Ypokeimenon

Every existent is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.

The absurd world more than others derives its nobility from that abject birth. In certain situations, replying ‘nothing’ when asked what one is thinking about may be pretence in a man. Those who are loved are well aware of this. But if that reply is sincere, if it symbolizes that odd state of soul in which the void becomes eloquent, in which the chain of daily gestures is broken, in which the heart vainly seeks the link that will connect it again, then it is as it were the first sign of absurdity. It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, tram, four hours in the office or factory, meal, tram, four hours of work, meal, sleep and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the ‘why’ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement. ‘Begins’ – this is important. Weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but... https://wp.me/p9pyHP-6D

Δεν είναι εύκολο να ζει κανείς κάθε στιγμή έχοντας ολοκληρωτική συνείδηση του θανάτου. Είναι σαν να προσπαθείς να γυρίσεις τα μάτια σου στον ήλιο: για πολύ λίγο μπορείς να το αντέξεις. Επειδή δεν μπορούμε να ζήσουμε πετρωμένοι από φόβο, γεννάμε μεθόδους για να μαλακώσουμε τον τρόμο του θανάτου. Προβάλλουμε τον εαυτό μας στο μέλλον μέσα από τα παιδιά μας. Γινόμαστε πλούσιοι, διάσημοι, επεκτεινόμαστε όλο και πιο πολύ. Αναπτύσσουμε καταναγκαστικές προστατευτικές τελετουργίες. Ή ασπαζόμαστε μια αδιάσειστη πίστη σ’έναν τελικό σωτήρα. Ορισμένοι άνθρωποι... https://wp.me/p9pyHP-6z

Η ελευθερία, για τον Σαρτρ, βρίσκεται στη καρδιά κάθε ανθρώπινης εμπειρίας κι αυτό διακρίνει τον άνθρωπο απ’όλα τα άλλα είδη αντικειμένων. Άλλα πράγματα μένουν, απλώς, σταθερά, περιμένοντας να τα σπρώξουν ή να τα τραβήξουν τριγύρω. Ακόμη και τα υπόλοιπα ζώα ακολουθούν συνήθως τα ένστικτα και τις συμπεριφορές που χαρακτηρίζουν το είδος τους. Ως άνθρωπος, όμως, δεν έχω ούτε στο ελάχιστο προκαθορισμένη φύση. Δημιουργώ αυτή τη φύση με τις επιλογές μου. Μπορεί, φυσικά, να επηρεάζομαι από τη βιολογία μου ή από πλευρές της κουλτούρας μου κι από την προσωπική μου διαδρομή, όλα αυτά, όμως, δεν συνθέτουν ένα ολοκληρωμένο σχέδιο από το οποίο μπορώ να κατασκευαστώ. Βρίσκομαι πάντα ένα βήμα μπροστά από τον εαυτό μου, φτιάχνοντάς με καθώς προχωρώ. Ο Σαρτρ συμπύκνωσε αυτή την αρχή σε ένα μικρό σλόγκαν που... https://www.ypokeimenon.com/2019/04/06/sarah-bakewell/

Love says ‘I am everything’ and wisdom says ‘I am nothing’. Between the two, my life flows.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. This is an error of the intellect as inevitable as that error of the eye which lets us fancy that on the horizon heaven and earth meet. This explains many things, and among them the fact that everyone measures us with his own standard – generally about as long as a tailor’s tape, and we have to put up with it: as also that no one will allow us to be taller than himself – a supposition which is once for all taken for granted.

I believe that we should confront death as we confront other fears. We should contemplate our ultimate end, familiarize ourselves with it, dissect and analyze it, reason with it, and discard terrifying childhood death distortions. Let’s not conclude that death is too painful to bear, that the thought will destroy us, that transiency must be denied lest the truth render life meaningless. Such denial always exacts a price — narrowing our inner life, blurring our vision, blunting our rationality. Ultimately self-deception catches up with us. Anxiety will always accompany our confrontation with death. I feel it now as I write these words; it is the price we pay for self-awareness. […] It is my hope that by grasping, really grasping, our human condition — our finiteness, our brief time in the light — we will come not only to savor the preciousness of each moment and the pleasure of sheer being but to increase our compassion for ourselves and for all other human beings.

The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret it; if you marry or if you do not marry, you will regret both. Laugh at the world’s follies, you will regret it; weep over them, you will also regret it; if you laugh at the world’s follies or if you weep over them, you will regret both. Believe a girl, you will regret it; if you do not believe her, you will also regret it; if you believe a girl or you do not believe her, you will regret both. If you hang yourself, you will regret it; if you do not hang yourself, you will regret it; if you hang yourself or you do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the sum of all practical wisdom.

To the extent to which I hope, to which I worry about a truth that might be individual to me, about a way of being or creating, to the extent to which I arrange my life and prove thereby that I accept its having a meaning, I create for myself barriers between which I confine my life.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again.

Whatever may be the plays on words and the acrobatics of logic, to understand is, above all, to unify. The mind’s deepest desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man’s unconscious feeling in the face of his universe: it is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity. Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal. The cat’s universe is not the universe of the ant-hill. The truism ‘All thought is anthropomorphic’ has no other meaning. Likewise, the mind that aims to understand reality can consider itself satisfied only by reducing it to terms of thought. If man realized that the universe like him can love and suffer, he would be reconciled. If thought discovered in the shimmering mirrors of phenomena eternal relations capable of summing them up and summing themselves up in a single principle, then would be seen an intellectual joy of which the myth of the blessed would be but a ridiculous imitation. That nostalgia for unity, that appetite for the absolute illustrates the essential impulse of the human drama.

You can’t put your past in your pocket; you have to have a house in which to store it. I possess nothing but my body; a man on his own, with nothing but his body, can’t stop memories; they pass through him. I shouldn’t complaint: all I ever wanted was to be free.

Real beginnings, appearing like a fanfare of trumpets, like the first notes of a jazz tune, abruptly, cutting boredom short, strengthening duration […] but something begins in order to end: an adventure doesn’t let itself be extended; it achieves significance only through its death. Towards this death, which may also be my own, I am drawn irrevocably. Each moment appears only to bring on the moments after. To each moment I cling with all my heart: I know that it is unique, irreplaceable - and yet I would not lift a finger to prevent it from being annihilated.

This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers. I can sketch one by one all the aspects it is able to assume, all those likewise that have been attributed to it, this upbringing, this origin, this ardour or these silences, this nobility or this vileness. But aspects cannot be added up. This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. For ever I shall be a stranger to myself.

To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn’t know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn’t even know how to be dead.

Major decisions often have deep roots. Every choice involves a relinquishment, and each relinquishment makes us aware of limitations and temporality.