Sublime

To make the movement of infinite resignation you must demonstrate to yourself that you are willing to give up everything that is finite for the sake of eternal happiness. “If to him an eternal happiness is his highest good,” Kierkegaard writes in the Postscript, “this means that in his acting the finite elements are once and for all reduced to what

“By the experience of active love. Try to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly. The more you succeed in loving, the more you’ll be convinced of the existence of God and the immortality of your soul. And if you reach complete selflessness in the love of your neighbor, then undoubtedly you will believe, and no doubt will even be able to enter

Men of Athens, I honour and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one whom I meet and saying to him after my manner: You, my friend,—a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens,—are you not ashamed of heaping up

O my brothers, when I bade you break the good and the tablets of the good, only then did I embark man on his high sea. And only now does there come to him the great fright, the great looking-around, the great sickness, the great nausea, the great seasickness.

Whoever was still alive had reason for hope. Health, family, happiness, professional abilities, fortune, position in society—all these were things that could be achieved again or restored. After all, we still had all our bones intact. Whatever we had gone through could still be an asset to us in the future. And I quoted from Nietzsche: “Was mich ni

Socrates was the chief saint of the Stoics throughout their history; his attitude at the time of his trial, his refusal to escape, his calmness in the face of death, and his contention that the perpetrator of injustice injures himself more than his victim, all fitted in perfectly with Stoic teaching. So did his indifference to heat and cold, his pl

Ainsi donc y a-t-il les dieux, les héros et les hommes. Chacun vogue vers sa mort. Elle sera plus ou moins glorieuse. Chacun reçoit sa part de vie et sait plus ou moins s’en satisfaire. Chacun est plus ou moins libre de danser sous un ciel où sont écrits les grands axes de la destinée. Mais tous – habitants de l’Olympe, paysan paisible ou guerrier

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mou

Après une visite ultérieure à Prague, Philip Roth observa qu’à l’Ouest « tout marche mais rien ne compte » tandis qu’en Tchécoslovaquie « rien ne marche mais tout compte952 ». L’existentialisme sartrien était précisément une philosophie de ce qui compte : Sartre appelait ses lecteurs à prendre des décisions comme si tout l’avenir de l’humanité dépe