BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: PHILOSOPHY

for Mac

"If you asked me what I came into the world to do,I will tell you. I came to live out loud,"

Epigraph to Learning to Live Out Loud, by Piper Laurie (New York: Crown Archetype, 2011)
**
FROM A MORE WORLDLY PHILOSOPHER

"Well, let me quote once more from a worldly philosopher who had the knack of summarising human thought. I mean the prize-fighter John L. Sullivan. "Various candidates for the championship say they want this and they want that. But what they all really want is the good old dough."

William Lyon Phelps. As I like It (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1924)
**
"Stars, planets, people , and petunias: everything 
emits a special kind of radiation which, if it sticks around long enough, evaporizes into nothing."

                      Scientific American (Septemnber 2023)

**

"Only a part of what is perceived comes through the senses from the object: the remainder always come from within."
                          Matthew Luckiesh

epigraph to 36 Views, a play by Naomi Lizuka

**

J. L. AUSTIN ON LANGUAGE & ACTION

Yet, as Austin insisted, “when we examine what we should say when, what words we should use in what situations, we are looking not merely at words (or ‘meanings’, whatever they may be) but also at the realities we use the words to talk about”. And, he argued, the way we use words in fact changes reality. “When I say ‘I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth’ I do not describe the christening ceremony, I actually perform the christening”, he wrote; “and when I say ‘I do’ (take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife), I am not reporting on a marriage, I am indulging in it”. I am, in fact, “doing something rather than merely saying something”.

Review  of J. L. AUSTIN: Philosopher and D-Day intelligence officer 688pp. Oxford University Press. £30 (US $38.95).
M. W. Rowe in  How to do things with wars
"The life of the philosopher who ‘changed the whole idea of what language is’by Jane O’Grady in TLS (August 4, 2023)
**

WHAT IS BEAUTY

"To a toad, what is beauty? A female with two pop-eyes, a wide mouth, yellow belly and spotted back"
                                                Voltaire
**

JEAN PAUL SARTRE on NO EXIT
 
“…if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why? Because other people are basically the most important means we have in ourselves for our own knowledge of ourselves. When we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves, basically we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have or have given us for judging ourselves. Into whatever I say about myself someone else’s judgment always enters. Which means that if my relations are bad, I am situating myself in a total dependence on someone else. And then I am indeed in hell.”

**
HOW WE MAY ANSWER THE QUESTION "WHAT AM I"

"When we ask ourselves, 'What am I?' we may answer 'I am a Man' but are concious that it's a silly answer because we don't know what kind of thing that might be; and finding the question silly we feel it's probably a silly question. We can't help asking it, hoewever, for natural curiosity makes us ask i all the time of everyone
else, and it would seem artificial to make ourselves the sole exxception, would indeed envelop the mental image of one self in a unique silence..."

Robert Bolt. Preface to A Man For All Seasons (New York: 
Vintage Books, 1990)


THREE THINGS ABOVE ALL ELSE

"People in the mid-18th century:  climate, government and religion. He was ahead of his time in putting climate first.  Peter Frankopan opens his new book with Voltaire's
comment and proceeds to show how all manner of natural disasters have shaped human history; not just floods and storms, but earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and crashing meteorites, too."

from an unsigned review of The Earth Transformed by
Peter Frankopan (The Economist, March 11, 2023)
**

"No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep
up."
          Lily Tomlin

**

ON GOOD CRAFTMANSHIP

"It seems to me that if you are a good craftsman your principal concern should be to keep working. If you manage to do that your employers will have to pay you sooner or later exactly what you are worth. How could they avoid it?"

Buster Keaton 

Buster Keaton, with Charles Samuels . My Wonderful World of Slapstick (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1960)
**

"First say to yourself what you would be, and then do
what you have to do."
                                          Epicetius. Discourses

Epigraph to Ernest Hemingway's Selected Leters, 1917-1961, edited by Carlos Baker.
**

I AM IN DEBT, THEREFORE I EXIST 

"What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I thelight of which the bulb is a vehicle?"   Joseph Campbell 

Oh, come off it, Joseh Campbell.
I've had it with allegories.
Am I the bulb?
Am I the light?
I'll tell you who I am:
When the Electric Company
Sends out its bill,
I'm the one
Who writes the check.  

Louis Phillips