least, ‘Do you care about the same truth?’ The person who agrees with us that some thing is of great interest or importance can be our friend.
whereas
People not qualified to enter a circle of friends must be excluded or the circle will be transformed into something else.
C. S. Lewis
consequently
In friendship no standard applies except the standards of friendship. That is why it is the most delightful of all human relationships.
Malcolm Muggeridge
LOVE & FRIENDSHIP
[28]
FRIENDSHIP IS LIKE EROS
IN SOME RESPECTS
Friendship must be willed. But more than this is necessary. A few years ago I worked on the same project with a man close to me in age and cultural interests. I had high respect for both his intelligence and his emotional qualities. We also found ourselves in perfect accord on ideological and spiritual matters. I have rarely so intensely desired to become anyone’s friend; I confided my desire to him and from all evidence he had an identical desire. We made meritorious efforts to meet one another, endeavoured to achieve as intimate a dialogue as possible and acted in all things like friends. It was all in vain; the emotional spark was not forthcoming. We had to resign ourselves to being good companions, friends in the broad sense of the term. We got along marvellously on the intellectual plane, but our emotional accord left something to be desired.
Ignace Lepp
consequently
Friendship, like eros and affection, has its source in emotional energy.
LOVE & FRIENDSHIP
[29]
UNDERSTANDING ANOTHER PERSON
IS NOT AS EASY AS IT LOOKS
Each man and woman dwells in a different environment—so different that I believe that not two people have so much as half in common. Men know each other’s inner world so slightly that they neglect this difference and it is only when two people have a relationship of utter love and trust that their inner lives begin to become perceptible to each other and are revealed as mutually most strange.
Sherwood Taylor
consequently
It is a luxury to be understood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
ROMANTIC LOVE & THE OPPOSITE SEX
[32]
A GENDER DIFFERENCE THAT
IS WORTH REMEMBERING
Erica Jong
because
Men love with their eyes, but women love with their ears.
consequently
Women woo men with dress and appearance while men woo women with words.
ROMANTIC LOVE & THE OPPOSITE SEX
[33]
IS COMPETITION BETWEEN THE SEXES
A THING TO BE AVOIDED?
The more men and women are rivals the less they are lovers.
however that may be
Winning an argument with the opposite sex is like winning a nuclear war. After it’s over life isn’t worth living.
perhaps
The more the sexes are in violent contrast the less likely they are to be in violent collision. The more incompatible their tempers are the better.
G. K. Chesterton
ROMANTIC LOVE & THE OPPOSITE SEX
[36]
DOES SEXUAL ATTRACTION OPERATE
ASYMMETRICALLY BETWEEN THE SEXES?
The man’s desire is for the woman; but the woman’s desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
consequently
Healthy sexual attraction between a man and a woman usually takes the following form: the man must desire the woman and the woman must know she is desired by the man.
but
Not everyone can find a partner who is personally as well as erotically compatible. Quite often the ‘perfect’ sexual partners remain isolated in their solitude.
ROMANTIC LOVE & THE OPPOSITE SEX
[37]
IN MARRIAGE ALWAYS ASSUME THAT
WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET
There is no greater folly than to seek to correct the natural infirmities of those we love.
Henry Fielding
consequently
A man who marries a woman to educate her falls into the same fallacy as the woman who marries a man to reform him.
perhaps
People should marry selfishly so that they can act unselfishly after they marry.
HUMAN NATURE
[42]
THE BRUTALITY OF REASON
People don’t ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good, soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts.
in other words
Man is not a rational animal, but an animal capable of reason.
moreover
Nothing hath an uglier look to us than reason, when it is not on our side.
Marquess of Halifax
consequently
Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however mild and polite, are necessarily men of violence.
G. K. Chesterton
HUMAN NATURE
[43]
A HOMELY BUT IMPORTANT PRINCIPLE
Most emotion is situated on the level of sense experience.
for example
We can face things which we know to be dangerous if they don’t look or sound too dangerous; our real trouble is often with things we know to be safe but which look dreadful.
C. S. Lewis
for example
Appearances beat the facts nine times out of ten.
for example
There are some people who state that the exterior, sex, or physique of another person is a matter of indifference to them, that they care only for the communion of mind with mind; but these people need not detain us. There are some statements that no one ever thinks of believing, however often they are made.
G. K. Chesterton
for example
I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
for example
It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place the world is when one is playing golf.
HUMAN NATURE
[46]
HUMAN NATURE
Human beings are creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.
Dale Carnegie
consequently
If you can engage people’s pride, love, pity, ambition (or whatever is their prevailing passion), on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
Lord Chesterfield
HUMAN NATURE
[49]
PATIENCE ISN’T ALWAYS A VIRTUE
Endurance is frequently a form of indecision.
however that may be
It would seem as if a living creature had to be taught, like an art of culture, the art of protesting when it is hurt. It would seem as if patience were the natural thing; it would seem as if impatience were an accomplishment like bridge.
but
One can reach a point of humiliation where violence is the only outlet.
Arthur Koestler
HUMAN NATURE
[55]
HUMAN NATURE
The great consolation in life is to say what one thinks.
Voltaire
however that may be
Self-expression is the dominant necessity of human nature.
Dale Carnegie
consequently
I’m exhausted from not talking.
