Great writers are either husbands or lovers. Some writers supply the solid virtues of a husband: reliability, intelligibility, gen...erosity, decency. There are other writers in whom one prizes the gifts of a lover, gifts of temperament rather than of moral goodness. Notoriously, women tolerate qualities in a lover--moodiness, selfishness, unreliability, brutality--that they would never countenance in a husband, in return for excitement, an infusion of intense feeling. In the same way, readers put up with unintelligibility, obsessiveness, painful truths, lies, bad grammar--if, in compensation, the writer allows them to savor rare emotions and dangerous sensations. It's a great pity when one is forced to choose between them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us of ...being bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist an...d has been influenced by the methodical path of the Jesuits.... It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation. DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that all can reach salvation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »