A hobby is an activity that doesn’t go anywhere, like the child’s hobby horse from which it takes its name. Little wonder, then, that hobbies have been considered trivial pastimes, diverting adjuncts to the serious business of life, best confined to our spare time. Perhaps this hierarchy of importance needs to be reversed…
ReadThere may be clear moral lines, but also a need to cross them. Paradoxical though it may sound, something may still be wrong even when it becomes right to do it.
ReadThere is a kind of agnostic who genuinely has no opinion and so doesn’t criticise those who do. But many agnostics have a very clear opinion indeed: that the balance of probability is too fine to call. This is not suspension of belief in the face of uncertainty but the certain belief that the matter is especially uncertain.
ReadStart with a wrong idea of the parts and, good though they may seem, the whole you try to build from them just won’t add up, and the cool, rational pursuit of the abstract general good will not lead to the real good after all.
ReadThe philosophic soul trusts herself no more and no less than she does anyone else. None of us can trust that our memories, our reasoning or our intentions guarantee the truth or goodness of what they produce. We need to check, verify and monitor.
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