Philosophy Slams

But there are many people who do not allow that any fault has entered in even on other questions, adopting the stance that by a certain special providence God has preserved the entire Bible uncorrupted. They assert that variant readings are indications of the most profound mysteries...and even insist that fabulous secrets are contained in the accents on the letters. I do not know whether they affirm this from foolishness and doddering devotion or from pride and malice, so that people would believe that they alone know God's secrets, but this I do know: I have read nothing in them that sounds like a deep secret, rather it is all very childish.

That fatuous dolt, Carlyle, knew well enough what England lacks and has always lacked; Carlyle, that half-actor and rhetorician who tried to conceal under impassioned grimaces what he knew about himself: namely, what he *lacked* -- real *power* of intellect, real *profundity* of spiritual vision, in short: philosophy.

[The artist] is in the end only the precondition of his work, the womb, the ground, in some cases the fertilizer and manure on which, out of which, it grows -- and thus in most cases something one must forget if one wants to enjoy the work itself.

I do not know the art of being clear for those who are not willing to be attentive.

One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.

A solemn friend of my grandfather used to go for walks on Sunday carrying a prayer-book, without the least intention of going to church. And he calmly defended it by saying, with uplifted hand, 'I do it, Chessie, as an example to others.' The man who did that was obviously a Dickens character. And I am disposed to think that, in being a Dickens character, he was in many ways rather preferable to many modern characters. Few modern men, however false, would dare be so brazen. And I am not sure he was not really a more genuine fellow than the modern man who says vaguely that he has doubts or hates sermons, when he only wants to go play golf. Hypocrisy itself was more sincere. Anyhow, it was more courageous.

It fell to modern liberalism to give the fullest, and perhaps the crudest expression of this line of thought: 'the principle on which public institutions ought to be formed,' Bentham declared, is that an office-holder can be expected to subordinate office to personal advantage. Yet this presents no cause for alarm, at least not to the innocent, because when the principle 'is applied to all men universally, it is injurious to none.' What is significant is the implicit assumption that a political office is itself an 'interest' exactly on the same level as any other kind of interest. 'It is only by the magnitude of the scale that public trusts differ from private trusts.' Apparently the suggestion is no longer seriously entertained that there is a peculiar dignity or status to public office which exacts an obligation transcending the personal interest of the occupant. The epitaph to the majesty of the political was supplied by Bentham: 'It is to the interest of the public that the portion of respect which, along with the salary, is habitually attached to any office should be as small as possible.'

Indeed, it has been and remains one of the abiding concerns of the Western political theorist to weave ingenious veils of euphemism to conceal the ugly fact of violence. At times he has talked too sonorously of “authority,” “justice,” and “law,” as though these honorific expressions alone could transform coercion into simple restraint.

From the philosopher E.D. Klemke, Wittgenstein's "lecture on ethics" is "undoubtedly one of the shoddiest things ever written on the subject," being of "no value whatsoever," and employing a "manner of philosophizing" that is "despicable."

Human things are complex, obscure, and legitimately give rise to uncertainty and doubt, but if there is one thesis on human things that has no chance of being true, it is Constant's theory of war.

If you notice the transition from Mill to Moore, you will suspect that it was made somewhere by someone; Sidgwick will come to mind as a likely name; and you will in fact find it going on, almost casually, in him. He is a rather dull author; and the important things in him occur in asides and footnotes and small bits of argument which are not concerned with his grand classification of the 'methods of ethics'.

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.