July 2013
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Hannah Arendt on human life
Modern theories, whose raison d'être is to obscure human nature and thus instill in humanity an overabundance of belief in itself, perpetuate this constant obfuscation. This constant obfuscation draws upon Simone de Beauvoir's thoughts on human life. Constant obfuscation, uprooting, infantilization… We must tell humanity that it… Continue reading
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Unamuno on human life
“I don’t want to die, no, I don’t, nor do I want to; I want to live forever, forever; and to live myself, this poor self, that I am and feel myself to be today and here, and that is why the problem of the duration of my… Continue reading
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Yeats on human life
“When I think of all the books I have read,” Yeats said, “all the wise words I have heard, all the anxieties I have caused my parents… all the hopes I have had, every life weighed in the balance of my own seems to me a preparation for some…” Continue reading
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Simone de Beauvoir on human life
“To declare that life is absurd is to say that it will never have meaning. To say that it is ambiguous is to decide that its meaning is never fixed, that it must always be earned.”* A formidable declaration of powerlessness draped in an expression of the will to power, or how desire must regulate, govern life. This sentence is… Continue reading
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Pascal on human life
And this excerpt from Pascal, an avowed and forced intimacy: “When I consider the short duration of my life, absorbed in the eternity that precedes and follows it, the small space that I fill and even that I see, lost in the infinite immensity of spaces that I am unaware of and that are unaware of me, I am frightened and astonished to see myself…” Continue reading
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Tolstoy on human life
This morning, I stumbled—literally—upon this passage from Tolstoy's Confession, which is a pure marvel and so aptly foreshadows The Death of Ivan Ilyich, written seven years later: “At first it seemed to me that these were gratuitous, inappropriate requests. I thought that all this was already known, that if… Continue reading