Daily Inspiration Quote by Morris Raphael Cohen

Philosophers like to imagine they arrive at truth the way Euclid arrives at a theorem: clean, inevitable, unsullied by appetite. Cohen punctures that self-myth with a politely sharpened blade. The sting is in the mildness: "It is not impossible" reads like a courteous concession, but it licenses a devastating claim about motivated reasoning. Even professional thinkers, he suggests, are "other mortals" first. Their ideas often begin as commitments formed by temperament, class, training, rivalries, or the historical weather of a moment; arguments come later as the respectable clothing.

The line works because it reframes rationality from a pure engine into a post-hoc narrator. Once someone is "determined by diverse circumstances", the search for reasons becomes less discovery than procurement. "Naturally find" is doing heavy lifting: it implies the world is full of arguments if you already know what you want to conclude. Philosophy, in this view, is especially vulnerable because it deals in big, underdetermined questions where evidence can be made to fit and where elegance can masquerade as inevitability.

Cohen is writing in an era when grand systems were still tempting and ideological certainties were hardening between wars. His warning lands as both psychological realism and institutional critique: reverence for "the philosopher" can function as a shield against scrutiny. The subtext isn't anti-reason; it's pro-honesty about how reasoning actually moves. If your premises were recruited by circumstance, the ethical task is to interrogate the recruitment, not just polish the justification.