New
Oct 28, 9:10 AM
#1
What argument do you find to be the most beautiful piece of philosophy? How does this argument resonate with your understanding of truth, meaning, or the nature of existence? In what ways does it challenge or affirm your beliefs about human nature and our place in the universe? Considering this argument, how do you see its implications for understanding concepts like freedom, responsibility, or happiness? Are there particular philosophical traditions or thinkers that resonate with this idea, and how do they enrich its meaning for you? Finally, what personal reflections or transformative moments have you experienced in relation to this argument, and how do you think it shapes your vision for a more compassionate or enlightened future? |
Mao said: If you have to shit, shit! If you have to fart, fart! |
Oct 29, 1:20 PM
#3
It is be what it is be. If it is then it is and if it isn't than it isn't. |
Oct 29, 1:59 PM
#4
The most beautiful I dare not speak of in a public space, but one that has really stuck out to me for a while is the Platonist formulation of the transposition of our personal unity and worldly unity via the One, i.e. "God". Best encapsulated in Olympiodorus' commentary on Plato's First Alcibiades, the basic point is that our sense of self is (naturally) unitary and that this is a holographic refraction of the unity that the world itself possesses: your perception is phenomenologically the most "real" thing you have, you can affirm it in every moment, and it informs something which is greater than the sum of its parts - it seems to flow and be stationary all the same, it can affirm itself by contemplating itself dialectically ("reversion"), until the line between subject and object blurs into that which is merely and abstractly "one". You do not just appear as discrete, but seem to fundamentally exist discretely, at least as far as you are concerned. We are granted this through the ontological emanation of reality itself, like surfaces in a kaleidoscopic network we all "participate" in the larger "one-ness" that the entire world possesses, itself ultimately reverting and contemplating its components also. The "solar seed", the aspect of divinity, that each conscious thing has is this ability to experience a sense of unity; initially through self-reference and affirmation, and eventually the affirmation of the entire world. This is the most general thing that could be said about any one thing and also about all things at once: that it is one. It is a difficult argument to lay out without an understanding of the larger Platonic answer to the problem of universals. I doubt I did a satisfactory job and probably raised more questions than I answered. The implication of this argument is that we are makers of our experience of reality insofar as we accord ourselves with the universal law which grants us this ability: unity itself. We succeed when we master the cycles of nature until we can condense them; what was once rushing to and fro becomes stationary to us. An aberration of an aspect of our experience suddenly comes into harmony with all else we feel, and that part of life becomes complete, it becomes one. |
Oct 29, 7:30 PM
#5
I only rarely look outside the club I'm part of, and the last time I did I said this on a thread someone started about whether morality is objective: auroraloose said: Lol, we may be anime fans, but who would eat from this trash can? There is no universe or system in which doing so isn't sad, thus the transcendental argument for morality from anime trash has apodictic certainty. So I was about to say something of a similar "My dude, this is MAL" variety, but—then somebody actually had something real and competent to say about Plato's Dialogues? And I'm really only a hack who read a bunch of postmodernism. So I walked over to my bookshelves, looked over the philosophy bits, and concluded I had to go with this: And yet, and yet the whole earthly form he presents is a new creation on the strength of the absurd. He resigned everything infinitely, and then took everything back on the strength of the absurd. He is continually making the movement of infinity, but he makes it with such accuracy and poise that he is continually getting finitude out of it, and not for a second would one suspect anything else. It is said that the dancer's hardest task is to leap straight into a definite position, so that not for a second does he have to catch at the position but stands there in it in the leap itself. Perhaps no dancer can do it—but that knight does it. The mass of humans live disheartened lives of earthly sorrow and joy, these are the sitters-out who will not join in the dance. The knights of infinity are dancers too and they have elevation. They make the upward movement and fall down again, and this too is no unhappy pastime, nor ungracious to behold. But when they come down they cannot assume the position straightaway, they waver an instant and the wavering shows they are nevertheless strangers in the world. This may be more or less evident, depending on their skill, but even the most skilled of these knights cannot hide the vacillation. One doesn't need to see them in the air, one only has to see them the moment they come and have come to earth to recognize them. But to be able to land in just that way, and in the same second to look as though one was up and walking, to transform the leap in life to a gait, to express the sublime in the pedestrian absolutely—that is something only the knight of faith can do—and it is the one and only marvel. —Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling I feel compelled to add several more paragraphs for clarification, but I'll spoiler it: [...] So the knight will remember everything: but the memory is precisely the pain, and yet in his infinite resignation he is reconciled with existence. His love for the princess would