Saturday, June 9, 2012

Habits and truth

Habits and truth

First of all, apparently the trial version of this typing app only allows up to five files, thus it's a good thing I found a way to export these things to a blog so that they may last just that much longer. I will put off paying the three dollars for the full app as long as I can...

Now to the topic at hand: habits. I had planned on writing about gravity but then I had another conversation which brought out to me how impossible the intellectual life is without well formed habits. Basically it came down to discussing something until the question was reduced to a contradiction where one side led to an immediate absurdity. This happened several times. Even on the very point of contradiction itself or the existence of motion and so on. How does one make a first principle clearer? There's almost nothing to be done if the other is dedicated to being contrary.

I'm not even sure where I should go after this. If one has a poor way of life (by poor I mean decadent and malicious), then one will be inclined to seek out and present arguments which defend that way of life. Sometimes one will cling to arguments with the most bogus premises, such that nothing exists or that change and difference are mere illusion. Such premises, if actually held, would destroy the possibility of any communication. Even letting them pass from the mouth is enough to make one concerned about the truth in that speaker's words. Perhaps with good reason, for if their passions cause their speech, then one is basically just working with a real dangerous animal. (Though it should be remembered that one must never lose hope in another's salvation.)

I intended to write much more about particular virtues, especially temperance, but sleep is coming quickly and will probably overtake me. At least it should be said that temperance allows one to enjoy bodily pleasure in the proper mode so that one is then free to seek true joy in freedom from the chains of passion and appetite. So much more. Ave Maria!


Sent from my iPhone

1 comment:

  1. Three dollars? You cheapass. :) I wonder who you were talking to that brought about this awareness of the need for well-formed habits.

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