Christmas Every Day

My favourite twentieth-century philosopher is David Stove (1927-1994), an Australian atheist, positivist, anti-Platonist and anti-Darwinian. A third of what he says I don’t understand, half of what I do understand I don’t agree with, but I always find reading him a pleasure.

Here are three quotes from The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies, 1991.

The Great Schism of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which split the Western from the Eastern Church, took place, on its theological side, over a question concerning the Trinity. This was, of course, that most famous of all theological questions, the question of the procession of the Holy Ghost, or of the filioque. The Orthodox theory was that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father alone. The Western bishops, however, were equally adamant that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father filioque – “and the Son”. It is obvious enough that these two opinions could not both be right, though both could be wrong. It is equally obvious that both opinions are wrong, or at least, that they each have got something dreadfully wrong with them, and the same thing. They both have some fatal congenital defect, whatever the exact nature of this defect may be. And it is equally obvious too, that this defect will also be shared by any other answer to the question, what or whom the Holy Ghost proceeds from. It does not matter much how you answer this question: something has already gone fatally wrong with your thoughts, once you find yourself so much as asking it.

Nothing which was ever expressed originally in the English language resembles, except in the most distant way, the thought of Plotinus, or Hegel, or Foucault. I take this to be enormously to the credit of our language. 

For Professor Harris, however, no manuscript, no scrap of paper, quite literally no doodle even, lacks profound significance, as long as it is Hegel’s. Indeed, all previous instances of philosopholatry, even the one which had Plato as its object and perhaps as its founder, are thrown entirely into the shade by Professor Harris. He does not actually say that Hegel’s philosophy can cure wooden legs, but I do not think he would like to hear it denied. 

If a man is not interested in having children, but is keen on winning victory crowns at the games or is engaged in some other such pursuit to which he recognizes that sexual intercourse is detrimental, then nothing would be of greater benefit to him than castration. It is time therefore for us to cut off the testicles of Olympic athletes. – Galen, (129-c. 210), On Semen

At a meeting of the college faculty, an angel suddenly appears and tells the head of the philosophy department, “I will grant you whichever of three blessings you choose: Wisdom, Beauty—or ten million dollars.” Immediately, the professor chooses Wisdom. There is a flash of lightning, and the professor appears transformed, but he just sits there, staring down at the table. One of his colleagues whispers, “Say something.” The professor says, “I should have taken the money.” – Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, 2007

I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this. – Emo Phillips, HBO comedy special, 1987

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is merely relative, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t. Deconstruction deconstructs itself, and disappears up its own behind, leaving only a disembodied smile and a faint smell of sulphur.  – Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey, 1994

Bart: We want the truth.

Sideshow Bob: You can’t handle the truth! No truth-handler, you. BAH! I deride your truth-handling abilities. 

– “Sideshow Bob Roberts”, The Simpsons, 1995

One must visit a wise man from time to time to learn what one already knows. – Robertson Davies (1913-95)

It is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows. – Epictetus, Discourses (c. 50-c.135)

The adjective “modern”’, when applied to any branch of art, means “designed to evoke incomprehension, anger, boredom or laughter”. – Philip Larkin, All That Jazz, 1985

I don’t know what art is, but I do know what it isn’t. And it isn’t someone walking around with a salmon over his shoulder, or embroidering the name of everyone they have slept with on the inside of a tent. – Brian Sewell, Independent, 26 April, 1999

A cow and calf are cut in half/ And placed in separate cases/ To call it art, however smart/ Casts doubt on art’s whole basis. – Anonymous, in Spectator, 5 July 2003

The existence of St Sophia is atmospheric; that of St Peter’s, overpoweringly, imminently substantial. One is a church to God: the other a salon for his agents. – Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana, 2007

After all they were a democracy; and, as Thucydides fully recognizes, a great mass of men, if it does commit infamies, likes first to be drugged and stimulated with lies: it seldom, like the wicked man in Aristotle’s Ethics, “calmly sins.” – Gilbert Murray, Euripides and His Age, 1946

Any nineteen-year-old can make love without Wordsworth. Like sexual enhancement drugs, poetry is necessary only after fifty. – Will Willimon, Accidental Preacher, 2019