take on for him the expression of an eternal love, would acquire a religious character, be transfigured into a love for the eternal being which, although it denied fulfilment, still reconciled him once more in the eternal consciousness of his love's validity in an eternal form that no reality can take from him. Fools and young people talk about everything being possible for a human being. But that is a great mistake. Everything is possible spiritually speaking, but in the finite world there is much that is not possible. This impossibility the knight nevertheless makes possible by his expressing it spiritually, but he expresses it spiritually by renouncing it. The desire which would convey him out into reality, but came to grief on an impossibility, now bends inwards but is not lost thereby nor forgotten. ... He pays no further finite attention to what the princess does, and just this proves that he has made the movement infinitely. Here we have the opportunity to see whether the movement in the individual is proper or not. There was a person who also believed he had made the movement, but time went by, the princess did something else, she married, say, a prince, and his soul lost the resilience of resignation. He knew then that he had not made the movement correctly; for one who has infinitely resigned is enough unto himself. [...] Let us now have the knight of faith make his appearance in the case discussed. He does exactly the same as the other knight, he infinitely renounces the claim to the love which is the content of his life; he is reconciled in pain; but then comes the marvel, he makes one more movement, more wonderful than anything else, for he says: 'I nevertheless believe that I shall get her, namely on the strength of the absurd, on the strength of the fact that for God all things are possible.' The absurd is not one distinction among others embraced by understanding. It is not the same as the improbable, the unexpected, the unforeseen. The moment the knight resigned he was convinced of the impossibility, humanly speaking; that was a conclusion of the understanding, and he had energy enough to think it. In an infinite sense, however, it was possible, through renouncing it [as a finite possibility]; but then accepting that [possibility] is at the same time to have given it up, yet for the understanding there is no absurdity in possessing it, for it is only in the finite world that understanding rules and there it was and remains an impossibility. On this the knight of faith is just as clear: all that can save him is the absurd; and this he grasps by faith. Accordingly at the same time he admits the impossibility and at the same time believes the absurd; for were he to suppose that he had faith without recognizing the impossibility with all the passion of his soul and with all his heart, he would be deceiving himself, and his testimony would carry weight nowhere, since he would not even have come as far as infinite resignation. [...] A man can still, in that last moment, concentrate his whole soul in a single glance towards the heaven from which all good gifts come, and this glance is something both he and the one he seeks understand; it means he has nevertheless remained true to his love. Then he will calmly put on the costume. He who lacks this romanticism has sold his soul, whether he received a kingdom for it or a paltry piece of silver. But by my own strength I cannot get the least little thing of what belongs to finitude; for I am continually using my energy to renounce everything. by my own strength I can give up the princess, and I shall be no sulker but find joy and peace and repose in my pain, but with my own strength I cannot get her back again, for all that strength is precisely what I use to renounce my claim on her. But by faith, says that marvellous knight, by faith you will get her on the strength of the absurd. Alas, this movement is one I cannot make! As soon as I want to begin it everything turns around and I flee back to the pain of resignation. I can swim in life, but for this mysterious floating I am too heavy. To exist in such a way that my opposition to existence expresses itself every instant as the most beautiful and safest harmony, that I cannot. And yet it must be glorious to get the princess, I say so every instant and the knight of resignation who doesn't say it is a deceiver, he has not had just one desire and he has not kept his desire young in its pain. ... and yet it is only the knight of faith who is happy, only he is heir apparent to the finite, whereas the knight of resignation is a stranger, a foreigner. To get the princess in this way, to live in joy and happiness, in her company day in and day out—we have to allow, of course, that the knight of resignation, too, may get the princess, even though he has clearly perceived the impossibility of their future happiness—thus to live joyfully and happily in this way every moment on the strength of the absurd, every moment to see the sword hanging over the loved one's head and yet find, not repose in the pain of resignation, but joy on the strength of the absurd—that is wonderful. The one who does that, he is great, the only great one, the thought of it stirs my soul, which was never sparing in its admiration of greatness. (Søren Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985.) Kierkegaard was one of the first major existentialists. and because of that these days popular Christian theology tends to disparage him as some kind of relativist whiner. Such an attitude does not understand the doctrine of sin, and definitely has never experienced real despair. But to move on to other existentialists, Nietzsche was not a nihilist; he saw that (whatever one believes is actually true) as a civilizational ordering God was indeed dead, and he strove to come up with something that could prevent humanity from succumbing to the kind of meaninglessness Dostoyevsky described in his novels. And thus it was the absurd, the ubermensch, Sisyphus happy—an ordering, or at least a conception, of the world not rationally possible, beyond human—that they had faith in. Lol, what have I done: In my bookshelf scan I forgot about my copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, because I had it set elsewhere: Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing:—the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth. Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and famished; and cruelty was the delight of that soul! But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency? Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure. Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your great contempt be submerged. What is the greatest thing ye can experience? It is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becometh loathsome unto you, and so also your reason and virtue. The hour when ye say: “What good is my happiness! It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should justify existence itself!” The hour when ye say: “What good is my reason! Doth it long for knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!” The hour when ye say: “What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!” The hour when ye say: “What good is my justice! I do not see that I am fervour and fuel. The just, however, are fervour and fuel!” The hour when we say: “What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a crucifixion.” Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had heard you crying thus! It is not your sin—it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven! Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which ye should be inoculated? Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy! These are not arguments for finding meaning in whatever you like, in the Lovecraftian "holocaust of ecstasy and freedom"; Kierkegaard urged man not to be slaves to simple passions, and Nietzsche similarly despised the Last Men who, believing the world to be meaningless, seek power in practical and technical control of others. I still choose Kierkegaard's knight of faith as my most beautiful piece of philosophy (for the purposes of this thread; I don't dare claim philosophical definitiveness for my choice). Fear and Trembling isn't as easily quotable as Nietzsche and so seems much more dry here, but it's definitely not if you read the whole book. Anyway, as for relevance, I present Exhibit A: It is Kierkegaard that is the key to Gurren Lagann. This is why BestGuyEver is dangerously wrong in his interpretation of the ending, ultimately shackling the absurd to a sad compromise that would have Simon fail even to be one of Kierkegaard's knights of infinite resignation. And then there is Exhibit B: Kyoko was not more mature than Sayaka. She is, in Kierkegaard's formulation, the slave, who couldn't hold on to justice seeing its difficulty. Sayaka is the knight of infinite resignation, knowing she is going to suffer—and literally giving up the guy, precisely as Kierkegaard has the knight of infinite resignation retain his love for the princess but give up having her. This makes even Homura inferior to Sayaka; even though she drove herself crazy suffering, Homura couldn't make the movement of resignation, actually giving up. Of course, Madoka is the knight of faith, but as Kierkegaard says, who can make that movement? Homura we can understand, Sayaka was truly heroic; though in the end a slave, Kyoko we can also understand and respect, as who wants to suffer trying to do something impossible? But to say that something's impossible, do it knowing full well it's impossible, and to do it anyway because you kick logic to the curb and literally break the universe; Puella Magi Madoka Magica's basically perfect representation of Fear and Trembling is what makes me go back and forth as to whether it or Gurren Lagann is the best anime ever. EDIT: I see I didn't answer the follow-up questions about the argument I chose. I've already gone through a lot, though. Suffice it to say that I am a Christian. ANOTHER EDIT: Just finished Googling PMMM and Kierkegaard together. At least a few people understand that Puella Magi Madoka Magica is not a deconstruction (there's no aporia, duh); nobody understands the Kierkegaard connection. |
auroralooseYesterday, 2:34 PM
"He who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short." —Arthur Schopenhauer |
Yesterday, 7:00 AM
#6
Reply to auroraloose
I only rarely look outside the club I'm part of, and the last time I did I said this on a thread someone started about whether morality is objective:
So I was about to say something of a similar "My dude, this is MAL" variety, but—then somebody actually had something real and competent to say about Plato's Dialogues? And I'm really only a hack who read a bunch of postmodernism. So I walked over to my bookshelves, looked over the philosophy bits, and concluded I had to go with this:
I feel compelled to add several more paragraphs for clarification, but I'll spoiler it:
Kierkegaard was one of the first major existentialists. and because of that these days popular Christian theology tends to disparage him as some kind of relativist whiner. Such an attitude does not understand the doctrine of sin, and definitely has never experienced real despair. But to move on to other existentialists, Nietzsche was not a nihilist; he saw that (whatever one believes is actually true) as a civilizational ordering God was indeed dead, and he strove to come up with something that could prevent humanity from succumbing to the kind of meaninglessness Dostoyevsky described in his novels. And thus it was the absurd, the ubermensch, Sisyphus happy—an ordering, or at least a conception, of the world not rationally possible, beyond human—that they had faith in.
