THE SHORT VERSION of

B ASIC P HILOSOPHY

A G UIDE FOR THE P HILOSOPHICALLY P ERPLEXED

OR

A C OMMON S ENSE A PPROACH TO P HILOSOPHY

ALSO

A C OLLECTION OF F UNDAMENTAL I DEAS

AND

A PHORISMS FOR L IBERAL E DUCATION

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

P RACTICAL P HILOSOPHY

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

C OMMON S ENSE P HILOSOPHY

LOGIC; Certainty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .218

FAITH; Freedom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

COMMON SENSE; Limitation; Dogma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316

MYSTERY; Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379

PARADOX; Subjectivism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410

LANGUAGE; Analogy; Fundamentalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .458

W ESTERN P HILOSOPHY

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]

T HE P ARADOX OF C AUSATION

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]

T HE P ARADOX OF E XTREMES

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]

L ANGUAGE D EALS IN H ALF-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]

T HE S ECRET OF H APPINESS

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]

C HRONIC B OREDOM IS S OMETHING

T O BE A VOIDED AT A LL C OSTS

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]

I S L OVE A F EELING OR AN A CT?

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]

I S F RIENDSHIP THE H IGHEST L OVE?

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]

T O L OVE IS TO L ISTEN

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]

I S L OVE’S P ATIENCE I NEXHAUSTIBLE?

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]

S HOULD F RIENDSHIP BE THE M AIN

C OURSE IN L IFE’S B ANQUET?

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]

S OMETIMES T RYING TO B REAK D OWN

B ARRIERS IS A M ISTAKE

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]

D OES F RIENDSHIP H AVE THE

R IGHT TO E XCLUDE?

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]

F RIENDSHIP IS LIKE E ROS

IN SOME R ESPECTS

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]

U NDERSTANDING A NOTHER P ERSON

I S NOT AS E ASY AS IT L OOKS

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 G ENDER D IFFERENCE THAT

I S W ORTH R EMEMBERING

You see an awful lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

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]

I S C OMPETITION B ETWEEN THE S EXES

A T HING TO BE A VOIDED?

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]

D OES S EXUAL A TTRACTION O PERATE

A SYMMETRICALLY B ETWEEN THE S EXES?

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]

I N M ARRIAGE A LWAYS A SSUME THAT

W HAT Y OU S EE IS W HAT Y OU G ET

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]

T HE B RUTALITY OF R EASON

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 H OMELY B UT I MPORTANT P RINCIPLE

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]

H UMAN N ATURE

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]

P ATIENCE I SN’T A LWAYS A V IRTUE

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]

H UMAN N ATURE

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]

H UMAN F RAILTY: I MAGINATIVE

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]

D O L IKES AND D ISLIKES W EIGH M ORE

W ITH U S THAN R EASON OR C ONSCIENCE?

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]

B IGOTRY IS A F AILURE OF

THE I MAGINATION

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]

H UMAN F RAILTY: E GOCENTRICITY

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 F RAILTY: S ELF-DECEPTION

Everyone is guilty of enjoying the comfort of opinion without submitting himself to the discomfort of thought.

for example

If we could add up all the minutes we have dedicated to a critical examination of one of our most deeply held beliefs, we would probably be shocked at the ridiculously small sum.

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]

H UMAN F RAILTY: S ELF-DECEPTION

It is in the ability to deceive oneself that one shows the greatest talent.

Anatole France

for example

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love—first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

Albert Camus

EGOTISM & SELF-DECEPTION

[87]

A RE S UBJECTIVISM AND E GOISM

E SSENTIALLY THE S AME S IN?

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]

F EELINGS ARE THE P RODUCTS AS W ELL

AS THE C AUSES OF A CTIONS

‘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]

I S IT P OSSIBLE TO R OOT O UT

U NCONSCIOUS B ELIEFS?

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]

D EVOTE Y OUR T IME TO THE T HINGS

Y OU R EALLY C ARE A BOUT

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]

E MOTIONAL E NERGY IS O NE OF THE

M OST S OLID F ACTS OF L IFE

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]

G O W HERE Y OU F EEL Y OU B ELONG

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]

I NSTINCTIVE D ISLIKES

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]

S OME F EELINGS S HOULD BE

T REATED AS H ARD F ACTS

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]

H OW F AR C AN W E C REATE I NTEREST

WHERE IT D OESN’T A RISE N ATURALLY?

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]

C ONVERSATION IS ONE OF THE H IGH

A RTS OF C IVILIZATION

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]

M ODERATION IN J UDGEMENT

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]

W HAT IS THE U LTIMATE G OAL

OF E DUCATION?

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]

T HE S CANDAL OF N EGATIVITY

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]

A RE T HERE SOME T HINGS THAT

ONLY S UFFERING C AN T EACH U S?