Sam Goldwyn
HUMAN FRAILTY
[60]
HUMAN FRAILTY: IMAGINATIVE
What a man knows at fifty which he didn’t know at twenty is, for the most part, incommunicable.
Adlai Stevenson
because
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced—even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.
John Keats
for example
For nothing can seem foul to those that win.
King Henry IV (King Henry)
for example
We are all strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others.
de la Rochfoucauld
for example
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
Jane Austen
for example
A man must have grown old and lived long in order to see how short life is.
Arthur Schopenhauer
consequently
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences.
Edward R. Murrow
HUMAN FRAILTY
[61]
DO LIKES AND DISLIKES WEIGH MORE
WITH US THAN REASON OR CONSCIENCE?
We resent offenses against our taste at least as much as offenses against our conscience or reason. If we are not careful criticism may become an mere excuse for taking revenge on things we dislike by erecting our temperamental antipathies into pseudo-moral judgements.
C. S. Lewis
often
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.
Oscar Wilde
in other words
Men are disliked not for what they do, but for what they are.
Hugh Kingsmill
for example
I was glad when I found Celia (his wife) was unfaithful. I felt it was all right for me to dislike her.
Charles Ryder to his soon-to-be lover
(from Brideshead Revisited)
HUMAN FRAILTY
[63]
BIGOTRY IS A FAILURE OF
THE IMAGINATION
Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition. It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.
G. K. Chesterton
whereas
The simple realization that there are other points of view is the beginning of wisdom. Knowing what they are is a big step. The final achievement is understanding why they are held.
but
It takes effort to imagine how other people see the world and many people are not prepared to make that effort.
HUMAN FRAILTY
[67]
HUMAN FRAILTY: EGOCENTRICITY
A man has his beliefs: his arguments are only his excuses for them...we only see what we look at: our attention to our temperamental convictions blind us to all the facts that tell against us.
George Bernard Shaw
in other words
People only see what they are prepared to see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
moreover
What ardently we wish, we soon believe.
Edward Young
for example
People believe lies, not because they are plausibly presented, but because they want to believe them. So, their credulity is unshakeable.
Malcolm Muggeridge
consequently
It’s not a controversial proposition that people tend to believe what they want, and that the strength of their conviction is usually proportional to their self-interest.
EGOTISM & SELF-DECEPTION
[81]
HUMAN FRAILTY: SELF-DECEPTION
Everyone is guilty of enjoying the comfort of opinion without submitting himself to the discomfort of thought.
for example
nevertheless
One likes to believe that one’s views on all subjects are the product of calm, dispassionate reasoning on the available evidence.
consequently
What probably distorts everything in life is that one is convinced that one is speaking the truth because one says what one thinks.
EGOTISM & SELF-DECEPTION
[82]
HUMAN FRAILTY: SELF-DECEPTION
It is in the ability to deceive oneself that one shows the greatest talent.
Anatole France
for example
Albert Camus
EGOTISM & SELF-DECEPTION
[87]
ARE SUBJECTIVISM AND EGOISM
ESSENTIALLY THE SAME SIN?
When you’re an egoist all the harm you do is unintentional.
for example
Other nations use ‘force’; we Britons alone use ‘Might’.
Evelyn Waugh
however that may be
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
Ana‹s Nin
moreover
All violent feelings produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things.
John Ruskin
consequently
The truth is generally seen, rarely heard.
Gracian
on the other hand
Objectivity means that we can separate facts from our thoughts and feelings about those facts.
but perhaps
When a subject is highly controversial one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.
Virginia Woolf
FEELINGS & EMOTIONAL ENERGY
[90]
FEELINGS ARE THE PRODUCTS AS WELL
AS THE CAUSES OF ACTIONS
‘To wrestle with a bad feeling only pins our attention on it, and keeps it still fastened in the mind; whereas if we act as if from some better feeling, the old bad feeling soon folds its tent and silently steals away.’ Thus William James claimed that negative states of consciousness are more effectively dissipated by strategic behaviour than by introspective scrutiny.
because
Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
Dale Carnegie
for example
Praising what is lost
Makes the remembrance dear.
All’s Well That Ends Well (King)
FEELINGS & EMOTIONAL ENERGY
[91]
IS IT POSSIBLE TO ROOT OUT
UNCONSCIOUS BELIEFS?
Let your conscious beliefs be so vivid and emphatic that they make an impression upon your unconscious strong enough to cope with the impressions made by the formative experiences of your early childhood.
Bertrand Russell
because
Unconscious beliefs about oneself often grow out of childhood experiences and a negative view of oneself is at the heart of depression.
for example
You’ve no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself—and how little I deserve it.
W. S. Gilbert
moreover
We are all apt to believe what the world believes about us.
George Eliot
consequently
We speak of independence of thought, but the real challenge is independence of feeling.
FEELINGS & EMOTIONAL ENERGY
[92]
DEVOTE YOUR TIME TO THE THINGS
YOU REALLY CARE ABOUT
The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. That is why so much social life is exhausting.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
in fact
Only when a person is paying attention to something he really cares about can he concentrate and find true satisfaction.
consequently
People who bore one another should meet seldom, people who interest one another, often.