Lol, what have I done: In my bookshelf scan I forgot about my copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, because I had it set elsewhere:
These are not arguments for finding meaning in whatever you like, in the Lovecraftian "holocaust of ecstasy and freedom"; Kierkegaard urged man not to be slaves to simple passions, and Nietzsche similarly despised the Last Men who, believing the world to be meaningless, seek power in practical and technical control of others. I still choose Kierkegaard's knight of faith as my most beautiful piece of philosophy (for the purposes of this thread; I don't dare claim philosophical definitiveness for my choice). Fear and Trembling isn't as easily quotable as Nietzsche and so seems much more dry here, but it's definitely not if you read the whole book.
Anyway, as for relevance, I present Exhibit A:
It is Kierkegaard that is the key to Gurren Lagann. This is why BestGuyEver is dangerously wrong in his interpretation of the ending, ultimately shackling the absurd to a sad compromise that would have Simon fail even to be one of Kierkegaard's knights of infinite resignation.
And then there is Exhibit B:
Kyoko was not more mature than Sayaka. She is, in Kierkegaard's formulation, the slave, who couldn't hold on to justice seeing its difficulty. Sayaka is the knight of infinite resignation, knowing she is going to suffer—and
literally giving up the guy, precisely as Kierkegaard has the knight of infinite resignation retain his love for the princess but give up having her.
This makes even Homura inferior to Sayaka; even though she drove herself crazy suffering, Homura couldn't make the movement of resignation, actually giving up. Of course, Madoka is the knight of faith, but as Kierkegaard says, who can make that movement? Homura we can understand, Sayaka was truly heroic; though in the end a slave, Kyoko we can also understand and respect, as who wants to suffer trying to do something impossible? But to say that something's impossible, do it knowing full well it's impossible, and to do it anyway because you kick logic to the curb and literally break the universe; Puella Magi Madoka Magica's basically perfect representation of Fear and Trembling is what makes me go back and forth as to whether it or Gurren Lagann is the best anime ever.
EDIT: I see I didn't answer the follow-up questions about the argument I chose. I've already gone through a lot, though. Suffice it to say that I am a Christian.
ANOTHER EDIT: Just finished Googling PMMM and Kierkegaard together. At least a few people understand that Puella Magi Madoka Magica is not a deconstruction (there's no aporia, duh); nobody understands the Kierkegaard connection.
auroraloose said:
Lol, we may be anime fans, but who would eat from this trash can? There is no universe or system in which doing so isn't sad, thus the transcendental argument for morality from anime trash has apodictic certainty.
Lol, we may be anime fans, but who would eat from this trash can? There is no universe or system in which doing so isn't sad, thus the transcendental argument for morality from anime trash has apodictic certainty.
So I was about to say something of a similar "My dude, this is MAL" variety, but—then somebody actually had something real and competent to say about Plato's Dialogues? And I'm really only a hack who read a bunch of postmodernism. So I walked over to my bookshelves, looked over the philosophy bits, and concluded I had to go with this:
And yet, and yet the whole earthly form he presents is a new creation on the strength of the absurd. He resigned everything infinitely, and then took everything back on the strength of the absurd. He is continually making the movement of infinity, but he makes it with such accuracy and poise that he is continually getting finitude out of it, and not for a second would one suspect anything else. It is said that the dancer's hardest task is to leap straight into a definite position, so that not for a second does he have to catch at the position but stands there in it in the leap itself. Perhaps no dancer can do it—but that knight does it. The mass of humans live disheartened lives of earthly sorrow and joy, these are the sitters-out who will not join in the dance. The knights of infinity are dancers too and they have elevation. They make the upward movement and fall down again, and this too is no unhappy pastime, nor ungracious to behold. But when they come down they cannot assume the position straightaway, they waver an instant and the wavering shows they are nevertheless strangers in the world. This may be more or less evident, depending on their skill, but even the most skilled of these knights cannot hide the vacillation. One doesn't need to see them in the air, one only has to see them the moment they come and have come to earth to recognize them. But to be able to land in just that way, and in the same second to look as though one was up and walking, to transform the leap in life to a gait, to express the sublime in the pedestrian absolutely—that is something only the knight of faith can do—and it is the one and only marvel.
—Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
—Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
I feel compelled to add several more paragraphs for clarification, but I'll spoiler it:
[...]
So the knight will remember everything: but the memory is precisely the pain, and yet in his infinite resignation he is reconciled with existence. His love for the princess would take on for him the expression of an eternal love, would acquire a religious character, be transfigured into a love for the eternal being which, although it denied fulfilment, still reconciled him once more in the eternal consciousness of his love's validity in an eternal form that no reality can take from him. Fools and young people talk about everything being possible for a human being. But that is a great mistake. Everything is possible spiritually speaking, but in the finite world there is much that is not possible. This impossibility the knight nevertheless makes possible by his expressing it spiritually, but he expresses it spiritually by renouncing it. The desire which would convey him out into reality, but came to grief on an impossibility, now bends inwards but is not lost thereby nor forgotten. ... He pays no further finite attention to what the princess does, and just this proves that he has made the movement infinitely. Here we have the opportunity to see whether the movement in the individual is proper or not. There was a person who also believed he had made the movement, but time went by, the princess did something else, she married, say, a prince, and his soul lost the resilience of resignation. He knew then that he had not made the movement correctly; for one who has infinitely resigned is enough unto himself.
[...]
Let us now have the knight of faith make his appearance in the case discussed. He does exactly the same as the other knight, he infinitely renounces the claim to the love which is the content of his life; he is reconciled in pain; but then comes the marvel, he makes one more movement, more wonderful than anything else, for he says: 'I nevertheless believe that I shall get her, namely on the strength of the absurd, on the strength of the fact that for God all things are possible.' The absurd is not one distinction among others embraced by understanding. It is not the same as the improbable, the unexpected, the unforeseen. The moment the knight resigned he was convinced of the impossibility, humanly speaking; that was a conclusion of the understanding, and he had energy enough to think it. In an infinite sense, however, it was possible, through renouncing it [as a finite possibility]; but then accepting that [possibility] is at the same time to have given it up, yet for the understanding there is no absurdity in possessing it, for it is only in the finite world that understanding rules and there it was and remains an impossibility. On this the knight of faith is just as clear: all that can save him is the absurd; and this he grasps by faith. Accordingly at the same time he admits the impossibility and at the same time believes the absurd; for were he to suppose that he had faith without recognizing the impossibility with all the passion of his soul and with all his heart, he would be deceiving himself, and his testimony would carry weight nowhere, since he would not even have come as far as infinite resignation.
[...]
A man can still, in that last moment, concentrate his whole soul in a single glance towards the heaven from which all good gifts come, and this glance is something both he and the one he seeks understand; it means he has nevertheless remained true to his love. Then he will calmly put on the costume. He who lacks this romanticism has sold his soul, whether he received a kingdom for it or a paltry piece of silver. But by my own strength I cannot get the least little thing of what belongs to finitude; for I am continually using my energy to renounce everything. by my own strength I can give up the princess, and I shall be no sulker but find joy and peace and repose in my pain, but with my own strength I cannot get her back again, for all that strength is precisely what I use to renounce my claim on her. But by faith, says that marvellous knight, by faith you will get her on the strength of the absurd.
Alas, this movement is one I cannot make! As soon as I want to begin it everything turns around and I flee back to the pain of resignation. I can swim in life, but for this mysterious floating I am too heavy. To exist in such a way that my opposition to existence expresses itself every instant as the most beautiful and safest harmony, that I cannot. And yet it must be glorious to get the princess, I say so every instant and the knight of resignation who doesn't say it is a deceiver, he has not had just one desire and he has not kept his desire young in its pain. ... and yet it is only the knight of faith who is happy, only he is heir apparent to the finite, whereas the knight of resignation is a stranger, a foreigner. To get the princess in this way, to live in joy and happiness, in her company day in and day out—we have to allow, of course, that the knight of resignation, too, may get the princess, even though he has clearly perceived the impossibility of their future happiness—thus to live joyfully and happily in this way every moment on the strength of the absurd, every moment to see the sword hanging over the loved one's head and yet find, not repose in the pain of resignation, but joy on the strength of the absurd—that is wonderful. The one who does that, he is great, the only great one, the thought of it stirs my soul, which was never sparing in its admiration of greatness.
(Søren Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985.)