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]

S OLVING THE R IDDLE OF T OLERANCE

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 N EGLECTED K IND OF H UMILITY

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]

T HE P ARADOX OF A NIMAL I NSTINCT

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]

H ESITANCY IN J UDGEMENT

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]

M YSTICISM I NSTEAD OF M ORALISM

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]

P HILOSOPHY B EGINS IN W ONDER

AND N EVER C EASES TO W ONDER

No philosophical question can be answered with complete finality.

because

Philosophy cannot fully comprehend its objects.

consequently

A complete and closed ‘system’ of philosophy is not possible. The claim to expound the world in a formula, or to have a system with which to explain the world, is quite simply unphilosophic or pseudo-philosophy.

in fact

Philosophy should hinder and resist the natural craving of the human spirit for a clear, transparent and definite system.

RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY

[140]

W HAT D ID J ESUS M EAN WHEN H E

SAID THAT L IFE IS FROM THE S PIRIT?

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]

R ELIGIOUS P ASSIONS C AN BE AS

O VERBEARING AS A NIMAL P ASSIONS

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]

I S A D ISILLUSIONED A TTITUDE TO

L IFE M ORALLY D EFICIENT?

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]

I S THE W ORLD F AULTY OR IS

O UR V IEW OF THE W ORLD F AULTY?

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]

M UST P OWER A LWAYS C ORRUPT?

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]

I S M ULTI-CULTURALISM D OOMED

TO F AIL IN THE L ONG R UN?

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]

M YSTERY IS I MMORTAL

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]

I S T ECHNOLOGY L EADING O UR

S OCIETY INTO AN E CONOMIC C RISIS?

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]

H OW M UCH DO G ADGETS C ONTRIBUTE

TO H UMAN W ELL-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]

D O THE B ENEFITS OF C APITALISM

O UTWEIGH ITS O BJECTIONABLE F EATURES?

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

I think that Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself is in many ways extremely objectionable.

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

Under capitalism the more money you have, the easier it is to make money, and the less money you have, the harder. Or as Edgar Bronfman Sr. put it, ‘To turn $100 into $110 is work. To turn $100 million into $110 million is inevitable.’

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]

C AN THE M ARKET BE AN

A NTI-HUMAN F ORCE?

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]

W ORK WAS O NCE S EEN AS AN

I MPORTANT W AY TO S ALVATION

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

I think that where it is possible to do work that is satisfactory to a man’s constructive impulses without entirely starving, he will be well advised from the point of view of his own happiness if he chooses it in preference to work much more highly paid but not seeming to him worth doing on its own account.

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]

C AN THIS C HARGE BE D ISMISSED

AS M ERE C YNICISM?

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]

H OW S ERIOUS IS A C RISIS OF M OTIVE?

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]

D OES O UR C ULTURE F EAR L EISURE?

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]

T HE P ARADOX OF P ROGRESS

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]

S IMPLICITY: A F ORGOTTEN V IRTUE?

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]

I S A RT THE H ANDMAID OF V ALUES

OR T HEIR C REATOR?

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

C OMMON S ENSE P HILOSOPHY

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.

A N O UTLINE OF

C OMMON S ENSE P HILOSOPHY

L OGIC; Certainty

NEW LINK, 03/03/06

[218] First principles are not in the order of things that can be proved or disproved. If you could prove your first statement, then it would no longer to be your first.

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.

________________________________________________________

[240] The relations of logic to truth depend, not on its perfection as logic, but on the possession of certain pre-logical faculties and on the power of making certain pre-logical discoveries.

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

[242] There are some things you can only receive by direct insight, for example: babies are cute; murder is wrong; Michelangelo is a good painter; man is a rational animal.

________________________________________________________

[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

[247] It is not enough for a system of ideas to be complete in theory. It must not be crippling in practice.

F AITH; 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

[255] One of the most disastrous consequences of rationalism is the vague feeling that you shouldn’t believe anything you can’t prove.

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

[306] Every philosopher is a man of faith. He needs faith to believe in the foundations of his own philosophy.

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

C OMMON S ENSE; Limitation; Dogma

[316] Common sense appeals to realities, truths or tendencies that we all know are real, but which can’t be demonstrated, and therefore have no place in argument except as postulates.

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.

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[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

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[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.

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[371] There are two kinds of people: those who accept dogmas and know it and those who accept dogmas and don’t know it.

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

M YSTERY; 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

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[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

[402] Experience comes before thought and if you can’t trust any of your experience then you can’t trust any of your thought.

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.

P ARADOX; 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

[417] There is nothing abnormal about paradox because being is paradoxical. Paradox is inconsistency, explicit or implied. But it sits by the springs of truth.

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.

L ANGUAGE; 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

[460] As nothing can be proved but by supposing something intuitively known, and evident without proof, so nothing can be defined but by the use of words too plain to admit a definition.

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

[506] The first step in escaping fundamentalism is to distinguish between what a sentence says and what it means.

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

[509] In natural, historical human speech there is something which we cannot manipulate at will as we can things and tools which we have made—something which we have no right to deal with arbitrarily.