The intellect, the organ of knowledge and cognition, is still of this world; in the words of Duns Scotus, it falls under the sway of nature, cadit sub natura, and carries with it all the necessities to which a living being, endowed with sense organs and brain power, is subject.
All the metaphysical questions that philosophy took as its special topics arise out of ordinary common-sense experiences; “reason’s need”—the quest for meaning that prompts men to ask them—is in no way different from men’s need to tell the story of some happening they witnessed, or to write poems about it In all such reflecting activities men move outside the world of appearances and use a language filled with abstract words which, of course, had long been part and parcel of everyday speech before they became the special currency of philosophy. For thinking, then, though not for philosophy, technically speaking, withdrawal from the world of appearances is the only essential precondition. In order for us to think about somebody, he must be removed from our presence; so long as we are with him we do not think either of him or about him; thinking always implies remembrance; every thought is strictly speaking an after-thought.
All of the self-justifying explanations by the supporters of the [Vietnam] war—selfishness, cowardice, decadence, ignorance, Communist sympathies—were excuses that failed to confront the basic challenge that the protesters (and [Hans] Morgenthau too) were raising about the war, namely that the very reasons the United States had become involved in Vietnam, the Domino Theory and the doctrine of a monolithic Communism, were fundamentally false and had no application to the world as it actually existed.
PUSH YOURSELF BEYOND when you think you are done with what you have to say. Go a little further. Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that’s why we decide we’re done. It’s getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.
Our minds don’t have direct control over every autonomic process. We can’t just think the word “adrenaline” and trigger the hormonal release we want. But we can put ourselves in situations that trigger that same predictable hormonal release. When we choose stressors, we choose our biological reactions. The same goes for the immune system: We can’t think it into action, but we can certainly change the environment that the immune system responds and reacts to.
