Conviviality is a wicked lady who forcibly corrupts morals and indoctrinates into vice. The one who coexists buys this lady using his own freedom as currency. He becomes someone worse, for sure. In this, modern psychology is infallible: there is a veiled convivial agreement that implies actions which, if not fulfilled, generate individual and collective discomfort. Moral evolution requires a break from this agreement, because it consists of a reaction to worldly instinct. Virtue, although practiced in the world, can only be conceived in solitude.
Category: Notes
A Higher Conception of Existence
It seems necessary to the man who effectively overcomes the weaknesses of the flesh to support himself in a higher conception of existence, that is, to believe—and this is the word—in something that transcends concrete reality. Acting in this way, simple reason points to a scale of values that should serve as a guide, and by guiding on it, it is possible to act against the instincts—giving them their due importance.
Ah, If I Wanted to Be Part of a Club…
Ah, if I wanted to be part of a club, of a “school”, of a congregation! After becoming aware of Antero’s existence—whom I could even fantasize as a past existence, seeing how much I have catechized myself in these philosophies—I could easily take upon myself to “continue what he did not finish”, “rescuing” his “values”, searching for his disciples coeval to me, etc., etc. So, perhaps, I could never be Antero—someone who martyred himself by giving in to the relapses of that feeling which, for an unusual mind like his, must be exterminated for the sake of peace.
Antero de Quental and Cesare Pavese
In Cesare Pavese’s diary, suicide can be easily glimpsed since we find, first, the suicidal idea that appears repeatedly as a solution, and, second, temperamental oscillations that cloud the reason. In Antero de Quental, the picture is completely different. Antero is, among other things, a stoic—and this implies both the ability to accept reality and the ability to control himself. In Antero, despite the atrocious psychological conflict, we find reason taking the reins of instinct, and from this it follows that the spirit, accustomed to sharp oscillations, is also accustomed to converting them into fruitful impulses through meditation. How, at the age of forty-nine, could Antero commit suicide? On the one hand, it seems obvious to me that we are all subject to the susceptibilities of the race; on the other hand, it seems erroneous to want to attribute common causes to an uncommon man.