C. S. Lewis
FEELINGS & EMOTIONAL ENERGY
[93]
EMOTIONAL ENERGY IS ONE OF THE
MOST SOLID FACTS OF LIFE
Emotional energy can no more be defined than pain or pleasure, but it is every bit as real.
moreover
Our emotional energy is meant to flow in a certain direction and if we impede that flow or try to redirect it unhappiness and dissatisfaction are sure to follow.
for example
Speaking of the family parties of his boyhood, C. S. Lewis wrote, ‘My party manner, a deliberate concealment of all that I really thought and felt under a sort of feeble jocularity and enthusiasm, was assumed as consciously as an actor assumes his role, sustained with unspeakable weariness, and dropped with a groan of relief the moment my brother and I at last tumbled into our cab for the drive home.
consequently
Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they ever find?
Samuel Johnson
FEELINGS & EMOTIONAL ENERGY
[94]
GO WHERE YOU FEEL YOU BELONG
Owing to differences of outlook a person of given tastes and convictions may find himself practically an outcast while he lives in one set, although in another set he would be accepted as an entirely ordinary human being. A very great deal of unhappiness, especially among the young, arises in this way.
Bertrand Russell
consequently
The essence of living reasonably is to be where you feel you belong. All forms of social malaise and discontent derive from ignoring this most important of all principles.
Malcolm Muggeridge
for example
There is something very wonderful about this country [The United States], but not for me. In no country that I’ve been in have I felt so completely an outsider as here.
Malcolm Muggeridge
for example
Almost immediately after starting Exeter [an exclusive New England prep school] I became miserably unhappy. The reasons for my unhappiness were totally obscure to me then and are still quite profoundly mysterious to me today. I just did not seem to fit. I didn’t seem to fit with the faculty, the students, the courses, the architecture, the social life, the total environment. Yet there seemed nothing to do other than to try to make the best of it and try to mould my imperfections so that I could fit more comfortably into this pattern that had been laid out for me and that was so obviously the right pattern. And try I did for two and a half years. Yet daily my life appeared more meaningless and I felt more wretched. The last year I did little but sleep, for only in sleep could I find any comfort.
M. Scott Peck
FEELINGS & EMOTIONAL ENERGY
[95]
INSTINCTIVE DISLIKES
We often irritate others when we think we could not possibly do so.
de La Rochefoucauld
in fact
After appetite human beings seem to be driven by aversion as much as by anything.
for example
At the heart of our friendly or purely social relations, there lurks a hostility momentarily cured but recurring in fits and starts.
Marcel Proust
for example
I was taught when I was young that if people would only love one another, all would be well with the world. This seemed simple and very nice; but I found when I tried to put it in practice not only that other people were seldom lovable, but that I was not very lovable myself... The oddest thing is that you will find yourself making friends with people whose opinions are the very opposite to your own, while you can’t bear the sight of others who share all your beliefs. You may love your dog and find your nearest relatives detestable. So don’t waste your time arguing whether you ought to love all your neighbours. You can’t help yourself; and neither can they.
George Bernard Shaw
consequently
Feelings of antipathy are instinctive and have to be recognized as such. Since we can’t pretend we feel differently than we really do we simply have to accept our instinctive dislikes as an unavoidable trial.
FEELINGS & EMOTIONAL ENERGY
[101]
SOME FEELINGS SHOULD BE
TREATED AS HARD FACTS
The passion of love is the most familiar and extreme example of the importance of the inner element in experience. If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it.
William James
consequently
I have every reason to love you. What I lack is the unreason.
FEELINGS & EMOTIONAL ENERGY
[102]
HOW FAR CAN WE CREATE INTEREST
WHERE IT DOESN’T ARISE NATURALLY?
No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en;
In brief, sir, study what you most affect.
Taming of the Shrew (Tranio)
in fact
It can never be repeated often enough that nothing intellectual can be achieved in a field that does not attract us. Working in our vein, without a sense of effort, and, on the contrary, with a sense of ease and freedom, is the fundamental condition of a healthy mental operation.
consequently
A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Samuel Johnson
for example
George Bernard Shaw seemed to have no power of learning anything that did not interest him.
Michael Holroyd (biographer)
EDUCATION, ENLIGHTENMENT & VIRTUE
[106]
CONVERSATION IS ONE OF THE HIGH
ARTS OF CIVILIZATION
Some have wondered that disputes about opinions should so often end in personalities; but the fact is, that such disputes begin with personalities. Besides, after the first contradiction it is ourselves, and not the thing, we maintain.
Edward Fitzgerald
consequently
It doesn’t pay to tell someone they are wrong.
Dale Carnegie
in fact
I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive asertion of my own.
Benjamin Franklin
however that may be
That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity but a calm quiet interchange of sentiments.
Samuel Johnson
on the other hand
There is nothing so good to the heart as well argued conversation, when you know that your companion will answer to your thought as the anvil meets the hammer.
Richard Jefferies
perhaps
Equality is essential to conversation.
G. K. Chesterton
and
Every man has a right to be wrong in his opinions. But no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.
Bernard Baruch
in other words
In conversation no opinion, however right, has any special status.
EDUCATION, ENLIGHTENMENT & VIRTUE
[108]
MODERATION IN JUDGEMENT
A good test of character is how one reacts to the weaknesses of other people.
perhaps
Moderation is an conspicuous proof of our strength of character.
de la Rochfoucauld
and
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James
whereas
All empty souls tend to extreme opinion.
W. B. Yeats
EDUCATION, ENLIGHTENMENT & VIRTUE
[111]
WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE GOAL
OF EDUCATION?
Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know; it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.
