The joy of... chess?

Almost missed this Stone essay from earlier this month. It never occurred to me to look to chess as a paradigm for joy (let alone happiness). But this is still interesting.

We Don’t Actually Want to Be Happy

Chess helps answer the perennial human question, “What should I do next?”

By Jonathan Rowson

You may have already figured out that our inalienable right to pursue happiness is self-defeating. Happiness may be with us, baked into our present moment, eagerly awaiting our grateful acknowledgment, but nothing is less likely to make us happy than trying to pursue it. On this analysis, we are right to desire happiness; it’s just that the predatory process of chasing it drives what we apparently want out of reach.

But perhaps the conundrum is deeper. The writer Oliver Burkeman observes that for a civilization so fixated on achieving happiness, we are remarkably bad at it. It seems to me that we might actually want something entirely different from happiness and not know what it is. At least, that’s what chess — which I’ve played since I was a boy, reaching the level of grandmaster — has taught me.

If you walk into your typical chess event and look around the room, you’ll see humans, mostly male, sitting in contorted postures, enraptured by the geometric cage fights they are caught up in. To the outside world we may look absorbed, transfixed even, but we are clearly not at ease. We enter this state willingly, under enormous competitive tension and high adrenaline, for hours at a time, decades at a time.

One might imagine that we endure this competitive intellectual strain as a necessary price for victory, which is perhaps part of happiness. But we are just as likely to lose, which is always much more painful than winning is pleasurable. So if we are pursuing happiness, both in terms of process and outcome, chess does not look like a good way to do it... (continues)

Oliver Sacks's existential gratitude

“I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”@OliverSacks, in facing his death, on the deepest existential gratitude https://t.co/SnUeY7A5el #Thanksgiving

— Maria Popova (@brainpicker) November 28, 2019

Thank You Mr. President*

Today I read in the NY Times an interesting column by David Brooks on the mind-body connection. At the bottom of the article, where it says who David is, there is a reference to a book he wrote entitled “The Road to Character.” Because I am working on my final post on Positive Psychology, in which character is central to well-being, I have been thinking about character a lot. So I google-booked the book, read some of it and reviews of it, and then ordered it. Thinking about character, for some reason I thought about the Donald. So I googled “Donald Trump’s character”. Needless to say, there are a great many that recognize that (good) character is something that the Donald lacks, and that his lack of character is having disastrous consequences. I’d encourage you to google it and read some of the articles.

But apparently, to my surprise, no one values character more than our president*. A must-read is his October 18, 2019 proclamation of National Character Counts Week (link below). It begins:

“Since our Nation’s founding, we have recognized that the good character of our people is vital to maintaining our freedom.  The strength of our Union and the defense of our precious liberty require both constant vigilance and moral clarity.  During National Character Counts Week, we reaffirm our commitment to developing and demonstrating admirable qualities to enrich our lives and the lives of others.  In doing so, we are confident that we can positively influence the next generation of our Nation’s leaders and inspire them to lead lives of virtue and integrity.”  https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidential-proclamation-national-character-counts-week-2019/

It occurs to me that in these dark days, the Donald has done us a great service. He has shown us all that character matters greatly, and has offered us, throughout his life and continuing daily, real-life examples of what bad character is. Nobody does it better. More than ever, people are talking about the need for character in our leaders. Our Dear Leader proclaimed that “the good character of our people is vital to maintaining our freedom. The strength of our Union and the defense of our precious liberty require both constant vigilance and moral clarity.” He reaffirmed our commitment to “demonstrating admirable qualities to enrich our lives and the lives of others.” He has at the same time clearly stated our values of virtue and integrity and demonstrated to us the behavior that is antithetical to those values. He proclaimed that “the defense of our precious liberty require both constant vigilance and moral clarity.” Now we know what we must do, and why. Thank you Mr. President*.

