Roeser Blog's McCarthy Obit: Rest, Perturbed Spirit

Tom writes a good obit for a man he knew well.

There was one favorite quote he used when he spoke to the kids which stunned me. He would quote Plutarch: “They are wrong who think politics is like an ocean voyage or military campaign-something to be done with some particular end in view.” Repeat that to yourself as I did. What does it mean? It meant that McCarthy was telling us he was uncertain, a nihilist. The more I questioned him through the years the more I became convinced that for all his learning, he was a skeptic, that he was not far from believing like the Buddhists who hold the existence is not real but mere illusion with truth held as relative; maybe like Nietzsche that truth is a mere expedient of language, truth is nothing more than a cultural necessity.