On The Tripartite Soul

Plato claims there are three realms of human desiring: mind, heart, and stomach. The mind knows, the heart feels, the stomach yearns.

The mind is the least strong of all three. It has the least power. In and of itself, knowing rarely leads to action. Knowing must usually be paired with feeling and yearning. Apart from the efforts of the heart, the stomach will almost always triumph over the mind. In other words, we must not only know what is right in order to do what is right. We must both know and love what is right in order to do it.

All of these claims are commonly traded. I will add this, though:

Given it is weakest, the mind is also easiest to control. We may think about whatever we want to think about. We may change our thoughts instantly. We may of cars, then trucks, then coffee, then scissors in quick succession.

We cannot move from feeling to feeling so easily. Feelings are much harder to change, though they can be changed. If a man wants to feel sad, he may do so with great effort.

And yet changing our desires is very, very difficult. If a man is hungry, it is nearly impossible for him to decide he does not want food. If a man is tired, he must feel tired. Nothing changes with greater difficulty than the stomach.

Just One Man’s Opinion

“Next to [Piglet’s] house was a piece of broken board which had: “TRESPASSERS WILL” on it. When Christopher Robin asked Piglet what it meant, he said it was his grandfather’s name, which was short for Trespassers William.”

This is the best joke in a work of twentieth century literature.

When A Friend Recommends A Dumb Book

“Tom: So, what did you think of The Art of Reimagining Community by Carlos Carson?

Harry: I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t like it.

Tom: That’s interesting. Do you think it’s possible that you just didn’t understand it?

Harry: No, I understood it just fine. I didn’t like it.

Tom: Well, perhaps it’s not the kind of book you’re meant to like.

Harry: What do you mean?

Tom: The Art of Reimagining Community brings up a lot of really important issues—the sort of issues that most people shy away from. It’s a pretty confrontational book.

Harry: I never felt confronted while reading this book. In fact, there was a lack of confrontational material in this book.

Tom: Well, I would say it’s a very intellectual book, as well. Perhaps you just like books with more action.

Harry: No, I’ve enjoyed a great many books that didn’t contain any action.

Tom: Perhaps you didn’t realize all the ways you were being confronted.

Harry: No, I could tell when the author thought he was confronting me as a modern day American—and I don’t mind being confronted, but this book never truly confronted me. I didn’t think the book was very good and so I didn’t like it.

Tom: Wow. So, I’d love to hear about the passages of the book that you took issue with, but before we get into that, I have to ask about your claim that you “didn’t like” the book. That strikes me as a very reductive sort of judgement.”

-from my latest for CiRCE

Is Language Logical Or Is Logic Linguistic?

A significant part of proving that a certain claim is logical rests on illustrations born of proper and improper speech. This arises in The Consolation of Philosophy when Lady Philosophy asserts that evil is a nothingness, a privation of being. To prove this, she points out that people do not say that a dead man is a man, but that he was a man, and is now a dead man. Death is not a feature of human nature, but a disruption of it, and so a dead man both is and is not a kind of man.

Lady Philosophy is unwilling to entertain the idea that all people speak improperly. The fact that all people speak a certain way is its own kind of logical proof, like expert witnesses or syllogisms or analogies or hard data. In fact, human speech is essentially an amalgam of every other form of proof.

Pamphlet No. 3: “Will Heaven Be Boring?”

“Teacher: You might watch a movie to alleviate boredom, but what if the movie went on for ten hours?

Student: Anyone would tire of a movie that long.

Teacher: Yes, and so you would quit watching the movie to do something else, but that thing would eventually becomes boring, as well. So you do something else that you eventually tired of, then something else you tired of after that. Have you ever tasted something so good that you never wanted to eat it again?

Student: No. If something tastes really good, you want it all the more.

Teacher: Yes. We want to eat our favorite foods again and again. They’re good, but they don’t satisfy us for all that long. Have you ever seen a movie that was so good you never wanted to watch it again?

Student: Again, no. I generally watch good movies over and over again.

Teacher: But you don’t immediately rewatch them? You don’t rewatch a good film the second it’s over?

Student: Of course not. I might watch my favorite films once a year.

Teacher: Why don’t you rewatch them immediately?

Student: Because I don’t want to. I’ve had enough. 

Teacher: Yes. If you rewatched a good movie the second it was over, you wouldn’t enjoy it.

Student: It would be boring. Teacher: Yes. That’s how tenuous the things of this world are. We enjoy our favorite movies as long as we don’t have to watch them twice in a row. We enjoy our favorite meals as long as we don’t have to eat them three times in the same day, in which case we’d grow sick of them. And yet neither does the satisfaction which our favorite movies and favorite meals offer us last all that long. We tire of not having them, then we tire of having them. There’s nothing on earth—not even our favorite things—which isn’t beset on all sides by boredom. And consider just how many things you enjoyed last year or the year before which no longer interest you at all.”

-from “Will Heaven Be Boring? A Companion Piece To Love What Lasts“

My next pamphlet should be done by Christmas and will be available through Gibbs Classical. It’s a long conversation between a teacher and a student that revolves around the fear that heaven will be boring. Love What Lasts explores the connections between good taste and piety. “Will Heaven Be Boring?” explores those connections in a way that will prove compelling to high school students and adults alike.