Study Guide for Dec. 3rd

Tuesday's exam will be drawn from the even-numbered questions:

Quiz for 11/07

1. Who paid homage to Epicureanism after its 17th century revival? 2

2. What common Creation Story assumptions did Epicurus reject? 21

3. Of what should we beware, regarding human perception? 26

4. The Epicureans grasped the basic principle of what modern scientific theory? 33

5. What was, and what is, the great fear of those who reject Epicurean-Darwinian ideas about the origins of life? 41

QQs: Kathryn

1."The ancient Epicureans argued that everything in our experience is perishable and will someday perish. But once something exists, they reasoned, _ ____ __ ____ ____." p.20

2.Lucretius wrote that all the species that we see alive now had been "protected and preserved from the beginning of its existence" by one of what three things? p.29

3.Epicureans "were not impressed by" what argument? p.35

4.What is a "good example" that the author gives for the role of chance still playing a role? p.40

QQs: Martin

1. What did Epicureans mean by Nature? (7)

2. To explain the complexity and combinations of atoms, Lucretius made what analogy? (22}

3. What was one creation myth from the ancient Greek philosophers that pre-dated the Epicureans? (33)

For 11/12

1. What is the spirit's fate, according to Lucretius? 43

2. What does the majority still believe about souls? 47

3. What dichotomous form of thinking about consciousness "must be wrong"? 52

4. Early humans, Lucretius supposes, experienced relative ____ and ____. 58

5. Humans evidently have not learned what? 61

6. Whatever ____ does must be consistent with God's will, says the religiously orthodox person. 63

Kathryn M.  QQs for chapters 3-4:

1.What are the 2 rational conclusions of thinking that the "body and mind are entirely interwoven?" p.46

2.What Epicurean idea did Hobbes revive? p.65

3.What is "one of the most important insights to take away from Lucretian prehistory and its reworking?" p.66

Martin QQ:s 3-4

1. Despite technological advances, what little robot relies on our consciousness for help? (3: evolution of consciousness)

2. What about consciousness do philosophers and neurosciences continue to debate about? (52)

3. What are two especially important features of Epicurean prehistory? (4: Authority and Inequality)

4. What was the significance of the Epicurean view on authority and justice? (62)

Alison QQ:

1. How does an Epicurean view the mind? (53)

2. Lucretius describes the earliest phase of human life ______, yet ________. (58)

3. Whose views on natural domination offered a regrettable interpretation of the idea of 'life in accord with nature'? (63-64)

Graham Anglin QQ:

1. We tend to think of consciousness as ___ or _______. (52)

2. What famous 17th century philosopher agreed with society that the soul is something that lives in the body? (46-47)

3. What is the one thing that the Roomba does exceptionally well? (49)

For 11/14 - HTBE 5-6

1. The satisfaction of what conditions should enable someone to be as happy as Zeus, according to Epicurus? 71

2. What have some "great philosophers" said about pleasure? 74

3. What does the different portrayal of male and female hedonism in advertizing and pop culture tell us about our society? 78

4. Why isn't set-point theory "the whole truth"? 85

5. What should you do if you have severe or chronic pain? 89

6. It's impossible to live pleasantly without what, for Epicurus? 95

7. What's the Epicurean position on kindness and generosity towards friends and strangers? 100-101

8. Why should you be moral? 104

Alison QQ 5-6

1. What is the Epicurean answer to the question, "Should we all do what we feel most like doing at any given moment, since our liking for pleasure and our aversion to pain are natural and fundamental?" (75)

2. Epicureanism is not a philosophy of what? (97)

3. For the Epicurean, ________ and _______ should and will determine decisions and and direct our practices. (106)

Martin QQ 5-6:

1. Ethics is the study of what? And what does Epicurus say about it? (73)

2. What is the most dangerous of all pleasures? (75)

3. What is the Epicurean view on petty annoyances? (87)

Kathryn QQs ch.5-6:

1.What does Epicurus say Ethics is about? (p.73)

2.What is the difference between the female and male versions of hedonistic advertising presentations? (p.78)

3.What do "surveyed people report as the most enjoyable activities of their day?" (p.81)

For 11/19 – 11/21 HTBE 7-8

1. What apparently motivated Lucretius's suicide? 111

2. What classes of women were recognized in ancient Greece? 113

3. What concept of morality was unfamiliar to ancient philosophers outside the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition? 117

