serve.........................

 The world has need of a philosophy, or a religion, which will promote life. But in order to promote life it is necessary to value something other than mere life. Life devoted only to life is animal, without any real human value, incapable of preserving men permanently from weariness and the feeling that all is vanity. If life is to be fully human it must serve some end which seems, in some sense, outside human life, some end which is impersonal and above mankind, such as God or truth or beauty.

-Bertrand Russell, Principles of Social Reconstruction, 1916

dogs........

 

Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.

-attributed to Diogenes

good ones, anyway..................

 

Someone says life is hard.

The comedian says, "Compared to what?"

Comedians are philosophers.

-Derek Sivers

on mickles and muckles..............

George Washington’s favorite saying was “many mickles make a muckle.” It was an old Scottish proverb that illustrates a truth we all know: things add up. Even little ones. Even at the pace of one per day. Because, as the Stoics would say, it’s the little things that add up to wisdom and to virtue. What you read, who you study under, what you prioritize. Day to day, practiced over a lifetime, this is what creates greatness. This is what leads to a good life.

-Ryan Holiday, from here

strange and wondrous...............

 Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life.

-Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

Not much.....................

 Of what use is a philosopher who never offends anybody?

-Charlie Munger

a loose connection...............

 They were convinced that what stands between most of us and happiness is not our government or the society in which we live, but defects in our philosophy of life—or our failing to have a philosophy at all.  It is true that our government and our society determine, to a considerable extent, our external circumstances, but the Stoics understood that there is at best a loose connection between our external circumstances and how happy we are.

-William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life (the ancient art of stoic joy)

Opening paragraphs.............

 It is sometimes said, either irritably or with a certain satisfaction, that philosophy makes no progress.  It is certainly true, and I think this is an abiding and not a regrettable characteristic of the discipline, that philosophy has in a sense to keep trying to return to the beginning: a thing which it is not at all easy to do.  There is a two-way movement in philosophy, a movement towards the building of elaborate theories, and a move back again towards the consideration of simple and obvious facts.

-Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good

life its ownself.........................

 Sometimes you can learn more about a person by watching how they talk to a waiter than by asking some profound question about their philosophy of life.

-David Brooks, How To Know a Person:  The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

summon up..............................

 The only persons who are really at leisure are those who devoted themselves to philosophy: and they alone really live: for they do not merely enjoy their own lifetime, but they annex every century to their own: all the years which have passed before them belong to them.  Unless we are the most ungrateful creatures in the world, we shall regard these noblest of men, the founders of divine schools of thought, as having been born for us, and having prepared life for us: we are led by the labour of others to behold most beautiful things which have been brought out of darkness into light; we are not shut out from any period, we can make our way into every subject, and, if only we can summon up sufficient strength of mind to overstep the narrow limit of human weakness, we have a vast extent of time wherein to disport ourselves:  we may argue with Socrates, doubt with Carneades, repose with Epicurus, overcome human nature with the Stoics, out-herod it with the Cynics.  Since Nature allows us to commune with every age, why do we not abstract ourselves from our own petty fleeting span of time, and give ourselves up with our whole mind ot what is vast, what is eternal, what we share with better men than ourselves?

-Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On The Shortness Of Life

To ask the question is to answer it........

 Spinoza, according to all the seventeenth-century interpreters, rejected all the traditional ideas about God, he was indisputably a heretic.  Yet his manner of living was humble and apparently free of vice.  then, as now, the philosopher seemed like a living oxymoron: he was an ascetic sensualist, a spiritual materialist, a sociable hermit, a secular saint.  How could his life have been so good, the critics asked, when his philosophy was so bad?

Matthew Stewart, Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World

go home.......................

 Some philosophers merely argue their philosophies.  When they finish their disputation, they hang up the tools of their trade, go home, and indulge in the well-earned pleasure of private life.  Other philosophers live their philosophies.  They treat as useless any philosophy that does not determine the manner in which they spend their days, and they consider pointless any part of life that has no philosophy in it.  They never go home.

     Spinoza belonged unambiguously to the latter group.

-Matthew Stewart, Courtier and the Heretic:  Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World

need.......................Part 2

 . . . But to conduct political argument as though these factors are too far from the realm of ideas to deserve a mention is to ignore all the limits that must be borne in mind, if our political philosophy is to be remotely believable.  It is precisely the character of modern utopias to ignore these limits - to imagine societies without law (Marx and Engels), without families (Laing), without borders or defenses (Sartre).  And much conservative ink has been wasted (by me among others) in rebutting such views, which can be believed only by people who are unable to perceive realities, and who therefore will never be persuaded by argument.

-Roger Scruton, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Grand Tradition

seeks.........................

 Philosophy, as Spinoza understands it, does not peddle in temporary cheer, modest improvements in well-being, or chicken soup for the soul; it seeks and claims to find a basis for happiness that is absolutely certain, permanent, and divine.  The principal—indeed, the sole—purpose of his mature philosophy, as expressed in his masterwork, the Ethics, is to achieve this kind of blessedness or salvation. . . . Like Socrates, Spinoza avers that blessedness comes only from a certain kind of knowledge—specifically, the "knowledge of the union the that mind has with the whole of Nature."

-Matthew Stewart, Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World

Consider......................

 You see that I have set out opposing assertions in response to your question and I have touched on quite strong arguments in support of each position. Therefore consider now which seems the more probable to you.

William of Ockham, Dialogus

haunted..................

 

     The spirit of Plato, and that of his pupil and critic Aristotle, have haunted philosophy throughout its history, and it is to them that almost all medieval controversies in the subject and ultimately be traced.  They each bequeathed to the world arguments and conceptions of superlative intellectual and dramatic power, and it is not surprising that, wherever they were read, their influence was felt.  Each of the important Mediterranean religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—attempted either to assimilate their doctrines or to present some alternative that would be equally persuasive and equally compatible with our intuitive sense of the nature of the world and of our place within it.

-Roger Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy

A general investing philosophy............

• I believe less is more, costs & taxes matter, predictions are unreliable and performance is mean-reverting.
• I believe risk & reward are attached at the hip and a long time horizon is your friend.
• I believe investing must be tied to goals to work effectively.
• And I believe behavior will determine your success or failure as an investor.

That’s not everything but close enough.

-Ben Carlson, from this post

A pretty good explanation...................

 ...........................of the concept of "Woke".

Opening paragraphs............

 It is our good fortune to live in an age when philosophy is thought to be a harmless affair.  As the autumn of 1676 approached, however, Baruch de Spinoza had ample reason to fear for his safety.  One of his friends had recently been executed, and another had died in prison.  His efforts to publish his definitive work, the Ethics, had come to an end amid threats of criminal prosecution.  A leading French theologian named him "the most impious and the most dangerous man of the century."  A powerful bishop denounced him as "that insane and evil man, who deserves to be covered with chains and whipped with a rod."  To the general public, he was known simply as "the atheist Jew."

-Matthew Stewart, Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World

the great dispute................

 If we sometimes spent a little consideration on ourselves, and employed in probing ourselves the time we put into checking up on others and learning about things that are outside us, we would easily sense how much this fabric of ours is built up of feeble and failing pieces.  Is it not a singular evidence of our imperfection that we cannot establish our contentment in any one thing, and that even in desire and imagination it is beyond our power to choose what we need?  A good proof of this is the great dispute that has always gone on between the philosophers over the sovereign good of man, and that still goes on and will go on eternally, without solution and without agreement:

-Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, Book 1, Chapter 53