This Frustrated Longing for Isolation…

It is hard to say, but this frustrated longing for isolation, which has to be accepted as unfeasible and fought over in an apparently hostile daily life, seems more beneficial to the artist than actual, full and consummate isolation. In the first case, we have a spirit energized by circumstance; in the second, an incentive to inertia. In the first case, an effort that renews and justifies the longing, which makes the artist value isolation much more when it is partially achieved—because this is the truth: his longing, at worst, can always be partially achieved, and to better advantage than one might suppose.

There Are Things That Can Only Be Learned…

There are things that can only be learned by giving in, and things that can only be learned by working in the interests of others, things whose value has increased enormously since they are so rare in modern times. Better than learning them, however, is remembering them through practice, overcoming the trap of understanding a poor reality by understanding it only in the part that is around the self.

Ortega y Gasset’s Approach to the Problem…

Ortega y Gasset’s approach to the problem of circumstance is one of the most lucid shots in modern philosophy. That is: the notion that there is no need to rebel against it, but rather to integrate it, or at least make a continuous effort to integrate it into the personality, something that can only be achieved by learning what it has to teach. This problem, in fact, has intensified as the turning of the eyes inwards has become popular, an act that, if radicalized, ends up repudiating external reality. It turns out that this repudiation never achieves the desired effects, resulting only in disturbances and conflicts with no solution other than the acceptance that circumstance is always an inalienable element of being.