Philosophy Is Immortality

The child laughs: “My wisdom and love are the game”.

The youth sings: “My game and wisdom are the love”.

The old man is silent: “My love and game are the wisdom”.

Lucian Blaga, Poems

We used to say that it was not in our power to choose our parents, that they were given us by chance: but we, the philosophers, are allowed to be born as we wish. The most famous personalities form families: choose the one you want to be part of. You will receive both their praise and possessions that you will not have to keep them for your greed or pettiness. These will increase the more you share them more.

They will open you a path to eternity and raise you to a place where no one has collapsed. This is the only way to overcome the mortal state and even turn it into immortality.

Honors, monuments, all the verdicts given by the ambitions or all the works made by it are falling apart soon; anything can be ruined or collapsed by long ages. But to those whom wisdom consecrated, it cannot touch them anymore.

Therefore, the life of the wise man will take a long time. He is not closed in the same boundaries as the others. He alone is freed from the laws of mankind. All centuries obey him as a god.

Is it about a past time ? The wise man will include it through his memories. The present ? He uses it. How about the future, he already enjoys it. Uniting all these moments makes his life longer.

from Seneca, The Eulogy of Philosophy

#ambitions, #boundaries, #centuries, #chance, #child, #eternity, #families, #game, #greed, #honours, #immortality, #laws-of-mankind, #love, #lucian-blaga, #memories, #monuments, #mortal-state, #old-man, #parents, #past-time, #personalities, #pettiness, #philosopher, #philosophy, #possessions, #praise, #present, #verdicts, #wisdom, #wise-man, #works, #youth

Hopeless Philosophy

I separated myself from philosophy when it was impossible for me to discover at Kant any trace of human weakness or an authentic accent of sadness; at Kant and at all philosophers.

 In contrast to music, mysticism, poetry, philosophical activity shows a thin sap and a suspected depth which tempt only shy beings and executioners.

Essentially, the philosophy, as impersonal anxiety and refuge around some anemic ideas, is the appeal of all those who avoid the corrupting exuberance of life.

Almost all philosophers died well; this is the ultimate argument against philosophy. Even the end of Socrates had notihing tragic in it: it was  just a misunderstandig, being the end of a teacher. And if Nietzsche collapsed, he paid for his ecstasy of poet and visionary, and not for his reasoning.

We cannot ignore existence because of the explanations; we can only live it, love or hate it, adore it or fear because of it in that alternation of happiness and horror that expresses the rhythm of the being itself, oscillations, dissonances, its bitter or sweet vehemences.

Practicing philosophy is not profitable; it is just honorable. You don’t risk anything as a philosopher: philosophy is a job without destiny, it fills the neutral and free time with bulky thoughts… refractory time to the Old Testament, to Bach as well as to Shakespeare.

Have these thoughts of philosophy ever been at the level of Job’s exclamation of pain ? Can it compare to a fright in Macbeth or the height of a symphony ?

The universe is not discussed; it is expressed. And philosophy doesn’t express it. The real problems start after you’ve gone through or exhausted them, after the last chapter of a huge book in which the final dot is put as a sign of abdication in favor of the Unknown, Unknown in which all our moments are rooted and we must fight against it because it is more immediate, more important than our daily bread.

Here the philosopher leaves us: enemy of disaster, he is quiet and prudent as rationality. And we remain in the fellowship of an old plague, of a poet who knows all the deliriums, and a musician whose sublime goes beyond the sphere of the world.

We begin to really live only at the end of philosophy, on its ruins, when we understand its terrible futility and the fact that it’s a hopeless act to ask for its help, that it is useless.

Emil Cioran, Manual de descompunere

#adore, #anemic-ideas, #anxiety, #appeal, #argument, #corrupting, #deliriums, #ecstasy, #emil-cioran, #end, #executioners, #existence, #exuberance, #fear, #happiness, #hate, #help, #hopeless, #hopeless-act, #horror, #kant, #life, #love, #misunderstanding, #music, #mysticism, #nietzsche, #philosopher, #philosophical-activity, #philosophy, #poet, #poetry, #rationality, #reasoning, #refuge, #rhythm, #shy-beings, #socrates, #tragic, #unknown, #visionary

Memento

When the snow falls…

During the times brokes out

Pain for dead souls,

Although… these are past events !

 

When the snow falls…

Again, love that disappeared

Awakens lonly poets,

Although… these are past events !

 

When the snow falls…

 As on an unknown shore…

Again, I think she’s beautiful,

Although… these are past events !

George Bacovia, Memento

translated from Romanian by Marcel Rus

#beautiful, #dead-souls, #events, #lonly-poets, #love, #memento, #pain, #past, #shore, #snow, #times, #unknown

The Sense of Justice

There is within the souls of man an innate principle of justice and virtue on the basis of which, against our own convictions, we judge our actions and others as good or bad, and this principle is consciousness…

 If this were the subject here, I would try to show how the first voices of consciousness appear from the heart of man, and how from the feeling of love and hatred are born the notion of good and bad.

I would like to show that justice and kidness are not just abstract words, pure moral creations made by thought, but true feelings of the soul enlightened by rationality, that they are an orderly progression of our primary feelings.

I would like to show that only by rationality, independent of consciousness, it is not possible to establish any natural law, and that the entire natural right is just a chimera if it is not based on a natural necessity of the human soul.

Even the precept of behaving towards one another in the way we want from the other to behave towards us is based on consciousness and sentiment. Someone may ask where is the exact reason to behave as if he were another, knowing that he would not, morally, ever be in this case; and if he follows this principle, will this cause others to do the same ?

The villain makes profit from his own injustice and the honor of right man, and it’s easy for him that everyone is honest, excepting him. This agreement, whatever it is said, is not very advantageous for the right people. If I were him, it means that in order not to feel pain, I don’t want him to feel pain. I’m interested in him for love for me, and the basis of the precept is in the nature itself, which inspires me the desire of my well-being anywhere i would be.

Hence, it results that is not true that the laws of human nature would be based only on rationality, having a safer and more solid base. Love for people, coming from self-love, is the principle of human justice.

J. J. Rousseau, Emil, or On Education

#consciousness, #honest, #human-justice, #injustice, #justice, #love, #man, #natural-law, #natural-right, #principle, #rationality, #sense, #souls, #villan, #virtue

The Impossible Dream

To dream the impossible dream,

To fight the unbeatable foe,

To bear with unbearable sorrow,

To run where the brave dare not go,

 

To right the unrightable wrong

To love the unchaste from afar,

To try when your arms are too weary

To reach the unreachable star.

 

This is my quest

To follow that star

No matter how hopeless

No matter how far,

 

To fight for the right

Without wasting or pause

To be willing to aid and to help

For that heavenly cause

And I know if I only be true

To this glorious west

That my heart will be peaceful and calm

When I’m laid to my rest,

 

And the world will be better for this

That one man, scorned and covered with scars,

Still strove with his last ounce of courage

To fight the unbeatable foe,

To reach the unreachable star.

 Man of La Mancha

musical by Dale Wasserman

#brave, #dare, #fight, #foe, #hopeless, #impssible-dream, #love, #man-of-la-mancha, #quest, #right, #sorrow, #star, #wrong