One of the nice things about getting older is finally being able to appreciate philosophy. Like most people, I was taught some in college, but back then people were reading Nietsche (I know there is a "z" in there somewhere, just not sure where), Marx, Che Guevera, which I, to this day, consider garbage. I read Plato, of course, and a little Russell, and so forth. But, that was pretty much it. Unless you count people like Rousseau and John Stuart Mill and the authors of the Federalist Papers, which I consider to be politics, not philosophy.
Last year, an old friend of mine suggested I try Plutarch, and I liked it fine. Plutarch's essays on moral topics are as fine as anything I have read. His sense of virtue, of right and wrong, of right behavior, are completely consistent with what I believe, at least so far as I have seen in his essays, I may be surprised by something I have not read.
By the way, many Christians, as well as many Jews, do not ask God for help, do not, as Jim Morrison said, "petition the Lord with prayer." They believe it to be immoral, and ineffective. |