John Ruskin
for example
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
Robert Frost
for example
Education frees the intellect and imagination from bondage to unexamined ideologies or beliefs.
Northrop Frye
for example
The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's time.
EDUCATION, ENLIGHTENMENT & VIRTUE
[112]
THE SCANDAL OF NEGATIVITY
The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.
William Hazlitt
in fact
The most important trait in determining a person’s attractiveness is the degree of their negativity: the more negative, the less attractive.
but
Sometimes intelligent, well-intentioned people have a peculiar blindness to certain emotional or aesthetic realities of life.
EDUCATION, ENLIGHTENMENT & VIRTUE
[113]
ARE THERE SOME THINGS THAT
ONLY SUFFERING CAN TEACH US?
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
Somerset Maugham
but
Do you not see how a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
John Keats
moreover
Man must learn to think of himself as a limited and dependent being, and only suffering teaches him this.
Simone Weil
EDUCATION, ENLIGHTENMENT & VIRTUE
[117]
SOLVING THE RIDDLE OF TOLERANCE
Tolerance is a tremendous virtue, but the immediate neighbours of tolerance are weakness and apathy.
perhaps
The real test of tolerance only comes after one is deeply committed to certain ideas, and deeply intolerant (by logical necessity) of the opposing ideas. To show tolerance towards human beings who disagree with our passionate convictions is the vindication of tolerance.
in other words
Tolerance applies to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies to truth, but never to persons. Tolerance applies to the erring; intolerance to the error.
Fulton Sheen
EDUCATION, ENLIGHTENMENT & VIRTUE
[120]
A NEGLECTED KIND OF HUMILITY
Nobody can doubt that nine-tenths of the harm in the world is done simply by talking.
G. K. Chesterton
however that may be
The human mind is generally far more eager to praise or blame than to describe and define. It wants to make every distinction a distinction of value.
C. S. Lewis
but
Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd.
C. S. Lewis
for example
One of the happiest men and most pleasing companions I have ever known was intensely selfish. On the other hand I have known people capable of real sacrifice whose lives were nevertheless a misery to themselves and to others, because self-concern and self-pity filled all their thoughts.
C. S. Lewis
in fact
There are people whose defects become them, and others who are ill served by their good qualities.
La Rochefoucauld
consequently
Be sparing in praise, and more so in blame.
William Langland
because
Things are seldom what they seem.
EDUCATION, ENLIGHTENMENT & VIRTUE
[122]
THE PARADOX OF ANIMAL INSTINCT
Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts.
D. H. Lawrence
but
Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‘people.’ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war.
C. S. Lewis
consequently
All the settlement and sane government of life consists in coming to the conclusion that some instincts, impulses or inspirations have authority, and others do not.
G. K. Chesterton
IDEAS, THINKING & ARGUMENT
[128]
HESITANCY IN JUDGEMENT
It is sometimes better not to think at all than to think intensely and think wrong.
George Bernard Shaw
however that may be
A few observations and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth.
Carrel Alexis
consequently
It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgement.
Arthur Conan Doyle
perhaps
Hesitancy in judgement is the only true mark of the thinker.
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
[138]
MYSTICISM INSTEAD OF MORALISM
True spirituality has its basis in moral life, which in turn is based on contemplation.
Fulton Sheen
consequently
The mystic in us should surpass the moralist. It’s not a matter of ignoring the moral virtues, but not becoming entangled in them.
for example
I knew nothing of evil, so I was afraid to meet it. I hadn’t yet discovered that nothing can be "unclean for those who have clean hearts," and that a simple, virtuous soul sees evil in nothing, for evil exists not in things but in corrupt hearts.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux
perhaps
The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.
Montaigne
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
[139]
PHILOSOPHY BEGINS IN WONDER
AND NEVER CEASES TO WONDER
No philosophical question can be answered with complete finality.
because
Philosophy cannot fully comprehend its objects.
consequently
in fact
Philosophy should hinder and resist the natural craving of the human spirit for a clear, transparent and definite system.
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
[140]
WHAT DID JESUS MEAN WHEN HE
SAID THAT LIFE IS FROM THE SPIRIT?
Only the spirit gives life. The flesh is of no avail.
Jesus of Nazareth
in other words
The food, the sex, the books, the music, the conversation, the friendship in which we thought enjoyment resided will betray us if we put our trust in these things. The enjoyment wasn’t in them, it only came through them.
perhaps
Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.
G. K. Chesterton
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
[141]
RELIGIOUS PASSIONS CAN BE AS
OVERBEARING AS ANIMAL PASSIONS
Religion is the one force that is stronger than self-interest and sensuality, that is capable of transforming human nature and altering the course of history. The danger of religion is not that it is too weak or too abstract to affect human conduct, but rather that it is so absolute and uncompromising that nature is overwhelmed and crushed.
Christopher Dawson
consequently
St. Teresa of Avila advised her brother Lorenzo, ‘Remember that we middle-aged people need to treat our bodies well, so as not to wreck the spirit,’ and when Lorenzo took a notion that he ought to meditate on hell she told him, ‘Don’t!’
and for good reason
St. Francis de Sales had, what we would call today, a nervous breakdown while he was an undergraduate at Padua. His was a very worrying problem; he thought after reading Calvinist doctrines that he was damned.
PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS
[152]
IS A DISILLUSIONED ATTITUDE TO
LIFE MORALLY DEFICIENT?