4. Why are some men puzzled by the accusation of sexual harassment? 119

5. It is wrong to engineer sex by force, or by offering a what? 121

6. What was Descartes's illusion with respect to the subjective feeling of being an indestructible Self? 126

7. No human has ever been known to live beyond what age? 129

8. A prudent person does not join what, voluntarily? 133

9. Suicide is almost always based on what? 139

Alison QQ

1. Epicureans who choose to have children do not sacrifice what? (121)

2. What are the three views of death for the Epicurean? (126)

3. ______ said "When we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist." (131)

Graham QQ

1. Ancient Greek society restricted respectable married women to the ______. p.113

2. The prudent person must recognize that love can be _______. p.115

3. The Epicurean takes an __________ view of human life. p. 129

Nov. 21 - HTBE 9-10

1. The Epicurean distinguishes what 3 levels of reality? 152

2. To think like an Epicurean is to be aware of what? 156

3. Do ghosts exist? 160

4. What is required for there to be facts? 166

5. If you believe the world is made up of tables and chairs and people and pets (etc.)  that exist just as they appear, you're a what? 171

6. What is the touchstone of truth? 174

7. Why should we try to find out who's right, in matters of political disagreement? 179

8. What pragmatic reason supports the empirical stance? 182 

Paivi QQ

1. As Epicureans see matters, rights exist only by what? (158)

2. Belief in Unthings leads to what? (161)

3. Some philosophers argue that truth can only be found where? (173)

4. How would Epicureans resolve the ongoing argument of poverty and violence in the United States? (181)

Alison QQ 9-10

1. Why is the topic of essential natures important? (151)

2. Today's Epicurean would agree with the ancient philosophers on what? (167)

3. How does an Epicurean regard theories? (184)

Martin QQ's:

1. What do all events have, unlike matter? (9)

2. What is the problem with claiming to perceive the world as it really is using the 5 senses? (172-173)

Kathryn QQs chapters 9-10:

1. If "our species had never existed," what else would have never existed, according to the Epicurean? (p.153)

2.What is the fourth category "implicit in Epicurean theory?" (p.159)

3."Epicurus recognized that not all first-hand experiences reveal the ____." (p.175)

4.What are political disagreements based on, and what do they usually involve? (p.178)

Graham QQ for Chapter 9-10

1. Rights are often called ______. p157

2. Jeremy Bentham described rights as nonsense on _____. p158

3. The pace of innovations accelerated when empiricism was rediscovered and redeveloped in the period known as the _______ Revolution. p183

HTBE 11-12

1. "Our life has no need now of" what? 187

2. Little particles explain most of what happens in the world, aside from what? 193

3. Involving real harm, _____ is a moral issue. 199

4. What was Thomas Jefferson's view of Epicureans and Stoics? 209

5. Whose early utopian writings sound like a version of the Epicurean Garden? 212

6. Who was thought to be joking when he proposed gender equality in education and physical training? 217

Paivi QQ:

1. Nearly how many people that were surveyed believe God created human beings in their present form? (200)

2. Who are the three philosophers who were impacted by Epicurean philosophy? (209)

3. The Epicureans generally have a skeptical stance to what? (214)

4. Major philosophical traditions have regarded women as useful for what? (221)

Kathryn QQs chapters 11-12:

1.What does Epicurus call 'political security'? (p.189)

2.In what cases does the author state we cannot "just wait and see what the consensus is after another twenty-five years of research?" (p.199)

3.What was Hobbes's materialistic declaration? (p.209)

4.What Lucretian idea did Marx and Engels engage with? (p.211)

Alison QQ

1. According to Epicurus, a free life cannot acquire what? (205)

2. The Epicurean story of humanity tells us what? (207)

3. In an Epicurean political community, people are seen as what? (221)

Graham QQ:

1. Ancel Keys followed a ___________ diet according to the New York Times. p197

2. ___________ would like you to believe certain things about the casual powers of their products. p203

3. What did Rousseau think was the principle aim of political decisions? p211

Martin QQ's: (see 187, 190)

1. In the study of nature, we must not conform to what? (11)

2. What did not prove the existence of powerful divinities needing to be pleased? (190)

3. How does one obtain a neighbors good will? (12)

4. Who caused Epicureanism to appear irresponsible, unrealistic, and dangerous? (208)

RIchard Ford's Thanksgiving happiness

LISTEN. Around Thanksgiving every year I pick up one of my favorite novels, Richard Ford's Lay of the Land (#3 in his wonderful Frank Bascombe trilogy, before it became a tetralogy). It takes place around Thanksgiving, c.2000. "Thanksgiving ought to be the versatile, easy-to-like holiday, suitable to the secular and religious... [it] won't be ignored. Americans are hard-wired for something to be thankful for. Our national spirit thrives on invented gratitude."

Here's one of Frank's ruminations on happiness, recalling a "shining moment of glory that was instantly gone" when he caught a foul ball and impressed his kid. I can almost totally relate... but can't agree that "happy is a lot of hooey." (Though of course the way a lot of us talk about it is.)

“The kind of happy I was that day at the Vet when "Hawk" Dawson actually doffed his red "C" cap to me, and everyone cheered and practically convulsed into tears - you can't patent that. It was one shining moment of glory that was instantly gone. Whereas life, real life, is different and can't even be appraised as simply "happy", but only in terms of "Yes, I'll take it all, thanks" or "No, I believe I won't." Happy, as my poor father used to say, is a lot of hooey. Happy is a circus clown, a sitcom, a greeting card. Life, though, life's about something sterner. But also something better. A lot better. Believe me.”

Ford on Fresh Air...

Happy gratitude day

LISTEN. Is gratitude the secret of happiness?

It has become a hugely popular concept in positive psychology and self-help, but is feeling grateful really a panacea? One writer sets aside her scepticism and opens up her gratitude journal

A memory came to mind recently of opening presents after my seventh or eighth birthday party – the thrill of the smooth, sharp-edged wrapping paper as I ripped it open, the breathless discovery of the gift concealed within. I also remember the many dull hours in the days that followed, writing thank-you letter after thank-you letter to grandparents, aunties, neighbours and friends, my mother sitting beside me, addressing the envelopes.

This could be why the notion of formalised, prescribed and premeditated gratitude, which in the past decade has become the darling of positive psychology and the self-help movement, tends to stick in my craw. So, too, the piles of gratitude journals displayed in gift shops among other tat, bespattered with cheesy quotations at jaunty angles: overcompensatingly “inspirational” gifts for uninspired givers on a deadline. Even hearing the word “gratitude” makes my shoulders tense and my eyes narrow. I am too cynical to get on board this particular Oprah bandwagon – too British, too atheist, too sensitive to schmaltz... (Guardian, continues)

More Alan Watts

The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Others:

Out of your mind

Become what you are

The way of zen

The wisdom of insecurity

In my own way (autobiography)

Chapters:

• Inside information - 
• Pillow Book
• Universal oddity
• Wonder
• The Game
• Ego's (coming out of the world)
• Creation Myth
• The game of black and white-
• Duality
• Space as a relationship between two bodies
• Attention is narrowed perspective
• Black goes with white, not against it
• How to be a genuine fake-
• The world is your body-
• Consciousness
• Community
• Unity of the body
• So what-
• It-
• Society
• Education
• Pleasure
• Peace
• Spiritual One-upmanship

Alan Watts Tea Talk

Introduction; Nothingness

Positive Psychology

A charismatic leader, a creation myth that begins with an epiphany, and legions of rapturous followers: Is positive psychology science or religion?... more »

Whatcha think, Ed?

Happy birthday Jennifer Michael Hecht

It's the birthday of pop philosopher, historian, and poet Jennifer Michael Hecht (books by this author), born in Long Island in 1965. Hecht holds a Ph.D. in the history of science, a subject that fascinates her — and simultaneously convinces her that art trumps scholarship. She inhabits each world — teaching, studying, and publishing both poetry and historical, analytical nonfiction — but ultimately pledges allegiance, she says, to poetry. "If you look at a testimony of love from 2,000 years ago, it can still exactly speak to you, whereas medical advice from only 100 years ago is ridiculous," she said in an interview with the Center for Inquiry. "And so as a historian, I write poetry. I'm profoundly committed to art as the answer. Indeed, I don't put science really as the way I get to any of my answers; it's just helpful. It's poetry that I look to. It's the clatter of recognition. Everybody has different ways, but I attest that poetry works pretty well."