So the knight will remember everything: but the memory is precisely the pain, and yet in his infinite resignation he is reconciled with existence. His love for the princess would take on for him the expression of an eternal love, would acquire a religious character, be transfigured into a love for the eternal being which, although it denied fulfilment, still reconciled him once more in the eternal consciousness of his love's validity in an eternal form that no reality can take from him. Fools and young people talk about everything being possible for a human being. But that is a great mistake. Everything is possible spiritually speaking, but in the finite world there is much that is not possible. This impossibility the knight nevertheless makes possible by his expressing it spiritually, but he expresses it spiritually by renouncing it. The desire which would convey him out into reality, but came to grief on an impossibility, now bends inwards but is not lost thereby nor forgotten. ... He pays no further finite attention to what the princess does, and just this proves that he has made the movement infinitely. Here we have the opportunity to see whether the movement in the individual is proper or not. There was a person who also believed he had made the movement, but time went by, the princess did something else, she married, say, a prince, and his soul lost the resilience of resignation. He knew then that he had not made the movement correctly; for one who has infinitely resigned is enough unto himself.
[...]
Let us now have the knight of faith make his appearance in the case discussed. He does exactly the same as the other knight, he infinitely renounces the claim to the love which is the content of his life; he is reconciled in pain; but then comes the marvel, he makes one more movement, more wonderful than anything else, for he says: 'I nevertheless believe that I shall get her, namely on the strength of the absurd, on the strength of the fact that for God all things are possible.' The absurd is not one distinction among others embraced by understanding. It is not the same as the improbable, the unexpected, the unforeseen. The moment the knight resigned he was convinced of the impossibility, humanly speaking; that was a conclusion of the understanding, and he had energy enough to think it. In an infinite sense, however, it was possible, through renouncing it [as a finite possibility]; but then accepting that [possibility] is at the same time to have given it up, yet for the understanding there is no absurdity in possessing it, for it is only in the finite world that understanding rules and there it was and remains an impossibility. On this the knight of faith is just as clear: all that can save him is the absurd; and this he grasps by faith. Accordingly at the same time he admits the impossibility and at the same time believes the absurd; for were he to suppose that he had faith without recognizing the impossibility with all the passion of his soul and with all his heart, he would be deceiving himself, and his testimony would carry weight nowhere, since he would not even have come as far as infinite resignation.
[...]
A man can still, in that last moment, concentrate his whole soul in a single glance towards the heaven from which all good gifts come, and this glance is something both he and the one he seeks understand; it means he has nevertheless remained true to his love. Then he will calmly put on the costume. He who lacks this romanticism has sold his soul, whether he received a kingdom for it or a paltry piece of silver. But by my own strength I cannot get the least little thing of what belongs to finitude; for I am continually using my energy to renounce everything. by my own strength I can give up the princess, and I shall be no sulker but find joy and peace and repose in my pain, but with my own strength I cannot get her back again, for all that strength is precisely what I use to renounce my claim on her. But by faith, says that marvellous knight, by faith you will get her on the strength of the absurd.
Alas, this movement is one I cannot make! As soon as I want to begin it everything turns around and I flee back to the pain of resignation. I can swim in life, but for this mysterious floating I am too heavy. To exist in such a way that my opposition to existence expresses itself every instant as the most beautiful and safest harmony, that I cannot. And yet it must be glorious to get the princess, I say so every instant and the knight of resignation who doesn't say it is a deceiver, he has not had just one desire and he has not kept his desire young in its pain. ... and yet it is only the knight of faith who is happy, only he is heir apparent to the finite, whereas the knight of resignation is a stranger, a foreigner. To get the princess in this way, to live in joy and happiness, in her company day in and day out—we have to allow, of course, that the knight of resignation, too, may get the princess, even though he has clearly perceived the impossibility of their future happiness—thus to live joyfully and happily in this way every moment on the strength of the absurd, every moment to see the sword hanging over the loved one's head and yet find, not repose in the pain of resignation, but joy on the strength of the absurd—that is wonderful. The one who does that, he is great, the only great one, the thought of it stirs my soul, which was never sparing in its admiration of greatness.
(Søren Kierkegaard. Fear and Trembling. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985.)
Kierkegaard was one of the first major existentialists. and because of that these days popular Christian theology tends to disparage him as some kind of relativist whiner. Such an attitude does not understand the doctrine of sin, and definitely has never experienced real despair. But to move on to other existentialists, Nietzsche was not a nihilist; he saw that (whatever one believes is actually true) as a civilizational ordering God was indeed dead, and he strove to come up with something that could prevent humanity from succumbing to the kind of meaninglessness Dostoyevsky described in his novels. And thus it was the absurd, the ubermensch, Sisyphus happy—an ordering, or at least a conception, of the world not rationally possible, beyond human—that they had faith in.
