Tag: philosophy

Change can be better understood when we think not of “change,” but of the death of one state for the birth of a new one. When something changes, what was ceases to be and gives way to something different, either better or worse. The previous state, however, becomes the past. Thus, it is wise to be cautious whenever one thinks of changing something that pleases or satisfies. To change something good is to destroy it, and the result of the change will not always be able to satisfy.

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.

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.