Hecht was speaking on the topic of her book The Happiness Myth: The Historical Antidote to What Isn't Working Today (2007), in which she argues that happiness is a phenomenon influenced far more by culture than by what we think of as scientific fact. In it, she writes: "We think our version of a happy life as more like physics than like pop songs; we expect the people of the next century, say, to agree with our basic tenets — for instance, that broccoli is good for a happy life and that opium is bad — but they will not. Our rules for living are more like the history of pop songs. They make their weird sense only to the people of each given time period. They aren't true."

 

Delight; & the delightful modern epicurean Bertrand Russell

Delight as a Daily Practice: A Poetic Illustrated Meditation on the Meaning of Happiness and Its Quiet Everyday Sources

A lovely countercultural invitation to savor the unpurchasable joys with which the world is strewn.

BY MARIA POPOVA

“What is your idea of perfect happiness?” asks the famous Proust Questionnaire. Posed to David Bowie, he answered simply: “Reading.” Jane Goodall answered: “Sitting by myself in the forest in Gombe National Park watching one of the chimpanzee mothers with her family.” Proust himself answered: “To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, a French theater.”

The touching specificity of these answers and the subtle universality pulsing beneath them reveal the most elemental truth about happiness: that there are as many flavors of it as there are consciousnesses capable of registering it, and that it is a universally delicious necessity of life, which we crave from the day we are born until the day we die. And yet, as Albert Camus lamented, “happiness has become an eccentric activity. The proof is that we tend to hide from others when we practice it.”

Half a century later, as we wade through a world that gives us ample reason for sorrow, as existential credibility seems meted out on the basis of how loudly one broadcasts one’s disadvantage, the savoring of happiness has become an almost countercultural activity — an act of courage and resistance, and one the practice of which is a whole life’s work, as George Eliot well knew when she observed that “one has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy.” Why, then, not make the learning of happiness as essential a part of young people’s education as the learning of arithmetic? Or even stand with Elizabeth Barrett Browning in deeming it our moral obligation...(continues)
==

Wendell Berry on Delight as a Force of Resistance to Consumerism, the Key to Mirth Under Hardship, and the Measure of a Rich Life

“The essential cultural discrimination is not between having and not having or haves and have-nots, but between the superfluous and the indispensable. Wisdom… is always poised upon the knowledge of minimums; it might be thought to be the art of minimums.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

“I have always had a quarrel with this country not only about race but about the standards by which it appears to live,” James Baldwin told Margaret Mead as they sat down together to reimagine democracy for a post-consumerist world. A generation later, the poet, farmer, and ecological steward Wendell Berry — a poet in the largest Baldwinian sense — picked up the time-escalated quarrel in his slim, large-spirited book The Hidden Wound (public library) to offer, without looking away from its scarring realities, a healing and conciliatory direction of resistance to a culture in which our enjoyment of life is taken from us by the not-enoughness at the hollow heart of consumerism, only to be sold back to us at the price of the latest product, and sold in discriminating proportion along lines of stark income inequality... (continues)
==

How to Grow Old: Bertrand Russell on What Makes a Fulfilling Life

“Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

“If you can fall in love again and again,” Henry Miller wrote as he contemplated the measure of a life well lived on the precipice of turning eighty, “if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical… you’ve got it half licked.”

Seven years earlier, the great British philosopher, mathematician, historian, and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970) considered the same abiding question at the same life-stage in a wonderful short essay titled “How to Grow Old,” penned in his eighty-first year and later published in Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (public library).Russell places at the heart of a fulfilling life the dissolution of the personal ego into something larger. Drawing on the longstanding allure of rivers as existential metaphors, he writes:

Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.

In a sentiment which philosopher and comedian Emily Levine would echo in her stirring reflection on facing her own death with equanimity, Russell builds on the legacy of Darwin and Freud, who jointly established death as an organizing principle of modern life, and concludes:

The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.

