The Victory of Thought

Philosophy is the effort to light, the aspiration to last or supreme clarity because it is heading towards generalizing notions through which science and consciousness, theory and practice, world and life are unified or totalized.

Philosophy is not just an analytical research of fundamental notions or principles, but it is also the most lacking bias or predetermination research.

“What abstraction and removal of life and concrete !”, it will be said. On the contrary, we have the right to say that we are closest to life. I believe that the successful act, the winning action knows to combine the attachment and detachment of the real, the concrete attention and the passion for the sensitive things.

Our ability to dethrone ourselves from reality, to rise above the concrete allows us to create an “internal immunity” that shelters us from the blows of reality and of disappointment and failure.

Exclusive attachment of real, slavery for sensitive-material data are a mortal danger for active life and lead to exhaustion of interest in things, to tired of attention, to disgust for reality and, ultimately, to despair or, more seriously, to absorbtion in small but imperative realities until brutalization and fall below human level.

To avoid this fall man needs a revival, a refreshment of powers, a recharge of depleted or degraded energies in his struggle with physical realities. Except for the use of physiological sleep, most people get this energy recharge through the so-called “fun” of all kinds where art takes a special place.

But the fun is ephemeral, and by accumulation leads to annoyance of the will and spiritual imbalance. A safer way opens through which we can free ourselves from the spell of reality and obtain a lasting immunity: it is the will to rise over the parts and reach the springs of the world, to Unity and Totality. The orientation towards Unity and Totality is the pathos of philosophy, the dream of supreme clarity…

In the calculation of the conjuncture, the one who struggles for the triumph of an idea must take into account the possibility of defeat, immunizing himself against failure and discovering a last refuge.

“The thought was victorious”, the chronicler said. The victory of thought often comes after the defeat of the thinker or after a long and systematic ignorance of his efforts. The triumph of the idea is often paid by the martyrdom of its thinker.

from Mircea Florian, Misticism și credință