The Philosophical Optimist

              Philosophy—let’s admit it, folks—has a bit of a bad reputation today.   But why?   What is philosophy, really, besides thinking rigorously and clearly?   And perhaps some people hate thinking rigorously, as some people hate thinking altogether; but clear thinking—no one can argue with that, now can they?   In reality, it is not philosophy that people tend to hate, but bad philosophy, of which we have an unfortunate abundance.   When it is good, philosophy can be as cleansing as a strong, stiff breeze blowing through a dusty old attic on a spring day.   It can make our thinking clearer, even about things where we never had any idea that we were thinking unclearly in the first place.             For example, consider the question: what is “worth”?   How do you get it?   Who doesn’t have it?   And who decides who d...

             A grammarian’s work is never done—nor a logician’s; and when one is a writing teacher, one of necessity plays both roles.   Sloppy writing is often but the outward sign of an inward illogic, and as all fans of the planet Vulcan know, a common foe of logic is strong emotion.   Hence it logically follows that it is precisely when people write about the things that matter the most to them that they are most likely to fall into the various logical traps we term fallacies.   When this happens it is the task of calmer, more logical minds to step in and restore order where passion—quite understandable passion, perhaps—has disordered things.             What topic could stir passions more thoroughly than the old contrast, so often flaring up into conflict, between the men who are, in a sense, the first two superheroes: Superman (1938) and Batman (1939)...

Or, Of Bruce Wayne, Batman, Buffy, & Redemptive Violence [1]             Poetry lurks everywhere, if you know how to find it.   Recently, over a long weekend, I came across an example of this in my reading of the fourth book of the Deluxe Edition of the recent adventures of Batman. [2]   There, in a scene set in a jury deliberation room, Bruce Wayne spoke two sentences which serve to encapsulate the difference between Batman, whom he feared some in Gotham were in danger of giving a sort of divine deference, and the only One to whom such deference truly belongs.   What struck me about those two sentences was that they rhymed; and that, and their rhythm, made me realize that Mr. Wayne, in his impassioned eloquence, had risen to the level of poetry in striving to get his point across.   The resulting couplet, I thought, deserved to be given a title, and its own separate presentation outside of the d...