Enough we live—and if a life,
With large results so little rife,
Though bearable, seem hardly worth
This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth.
Matthew Arnold
however that may be
The slow compromise, or even surrender, of our fondest hopes is a regular feature of normal human life.
yet
I defy anyone to imagine an environment more exquisitely designed to provide us with opportunities for spiritual growth than this life of ours.
M. Scott Peck
PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS
[163]
IS THE WORLD FAULTY OR IS
OUR VIEW OF THE WORLD FAULTY?
Had God designed the world, it would not be
A world so frail and faulty as we see.
Lucretius
for example
Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are Born;
Every Morn and every Night,
Some are born to Sweet Delight;
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night.
William Blake
for example
Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan;
For we are born in other’s pain,
And perish in our own.
Francis Thompson
for example
O, how full of briars is this working-day world!
As You Like It (Rosalind)
for example
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale,
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
King John (Lewis)
for example
Golden lads and girls all must,
As Chimney sweepers, come to dust.
Cymbeline (Guiderius)
...but
We must not insist that God govern the world according to our own best understanding of what is best.
because
The end changes the meaning of the beginning.
in other words
All's well that ends well.
All's Well that Ends Well (Helena)
POLITICS, GOVERNMENT & POWER
[166]
MUST POWER ALWAYS CORRUPT?
Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton
for example
When you take a benevolent man and make him a despot, his despotism survives but his benevolence rather fades away.
Bertrand Russell
for example
How a minority,
Reaching majority,
Seizing authority,
Hates a minority!
for example
The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.
Winston Churchill
in fact
The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.
Stanley Kubrick
consequently
Power should always be distrusted, in whatever hands it is placed.
POLITICS, GOVERNMENT & POWER
[168]
IS MULTI-CULTURALISM DOOMED
TO FAIL IN THE LONG RUN?
Government is impossible without a religion: that is, without a body of common assumptions.
George Bernard Shaw
consequently
Parliamentary government only works in communities which are essentially united. The moment you have a real conflict, whether of race, or class, or religion, democracy is unworkable.
Malcolm Muggeridge
moreover
You can’t have an unlimited expansion of the concept of equal rights or equal recognition because at a certain point it begins to undermine another necessary principle, that of community cohesion. You simply can’t have a society that recognizes virtually all forms of behaviour as equal. To judge by a poll in the late 1990s most Canadians, both native born and immigrant, intuitively recognize this fact and believe that newcomers should, as far as possible, adopt the customs of the majority.
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & CAPITALISM
[177]
MYSTERY IS IMMORTAL
In completing one discovery we never fail to get an imperfect knowledge of others of which we could have no idea before, so that we cannot solve one doubt without creating several new ones.
Joseph Priestley
consequently
Science doesn’t reduce mystery, it increases it.
in fact
My suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
J. B. S. Haldane
however that may be
The deeper our insight, the more baffling things become.
Robert Wright
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & CAPITALISM
[178]
IS TECHNOLOGY LEADING OUR
SOCIETY INTO AN ECONOMIC CRISIS?
Technological society leads to increasing numbers of people who cannot adapt to the inhuman rhythm of modern life with its emphasis on specialization. A class of people is growing up who are unexploitable because they are not worth employing even for the minimum wage. Technological progress makes whole categories of people useless without making it possible to support them with the wealth produced by the progress.
Jacques Ellul
consequently
Having created the problem of unemployment advanced technology is hardly likely to solve it. Politicians and economists who believe in a radiant technological future are dreamers.
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & CAPITALISM
[180]
HOW MUCH DO GADGETS CONTRIBUTE
TO HUMAN WELL-BEING?
A gadget is a technically very complex instrument whose utility is totally out of proportion to the considerable investment in time and money it involves. In other words, it entails an application of advanced technology for almost zero utility in return. The gadget is now the main industrial product and an unlimited source of profit.
Jacques Ellul
moreover
Modern gadgets speed up society and make it more fragile, but they do not truly better the individual lot.
for example
Absorption in technology leads to a shortage of time.
perhaps
Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it.
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & CAPITALISM
[184]
DO THE BENEFITS OF CAPITALISM
OUTWEIGH ITS OBJECTIONABLE FEATURES?
What kind of society isn’t structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of system.
Milton Friedman
however that may be
John Maynard Keynes
for example
In our society competitive capitalism has put family life and working life on a collision course.
for example
Normally speaking, it may be said that the forces of a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer and thus increase the gap between them.
Jawaharlal Nehru
for example
for example
Consumer capitalism is dedicated to the proposition that production is good in itself, no matter what is produced. The net effect is the massive production of absurd, empty and useless items which are nevertheless utterly serious since we earn our living from them, and dedicate our leisure time to them.
Jacques Ellul
for example
A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste.
Dorothy L. Sayers
...nevertheless
The chief safeguard of personal freedom in a democratic society is the anarchy and disorder of capitalist individualism.
Christopher Dawson
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & CAPITALISM
[185]
CAN THE MARKET BE AN
ANTI-HUMAN FORCE?
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
Henry David Thoreau
however that may be
What counts in a market-intensive society is not the effort to please or the pleasure that flows from that effort, but the coupling of labour with capital, however useless or damaging the result.
but
A human being has a right and a duty to preserve his individuality from forces attempting to absorb it and reduce it to type.
consequently
When you are gifted you have to do what you are gifted at, whether you can make money at it or not.
