When one follows the recommendation of Ortega y Gasset, Viktor Frankl and Louis Lavelle, who, from different perspectives, emphasize the importance of seeking to integrate individual circumstances into the plane of existence, the act certainly acquires an extraordinary solidity and life becomes more serious. But there is an unavoidable problem here: sometimes the circumstance is so miserable and depressing that its assimilation is dangerous. That is to say: he who wants to look at and understand raw reality, if taken by this sense of responsibility towards the circumstance, can never do so as a detached and impartial observer. What he calls to himself is what he suffers, what he seeks to integrate is what hinders, pressures and depresses him. What he does is the opposite of the rational path of detachment, and this task is never undertaken without leaving deep marks on the character. The result may not be good…
Tag: philosophy
Discomfort Chases Away Futility…
Discomfort chases away futility with such absolute effectiveness that its arrival often proves to be providential. Without it, how many enterprises would have been neglected, how many decisions would never have been made, how many biographies would no longer exist? So we have to value it as a motivating element, rather than giving in to the more common impulse to complain. When we look at their works, both in abundance and quality, discomfort completely overwhelms comfort.
If What Distinguishes Being Is the Act…
If what distinguishes being is the act, and what characterizes the act is the choice, it is necessary to repeat a thousand times that the individual always becomes the choices he makes, and that wisdom comes down to knowing how to choose. The problem is that choice, as a unifying element, is less a decision than a perennial practice, so that without this continuity, it would fall apart and even become null and void. Choosing, therefore, involves deciding and sticking to the decision.
There Is No Denying That, Despite Everything…
There is no denying that, despite everything that can be said about the conclusions drawn by Hegel, his understanding of the component and guiding processes of reality, in other words his dialectic, is one of impressive lucidity and acuity. Because wherever we turn our eyes, an in-depth examination will show that an effective historical action will necessarily give rise to its antithesis and have a result that is different from its intention. This dynamic, which is sometimes very difficult to understand, remarkably equates the fatal presence of the unpredictable, and forces us to always keep it in mind in any process. Getting used to the ambiguous and the complex is, in short, getting closer to reality.