Portraits from Memory and Other Essays is an uncommonly potent packet of wisdom in its totality. Complement this particular fragment with Nobel laureate André Gide on how happiness increases with age, Ursula K. Le Guin on aging and what beauty really means, and Grace Paley on the art of growing older — the loveliest thing I’ve ever read on the subject — then revisit Russell on critical thinking, power-knowledge vs. love-knowledge, what “the good life” really means, why “fruitful monotony” is essential for happiness, and his remarkable response to a fascist’s provocation... (more Russell)

Teach your children well

Why It’s Important To Teach Children Philosophy ... https://t.co/sLvEWgrdzP pic.twitter.com/tlX5mesbyY

— Philosophy Matters (@PhilosophyMttrs) November 22, 2019

Happy World Philosophy Day!

It’s World #PhilosophyDay! Studying philosophy is valuable no matter what career path one pursues, from academia to business to entertainment to politics. Download our "Who Studies Philosophy?" posters featuring well-known figures with philosophy degrees: https://t.co/d4zdE4ERpk pic.twitter.com/T9lezOpX2Z

— APA (@apaphilosophy) November 21, 2019

Quiz Nov 26

HTBE 11-12. "I too am an Epicurean"

1. "Our life has no need now of" what? 187

2. Little particles explain most of what happens in the world, aside from what? 193

3. Involving real harm, _____ is a moral issue. 199

4. What was Thomas Jefferson's view of Epicureans and Stoics? 209

5. Whose early utopian writings sound like a version of the Epicurean Garden? 212

6. Who was thought to be joking when he proposed gender equality in education and physical training? 217

DQ

• Is Epicurean scepticism peculiarly well-suited to this moment in history?
• Will we ever, or should we even desire to, explain everything in terms of micro-phenomena?
• Should an Epicurean concerned about climate change become an activist? Should calculations of personal happiness and the enjoyment of one's own life be decisive for him/her in addressing that question?
• COMMENT: "For moral reasons we need to combat the view that the fate of all plants, animals and humans resides with a loving and intelligent deity..." (201) Is a Stoic as likely to agree with this as an Epicurean?
• Are metaphysical materialists more likely than (say) theists to behave irresponsibly, dangerously, and violently? 208
• Whose view of human nature do you more nearly favor, Hobbes's or Rousseau's? 210
• What do you think of the Epicurean view of natural rights? 214
• What do you think of Augustine's statement about "Eve"? 220
• Is "male energy and inventiveness" catastrophic? 221
• 
  

From Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 31 October 1819

Monticello Oct. 31. 19.

Dear Sir

Your favor of the 21st is recieved. my late illness, in which you are so kind as to feel an interest was produced by a spasmodic stricture of the ilium, which came upon me on the 7th inst. the crisis was short, passed over favorably on the 4th day, and I should soon have been well but that a dose of calomel & Jalap, in which were only 8. or 9. grains of the former brought on a salivation. of this however nothing now remains but a little soreness of the mouth. I have been able to get on horseback for 3. or 4. days past.

As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing every thing rational in moral philosophy which Greece & Rome have left us. Epictetus indeed has given us what was good of the Stoics; all beyond, of their dogmas, being hypocrisy and grimace. their great crime was in their calumnies of Epicurus and misrepresentations of his doctrines: in which we lament to see the candid character of Cicero engaging as an accomplice. the merit of his philosophy is in the beauties of his style. diffuse rapid, rhetorical, but enchanting. his prototype Plato, eloquent as himself, dealing out mysticisms incomprehensible to the human mind, has been defied by certain sects usurping the name of Christians; because, in his foggy conceptions, they found a basis of impenetrable darkness whereon to rear fabrications as delirious, of their own invention. these they fathered blasphemously on him whom they claimed as their founder, but who would disclaim them with the indignation which their caricatures of his religion so justly excite. of Socrates we have nothing genuine but in the Memorabilia of Xenophon. for Plato makes him one of his Collocutors merely to cover his own whimsies under the mantle of his name; a liberty of which we are told Socrates himself complained. Seneca is indeed a fine moralist, disfiguring his work at time with some Stoicisms, and affecting too much of antithesis and point, yet giving us on the whole a great deal of sound and practical morality. but the greatest of all the Reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by it’s lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dung hill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man: outlines which it is lamentable he did not live to fill up. Epictetus & Epicurus give us laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the duties & charities we owe to others. the establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolentmoralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from misconstructions of his words by his pretended votaries, is a most desirable object... Founders Online