Barbara Sher
WORK & LEISURE
[188]
WORK WAS ONCE SEEN AS AN
IMPORTANT WAY TO SALVATION
Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.
J. M. Barrie
consequently
Find a job that you love and you will never work a day in your life.
Confucius
unfortunately
Most jobs are boring and of little intrinsic value. For every job that improves the lot of humanity and makes the world a better or more interesting place to live in, there are scores that do nothing of the sort.
but
Bertrand Russell
however that may be
People have a way of hanging on to what makes them miserable. At least they know what they’ve got.
George Burns
often
One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.
Oscar Wilde
WORK & LEISURE
[193]
CAN THIS CHARGE BE DISMISSED
AS MERE CYNICISM?
Labour: one of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
Ambrose Bierce
after all
The payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.
Albert Einstein
consequently
When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him whose.
WORK & LEISURE
[194]
HOW SERIOUS IS A CRISIS OF MOTIVE?
What makes life dreary is want of motive.
George Eliot
consequently
If a man has important work, and enough leisure and income to enable him to do it properly, he is in possession of as much happiness as is good for any of the children of Adam.
whereas
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
George Bernard Shaw
WORK & LEISURE
[197]
DOES OUR CULTURE FEAR LEISURE?
With the trivialization of leisure came the return of the work ethic.
in fact
You’re a social outcast in this society if you don’t have too much to do. Even retired people seem to be uncomfortable with the concept of leisure.
because
Work is the essence of who I am.
Carol Heilbroner
perhaps
True leisure cannot be enjoyed without some recognition of the spiritual world, for the first purpose of leisure is the contemplation of the good.
Josef Pieper
however that may be
The more materialistic a civilization is, the more it’s in a hurry.
Fulton Sheen
MISCELLANEOUS
[199]
THE PARADOX OF PROGRESS
There is no evidence that the mental and moral capacities of the human race have been increased since man became man.
C. S. Lewis
nevertheless
There is a continual enlargement of the field of experience, with the new not simply replacing the old, but being compared and combined with it. The history of mankind, and especially of civilised mankind, shows a continuous process of integration, which, even though it seems to work irregularly, never ceases.
Christopher Dawson
in fact
The major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur.
A. N. Whitehead
consequently
Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.
George Orwell
MISCELLANEOUS
[210]
SIMPLICITY: A FORGOTTEN VIRTUE?
A life of clutter is a life too full of things and busyness to be enjoyable.
whereas
Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
perhaps
Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify.
Henry David Thoreau
otherwise
Even though I’m busy all the time I feel unproductive.
(overheard in a restaurant)
MISCELLANEOUS
[217]
IS ART THE HANDMAID OF VALUES
OR THEIR CREATOR?
There is no kind of evidence or argument by which one can show that Shakespeare, or any other writer, is ‘good.’ Ultimately there is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion.
George Orwell
nevertheless
Good art is still the best means human beings have devised to train perception.
Philip Marchand
for example
When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone of our judgement.
John F. Kennedy
in other words
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
and yet
A man's artistic faculty is merely the means by which he communicates his vision of life, and however brilliant or complex it cannot purify a corrupted vision or deepen a shallow one.
Hugh Kingsmill
COMMON SENSE PHILOSOPHY
Sometimes a thing must first be trusted in order to discover whether it is trustworthy or not. Such is the case with An Outline of Common Sense Philosophy. In it we organize ideas under six main themes: logic, faith, common sense, mystery, paradox and language. Within this framework we try to present and illustrate nine fundamental principles or insights. They are as follows:
1. The Insufficiency of Logic
2. The Undeniability of Certainty
3. The Necessity of Faith
4. The General Reliability of Common Sense
5. The Fact of Freedom
6. The Inescapability of Mystery
7. The Authority of Experience
8. The Paradoxical Nature of Being
9. The Analogical Nature of Language
Although we claim that these nine principles constitute a
‘Philosophy of Common Sense’ we might just as easily have called them the ‘The
Fundamentals of Thinking’ or ‘The Laws of Thought.’ This is not to say that all
philosophies must abide by these laws. Any kind of thinking can be dignified by the
term ‘philosophy’ even if we sincerely believe it to be utter rubbish. In fact, of the
four main world views or philosophical systems possible to human thought, only
theism is completely consistent with our common sense philosophy. Buddhism is
almost totally opposed to common sense philosophy, while monism and materialism
lie somewhere in between. But, for the sake of argument, it’s not unjust
to begin with a consistent set of principles that favours one particular world view.
Experience has taught us that freewheeling philosophical discussion is far less
productive than discussion that proceeds within such a framework. It allows one
world view to be tested and understood more thoroughly than could any one of the
various incompatible philosophies that emerge in fragmentary form in the course of an
intellectually unbounded discussion.
All of us insist that other people have rules for their mind.
All true lovers of philosophy naturally strive for consistency and coherence in their
thought. It is in keeping with these common sense assertions, and the endlessly useful
maxim, ‘what a person really believes are what his actions show he believes,’ that we
offer the fundamentals of common sense philosophy. It is both a philosophical
method and the bare outline of a philosophy. Furthermore we contend that virtually
everyone lives by this philosophy, and thus unconsciously accepts it. If you are
deeply committed to, say, Buddhism, there is still great value in grasping the
principles of common sense philosophy, if only to theoretically reject them. For you
will discover that you accept most of them in practice. What’s more, once you
become consciously aware of them you will find that they keep on shedding
light.
