from the Westender, January 23 – 29, 2014
rant/rave (a weekly, and delightful, feature):
“Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off,
and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.
But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t
be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” — The Velveteen Rabbit
Richard
“If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if thou shouldst be bound to give it back immediately; if thou holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.”
“Meditations“, Book 3, 12
_________
the idea of the virtuous man, or the
interpretation of Marcus Aurelius of
such a person, goes back of course to
Socrates by way of Plato, 427 – 347
B.C., who’s ideal was primarily
political, what to achieve within a
political order, rather than a private
meditation, an advice rather than
a contemplation as in Marcus
Aurelius, 121 – 180 A.D., 550,
not inconsequential, years later
other moral perspectives meanwhile
applied, Epicureanism, for instance,
notably, after which the stranglehold
of Christianity produced not philosophy
but dogma, for a subservient and,
biblically labeled, fallen people,
nearly fifteen hundred years spent
trying to figure out how many angels
fit through the eye of a needle,
essentially, how many irrationalities
could prove the existence, and
authority, of a mandated God
René Descartes inadvertently in this
very quest, but not before 1637, put
an end to that, introduced a new, and
revolutionary, perspective, “I think,
therefore I am“, which put the individual
instead of the Church in the driver’s seat,
this, if it didn’t bring on the Renaissance,
at least gave it a significant push
but because of his famous scientific
method, studies afterwards in what
we now know as the humanities
became more empirical than
specifically moral, how do we
perceive rather than how do we live
according to what is right or wrong,
Nietzsche‘s “Beyond Good and Evil“,
1886, reoriented that investigation,
as it happened, ominously, in an age
where any kind of god had become
irrelevant, Beethoven would be
transformed into a Hitler, an
uncomfortably fateful Übermensch,
Superman
now philosophy is concerned with
language, what do we mean when
we say what do we mean, and can
anybody understand that
our closest moralist, our modern day
Marcus Aurelius, is at present Miss
Manners, whom I wholeheartedly
recommend
as well as, of course, Marcus Aurelius
Richard
psst: Miss Manners‘ question and answer
format, incidentally, is not at all unlike
what Plato does in his Socratic dialogues,
she just has a larger, more flip audience
“Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him, For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away.”
“Meditations“, Book 2, 1
____________
Marcus Aurelius was an emperor, he ruled
Rome for just under 20 years, from 161 to
180 A.D., a highly unlikely fount of
philosophical inspiration, do potentates
think this way, for instance, nowadays
meanwhile the advice above is not a
bad way to start any day, I think, even
for impotentates
respectfully
Richard
psst: “Remember that all is opinion.”,
Book 2, paragraph 15, also one of my
favourite ruminations
for all I‘m apparently therefore worth
“From Rusticus I received the impression that my character required improvement and discipline; and from him I learned not to be led astray to sophistic emulation, nor to writing on speculative matters, nor to delivering little hortatory orations, nor to showing myself off as a man who practises much discipline, or does benevolent acts in order to make a display; and to abstain from rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing; and not to walk about in the house in my outdoor dress, nor to do other things of the kind; and to write my letters with simplicity, like the letter which Rusticus wrote from Sinuessa to my mother; and with respect to those who have offended me by words, or done me wrong, to be easily disposed to be pacified and reconciled, as soon as they have shown a readiness to be reconciled; and to read carefully, and not to be satisfied with a superficial understanding of a book; nor hastily to give my assent to those who talk overmuch; and I am indebted to him for being acquainted with the discourses of Epictetus, which he communicated to me out of his own collection.”
Meditations, Book l, 7
______________
recently a website caught my attention
with news of a shared interest in things
of, to my mind, significance, a guide to
a moral life
Marcus Aurelius, an emperor, 121 – 180
A.D., along with Epictetus, 55 -135 A.D.,
a slave, are probably the only two
philosophers we know today specifically
devoted to that profoundly noble
intention
the juxtaposition of states here, from
the imperial to the abject, is instructive,
if not even inspiring
both from their divergent positions
proposed a considered life, of probity
and tolerance, what more do we
need of philosophy, fundamentally,
than that
above is an excerpt from Book l, others
will follow
Richard
psst: I found it hard not to imagine here
Laertes responding to Polonius in
“Hamlet”, Act l, scene l, lines 55 – 80,
nor Rudyard Kipling’s son responding
to his father’s poem, “If“, with its
famous, indeed timeless, exhortation,
“… you’ll be a Man, my son!”
daughters should also participate
why I write, just click
the information that either music or
art deliver isn’t intellectual, in the
sense that it isn’t driven by any
discernible logic
it’s a logic of the heart, which follows
other, inscrutable, principles
“Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison
ne connaît point.”, the heart has its
reasons which reason can never
ever fathom – Blaise Pascal
therefore art
Richard
“Madonna and Child with Canon Joris van der Paele”
(1436)
_______
you’ll become engrossed in this clock,
be mesmerized for minutes, watch the
numbers roll, the provocative statistics
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