All this affliction experienced by the serious writer could be mitigated if it were possible for him to promise and deceive himself, with each new work, that after completing it he would stop writing. Therefore, to see the present work as the last, always. Thus, the illusion of later relief would give strength so that the very painful work of the moment would not afflict, but rather motivate, because it is the last of a spirit that is one step away from rest. Unfortunately, this is not possible. What is possible is to see in dismay how much one still has to do, is to feel imprisoned by duty, obliged to force lines that refuse to come out, and then to fry oneself in a terrible process in which the satisfaction is strange and the result is always the same affliction.
Category: Notes
Detaching From the World Does Not Mean…
Detaching from the world does not mean to annul any worldly expectations, but to adopt an impassive posture before what happens. To expect that a good action will bear good fruit is natural and even stimulating; to plan and act according to a plan in the hope that it will be successful is, at the same time, to value time and one’s own being. Quite different is the case of the one whose expectations neither stimulate nor dignify the act, and whose existence is reduced to an uncontrolled yearning that has in the world, and not in the act, the parameters for its own realization.
It Would Certainly Be Interesting Today for Philosophy…
If not always, it would certainly be interesting today for philosophy to return to its beginnings as an antidote to its own misrepresentation. To teach it, it would be better to pretend that nothing was ever written down and expound concepts as if they were being taught for the first time. The teacher would then teach in the open air with the pupils sitting in a circle, and when he said “act”, he would show precisely the meaning of this word, so that, for the rest of their lives, the disciples would have in mind the actual act witnessed, and would not give in to the temptation to apply this word in a sense that was detached from the one the teacher made them witness. And so for all the important words. It is always profitable to secure the knowledge of a patent reality to which one must turn one’s eyes and without which reasoning is a waste.
The Emptying of the Meaning of Words
It is amusing to observe that, in some philosophers, we can witness the emptying of the meaning of words as we read them, or rather, the words, as they turn the pages, cease to mean what the dictionary defines them to fulfill the function of subjective concepts, which are worked on as if they were toys in an imaginary playground. There comes a moment in which we witness constructions that would be impossible if the words were used as they are, and then we realize, first, that the philosopher has distorted them, and second, that his philosophy has nothing to teach us about the real world.