AN OUTLINE OF
COMMON SENSE PHILOSOPHY
LOGIC; Certainty
NEW LINK, 03/03/06
in other words
[219] All argument begins with an assumption, or a set of assumptions; that is, with something you don’t dispute. You can, of course, dispute the assumptions at the beginning of your argument, but in that case you are beginning a different argument with another set of assumptions at the beginning of it. And so on ad infinitum.
in other words
[220] Logic is always an ‘if...then’ process which proceeds from the known to the unknown. But if nothing is known at the beginning of the process, then nothing can ever be known. You can’t use logic to generate knowledge from a state of total ignorance.
in other words
[221] If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. There are some premises that can’t be reached as conclusions.
consequently
[222] You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
G. K. Chesterton
for example
[223] I wanted certainty in the kind of way in which people want religious faith. I thought that certainty is more likely to be found in mathematics than elsewhere...But after some twenty years of arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.
Bertrand Russell
________________________________________________________
[233] The concept of certainty depends on the concept of truth. The moment you doubt or deny the concept of truth, the word certainty ceases to have meaning. Certainty and uncertainty imply truth because it’s always the truth of something that you are certain or uncertain. Therefore to say that one can’t be certain of any truth is a contradiction in terms.
in other words
[234] It is not certain that everything is uncertain.
Pascal
in fact
[235] It is brilliantly silly to ask whether anything can be known for certain.
________________________________________________________
consequently
[241] Only a fool tries to demonstrate the obvious. Working on the principle that a thing once seen is its own proof a wise man will try to find an image, or an analogy, or a parallel that will bring about that flash of illumination that the mind experiences when it apprehends truth.
because
________________________________________________________
[245] Accept my premises and I will lead you infallibly to my conclusions.
but
[246] Your conclusions can be completely wrong even though your logic is completely right.
consequently
FAITH; Freedom
[250] Faith is necessary to sanity because logic alone can never anchor the mind, and the mind, to remain sane, must be anchored.
yet
[251] The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular.
George Santayana
but
[252] Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
Samuel Butler
for example
[253] Every legal system that has ever existed is founded on the unprovable proposition that truth is not the property of the individual.
for example
[254] The conception of truth as the end of knowledge is dependent on faith, and nothing else.
Nirad C. Chaudhuri
consequently
in fact
[256] If we didn’t believe things we couldn’t prove life as we know it would cease.
________________________________________________________
[270] Faith declares what the senses do not see, but not the contrary of what they see.
Pascal
in other words
[271] Reasonable faith doesn’t mean believing in spite of the evidence or in the absence of evidence, it means believing on the basis of unseen and indirect evidence.
in fact
[272] Faith is intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.
for example
[273] As for future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague possibilities.
Charles Darwin
________________________________________________________
[282] There’s a common German proverb that runs: Whoever says A must also say B.
in other words
[283] Faith is the free element in thought, logic the necessary element.
moreover
[284] When we are not sure, we are alive.
Graham Greene
because
[285] Hope is the basic ingredient of all vitality.
Erik Erikson
consequently
[286] The most black and hopeless catastrophe conceivable to human nature would be to find a logical explanation of all things.
G. K. Chesterton
________________________________________________________
[287] I can’t stand people who will not believe anything because it might be false nor deny anything because it might be true.
George Bernard Shaw
because
[288] Freedom is a good horse, but you must ride it somewhere.
Matthew Arnold
but
[289] Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw
for example
[290] We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.
John Henry Newman
________________________________________________________
NEW LINK, 03/03/06
consequently
[307] Metaphysics is the only thoroughly emotional thing.
G. K. Chesterton
and
[308] The closest we can get to impartiality is admitting we are partial.
G. K. Chesterton
COMMON SENSE; Limitation; Dogma
consequently
[317] It’s difficult to have a profitable discussion unless it’s acknowledged that logic must be governed by common sense. There’s not much use counting the steps of the logic if every step takes us further away from common sense.
moreover
[318] To be really reasonable we sometimes have to reject logic just as we sometimes have to reject common sense. Truth always takes precedence over logic because logic is only one of a number of instruments for discovering truth. There are times when truth will yield to intuition or common sense, but not to logic.
for example
[319] Logically it’s possible to argue that the difference between warming your hands by the fire and being roasted alive is only a matter of degree. But common sense knows better.
for example
[320] It’s almost a paradox that Darwin’s book is called The Origin of Species because, in fact, Darwin deconstructs species. One of the things the book shows is that species disappear. This common sense category disappears as some kind of ontologically special level of reality. That is, there is no such thing as dog. Dogs are part of a grade of environmental expressions of certain genetic properties... And so all creatures start to grade one into the other. Species are simply snapshots of the world given to us by the fact of our mortality.
________________________________________________________
[354] The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature.
G. K. Chesterton
for example
[355] Women get more unhappy the more they try to liberate themselves.
Brigitte Bardot
for example
[356] In my second marriage I tried to preserve the respect for my wife’s [sexual] liberty which I thought my creed enjoined. I found however that my capacity for forgiveness was not equal to the demands I was making on it.
Bertrand Russell
________________________________________________________
[361] Just as there is no such thing as absolute freedom without limits, so there is no such thing as absolute intellectual freedom.
because
[362] All intelligent ideas are narrow in the sense that they cannot be broader than themselves.
