Arquivo de philosophy | Page 108 of 121

The Fate of the Intellectual

The intellectual must be unpredictable, or he will not be worthy of the epithet. If the reader, in contact with the title of a work or a chronicle, can predict its content, then the author will be dead, plunged into disinterest. I say the obvious, is to confront the examples… Single-subject chroniclers remain, novelists with blinkers are majority. And if they achieve, these or those, the desired effects ever, the insistence only exposes their limitations. The intellectual must be dynamic, varied, unpredictable and comprehensive; otherwise, he should stop speaking…

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The Great Human Problem Is Whether or Not There is Purpose

The great human problem is the problem of meaning, whether or not there is purpose. And it is not human life and work but the answer. This simple question surpasses all others, it goes through reality in the most intimate details. When all seems well, when fortune decides to show its whip, the problem remains evident, always waiting for an answer: for what? Thinking about it we have, therefore, the necessary tool to measure our dimension, to evaluate our existence and to decide, alone, what we should or should not do.

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Inspiration: Conscious Brain Stimulation

I read somewhere, a few years ago, a psychologist said that Bertrand Russell used an interesting process when he was involved in complex problems. It would be more or less as follows: Russell thought, with maximum concentration and strength of mind, on the particular problem; he outlined the possible solutions, dismembered them into minor issues, formulated various hypotheses and tried to find, in all, the possible flaws. The question occupied him entirely for hours, sometimes days, and then, when he felt exhausted, he did not publish, nor executed the final wording of his conclusions: he abandoned the problem and let him rest, occupying his mind with anything else. Then, after a few days, weeks or months, suddenly the mind pointed the solution, which came as a violent avalanche, and so Russell sat down to write. What would that be, inspiration? If that is the word, then it is necessary to add that there is nothing divine, fantastic, or superhuman about it. What is there is method, conscious brain stimulation. And if the brain, therefore, sometimes does not deliver an immediate response, it does not mean that it does not work, or that it is not working. In the same way, when it decides to boil at an inopportune moment, it is not doing any kind of magic or exhibiting supernatural powers…

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The Unbearable “I”

I hope, if not in these notes, I will never speak that unbearable word — “I” — in the first person. I find it funny how, still here and just now, I combine the verbs in the first person repetitively, when none other than myself have categorical disgust for this modern obsession with one’s own being and consider myself the most insignificant singularity of the whole universe. However, here are the justifications and the confession: (1) the “I”, in these notes, will never be but a low-lying expressive appeal, when the object of these lines is entirely another — confessing, I hope to expel the intrusive word; — (2) if one day, and I beg it not to happen, but if one day the “I” take the opposite path and start to occupy the center of these notes, then I will have exhausted myself as an artist and as an explorer of issues that go beyond my petty reality. Let’s see what will happen…

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