Lol, what have I done: In my bookshelf scan I forgot about my copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, because I had it set elsewhere:
Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing:—the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth.
Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and famished; and cruelty was the delight of that soul!
But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency?
Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.
Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your great contempt be submerged.
What is the greatest thing ye can experience? It is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becometh loathsome unto you, and so also your reason and virtue.
The hour when ye say: “What good is my happiness! It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should justify existence itself!”
The hour when ye say: “What good is my reason! Doth it long for knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!”
The hour when ye say: “What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!”
The hour when ye say: “What good is my justice! I do not see that I am fervour and fuel. The just, however, are fervour and fuel!”
The hour when we say: “What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a crucifixion.”
Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had heard you crying thus!
It is not your sin—it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven!
Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which ye should be inoculated?
Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!
Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and famished; and cruelty was the delight of that soul!
But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency?
Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.
Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your great contempt be submerged.
What is the greatest thing ye can experience? It is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becometh loathsome unto you, and so also your reason and virtue.
The hour when ye say: “What good is my happiness! It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should justify existence itself!”
The hour when ye say: “What good is my reason! Doth it long for knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!”
The hour when ye say: “What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!”
The hour when ye say: “What good is my justice! I do not see that I am fervour and fuel. The just, however, are fervour and fuel!”
The hour when we say: “What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a crucifixion.”
Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had heard you crying thus!
It is not your sin—it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven!
Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which ye should be inoculated?
Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!
These are not arguments for finding meaning in whatever you like, in the Lovecraftian "holocaust of ecstasy and freedom"; Kierkegaard urged man not to be slaves to simple passions, and Nietzsche similarly despised the Last Men who, believing the world to be meaningless, seek power in practical and technical control of others. I still choose Kierkegaard's knight of faith as my most beautiful piece of philosophy (for the purposes of this thread; I don't dare claim philosophical definitiveness for my choice). Fear and Trembling isn't as easily quotable as Nietzsche and so seems much more dry here, but it's definitely not if you read the whole book.
Anyway, as for relevance, I present Exhibit A:
It is Kierkegaard that is the key to Gurren Lagann. This is why BestGuyEver is dangerously wrong in his interpretation of the ending, ultimately shackling the absurd to a sad compromise that would have Simon fail even to be one of Kierkegaard's knights of infinite resignation.
And then there is Exhibit B:
Kyoko was not more mature than Sayaka. She is, in Kierkegaard's formulation, the slave, who couldn't hold on to justice seeing its difficulty. Sayaka is the knight of infinite resignation, knowing she is going to suffer—and
literally giving up the guy, precisely as Kierkegaard has the knight of infinite resignation retain his love for the princess but give up having her.
This makes even Homura inferior to Sayaka; even though she drove herself crazy suffering, Homura couldn't make the movement of resignation, actually giving up. Of course, Madoka is the knight of faith, but as Kierkegaard says, who can make that movement? Homura we can understand, Sayaka was truly heroic; though in the end a slave, Kyoko we can also understand and respect, as who wants to suffer trying to do something impossible? But to say that something's impossible, do it knowing full well it's impossible, and to do it anyway because you kick logic to the curb and literally break the universe; Puella Magi Madoka Magica's basically perfect representation of Fear and Trembling is what makes me go back and forth as to whether it or Gurren Lagann is the best anime ever.
EDIT: I see I didn't answer the follow-up questions about the argument I chose. I've already gone through a lot, though. Suffice it to say that I am a Christian.
ANOTHER EDIT: Just finished Googling PMMM and Kierkegaard together. At least a few people understand that Puella Magi Madoka Magica is not a deconstruction (there's no aporia, duh); nobody understands the Kierkegaard connection.
@auroraloose I have not read Kierkegaard, so I can't say much about him and his relation to PMMM. But, about Kyoko... ...she has her own sacrifice to do, different than the one Sayaka had to undergo. After the tragedy with her family, she wasn't doing what se wanted to do, but what she felt she had to do. She did want to fight for "justice", but she prioritized what she thought was her duty instead of what she wished to do. Her sacrifice is less visible, but it is still there. |
JustOscarYesterday, 7:21 AM
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