G. K. Chesterton
for example
[363] An atheist can’t believe that God exists and continue to be an atheist, just as a Christian can’t believe that atheism is true and continue to be a Christian.
________________________________________________________
consequently
[372] A dislike of defined dogmas really means a preference for unexamined dogmas.
after all
[373] You don’t avoid holding the assumptions by which you live just because you decline to give them explicit dogmatic status.
perhaps
[374] An unconscious dogma is the definition of a prejudice.
G. K. Chesterton
MYSTERY; Experience
[379] As long as you have mystery you have health. Destroy mystery and you create morbidity.
G. K. Chesterton
for example
[380] The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
Steven Weinberg (physicist)
for example
[381] It would be impossible to ‘love’ anyone or anything one knew completely. Love is directed towards what lies hidden in its object.
Paul Valery
for example
[382] The Puritans fell, through the damming fact that they had a complete theory of life, through the eternal paradox that a satisfactory explanation can never satisfy.
yet
[383] What is more wonderful than the delight which the mind feels when it knows? It is the satisfaction of a primary instinct.
Mark Rutherford
________________________________________________________
[384] As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.
Albert Schweitzer
but
[385] The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
Albert Einstein
in other words
[386] Mystery is a positive experience and not just a negative state of incomprehension.
consequently
[387] What we want is not impenetrable mystery, but mystery that we can penetrate forever without exhausting.
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[401] Thought must remain true to experience if the mind is not to fall victim to illusions.
because
in other words
[403] We arrive at truth through experience before we arrive at it through deduction
consequently
[404] Experience may not be the highest authority, but it is the first. It’s also the bedrock of authority, the thing that should support all other forms of authority.
PARADOX; Subjectivism
[410] The sane person always cares more for truth than consistency. If he sees two truths that seem to contradict each other, he accepts both truths and the contradiction along with them. His intellectual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that.
for example
[411] What is mature love? It is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s individuality... In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.
Erich Fromm
perhaps
[412] You cease being a mere logician and become a philosopher when you stop trying to eliminate paradox from reality and begin contemplating it.
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[413] Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise to balance it.
George Santayana
similarly
[414] The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Niels Bohr
but
[415] Non-paradoxical thinking splits the truth in two. It reveals something by denying or obscuring something else.
consequently
[416] To escape heresy we must accept paradox. Thinking with integrity is paradoxical thinking.
M. Scott Peck
moreover
yet
[418] Not every inconsistency can be passed off as a paradox. The statement, ‘If it wasn’t for electricity, we’d all be watching television by candlelight’ is not a paradox. It’s illogic pure and simple.
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[421] There is but one thing, which is unity and universality. The points in which things differ do not matter; it is only their agreement that matters.
rather
[422] The agreement we really want is the agreement between unity and diversity. We have to reconcile our sense that things do really differ, although they are at one.
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[439] No sceptic who believes that truth is subjective has any hesitation about treating it as objective. No determinist who thinks his mind was made up for him by heredity and environment has any hesitation in making up his mind. All sceptics without exception work on the principle that it is possible to accept in practice what it is not possible to believe in theory.
G. K. Chesterton
consequently
[440] Most subjectivism is intellectually dishonest because it claims for itself a privilege which it denies to other viewpoints, namely the privilege of being inconsistent. Either statements can be true or untrue, which implies some truth can be formulated in language, or truth and self-expression are one and the same, which implies all statements are equally valid. It has to be one or the other. Dishonest subjectivists insist on having it both ways. They will attack things which are untrue or illogical when taking objectivity for granted, and then, when it suits them, defend anything they please, however untrue or illogical, by suddenly insisting on the subjectivity of all experience.
LANGUAGE; Analogy; Fundamentalism
[458] One can’t go on defining one’s terms indefinitely.
in fact
[459] The thing that can’t be defined is the first thing, the primary fact. The word that has no definition is the word that has no substitute.
because
Samuel Johnson
for example
[461] Good is incapable of any definition in the most important sense of that word.
G. E. Moore
consequently
[462] All of us know the meanings of words we can’t adequately define.
for example
[463] The son of a celebrity described his famous father as a "mean spirited, self-centred, jerk," a view that finds considerable support in a recent biography of the man. Note that the words, ‘mean,’ ‘spirit,’ ‘self,’ and ‘jerk’ are primary words that largely defy definition. But even though the speaker couldn’t adequately define his terms, it doesn’t follow that he doesn’t know what they mean, or shouldn’t use them with confidence.
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[503] Words point to realities which are far greater than the realities of words.
in fact
[504] Reality is too complex and too subtle to be mirrored perfectly by language. Yet reality is also less vague and more definite than language. But because language is closer to us in the sense that it’s the tool we use to explore reality, it’s often language that seems more definite. So when language fails to do justice to reality our attitude should be ‘so much the worse for language.’ Unfortunately it’s often ‘so much the worse for reality.’ This oversight or turning from the world to clutch blindly at the word is the essence of fundamentalism.
in other words
[505] Fundamentalism means being fooled by language.
consequently
but
[507] It would seem that nothing is more effectively hidden in the farthest recesses of obscurity than the obvious.
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[508] Language is not an infallible guide, but it contains, with all its defects, a good deal of stored insight and experience. If you begin by flouting it, it has a way of avenging itself later on.
C. S. Lewis
consequently