Tragic Sense Of Life

n; no other man do I deem a stranger. For to me the adjective humanus is no less suspect than its abstract substantive humanitas, humani

ll, who dies; the man who eats and drinks and plays and sleeps and thinks

ζωον πολιτικον of Aristotle, the social contractor of Rousseau, the homo economicus of the Manchester school, the homo sapiens of Linn?us, or, if you like, the vertical

and bone-I, you, reader of mine, the other man

once the subject and the supreme object of all philosophy

ntaneously, and their authors, the philosophers, appear only as mere pretexts. The inner biography of the philosophers, of the m

ich have been constructed as a supreme concord of the final results of the individual sciences have in every age po

undamentally a matter of economics. A new scientific discovery, of the kind called theoretical, is, like a mechanical discovery-that of the steam-engine, the telephone, the phonograph, or the aeroplane-a thing which is useful for something else. Thus the telephon

ude and even to outward action. But the fact is that this feeling, instead of being a consequence of this conception, is the cause of it. Our philosophy-that is, our mode of understand

it is our optimism or our pessimism, of physiological or perhaps pat

at which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason. More often I have seen a cat reason than laugh

her, what must needs mo

have said, the somersault from the Critique of Pure Reason to the Critique of Practical Reason. He reconstructs in the latter what he destroyed in the former, in spite of what those may say who do not see the man himself. After having examined and pulverized with his analysis the traditional proofs of the existence of

at is to say, of the abstract man, of the man no-man; the other God, the God of feeling and volition, is th

o professed philosophy at K?nigsberg at the end of the century of the Encyclopedia and the goddess of Reason, was a man much preoccupied with the problem-I mean with the only real vital problem, the problem that strikes at the very root of our being, the

oul, and not the immortality of the soul from the existence of God. The categorical imperative leads us to a moral postulate which necessitates in its turn, in the teleological or

he basis of eschatology, but the prof

ality of men God is the provider of immortality. Yes, for the generality of men, including th

ul of every man may not be immortal in the traditional and concrete sense. He replied: "Then wherefore God?" So answered, in the secret tribunal of their consciousness, the man Kant and the

to believe that the real, the really real, is irrational, that reason builds upon irrationalities. Hegel, a great framer of definitions, attempted wi

of a future life, these pregnant words: "This credibility of a future life, which has been here insisted upon, how little soever it may satisfy our curiosity, seems to answer all the purposes of religion, in like manner as a demonstrative proof would. Indeed a proof, even a demonstrative one, of a futu

aid, of the future life, and the second of the government of God by rewards and punishments. And the fact is that, fundamentally, the good Anglican bishop deduces the existence of God from the immortality of the soul. And as this deduct

d is conceived by itself. And in the following proposition, the seventh, of the same part, he adds: conatus, quo unaquoeque res in suo esse perseverare conatur, nihil est proeter ipsius rei actualem essentiam-that is, the endeavour wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing itself. This means that your essence, reader, mine, that of the man Spinoza, that of the man Butler, of the man Kant, and of every man who is a man, is nothing but the endeavour, the effort, which he makes to continue to be a man, not to die. And the other proposition which follows these two, the eighth, says: conatus, quo unaquoeque res

ositivism were really only fragments of facts. In psychology its action was harmful. There were even scholastics meddling in literature-I will not say philosophers meddling in poetry, because poet and philosopher are twin brothers, if not even one and the same-who carried this Positivist psychological analysis into the novel and the drama, where the main business is to give act and motion to concre

in envisaging consciousness itself, the "I." To ask a man about his "I" is like asking him about his body. And note that in s

on. When we walk, one foot does not go forward and the other backward, nor, when we look, if we are normal, does one eye look towards the north and the other towards the south. In each moment of our life we entertain some purpose, and to this purpose the synergy of

-day derives, by a continuous series of states of consciousness, from him who was in my body twenty years ago. Memory is the basis of individual personality, just as tradition is the basis of the collective personalit

heir own personality. One of my best friends with whom I have walked and talked every day for many years, whenever I spok

edge; but to be someone else, that is a thing I cannot comprehend." It has often been said that every man who has suffered misfortunes prefers to be himself, even with his misfortunes, rather than to be someone else without them. For unfortunate men, when they preserve their normality in their misfortune-that is to say, when they endeavour to persist in their

this change is able to enter into the unity of his spirit and become involved in its continuity; in so far as this change can harmonize and integrate itself with all the rest of his mode of being, thinking and feeling, and can at the same time knit itself with his

onsciousness, is completely destroyed, and all that is left to the sufferer as the substratum of his individual continuity, which has now ceased to be personal, is the physical organism. For the subject who suffers it,

-may be more elevated, more noble, more anything you like; but it is different. To fly and breathe in the air may be better than to swim and breathe in the water; but if the fins of a fish aimed at converting themselves into wings, the fish, as a fish, would perish. And it is useless to say that it w

What if some other people is better than our own? Very possibly, although perhaps we do not clearly understand what is meant by better or worse. Richer? Granted. More cultured? Granted likewise. Happier? Well, happiness ... but still, let it pass! A conquering people (or what is called conquering) while we

ay as well or better? Another might fulfil my f

; but no, I would rather remind him of a doctrine of the man Kant-to wit, that we ought to think of our fellow-men not as means but as ends. For the question does not touch me alone, it

men and each individual man must be sacrificed? For I sacrifice myself for my neighbours, for my fellow-countrymen, for my children, and these sacrifice themselves in

to us also about the right to live. What is this right to live? They tell me I am here to realize I kno

ity, and afterwards, when we have filled the world with industrial marvels, with great factories, with roads, museums, and librarie

A. For man.'" Well, why not?-so ought the man who is a man to reply. The ant, if it took account of these matters and were

immortality, personal and concrete-the more he will exaggerate the worth of this poor transitory life. This is the source from which springs all that effeminate, sentimental ebullition against war. True, a man ought not to wish to die, but

onsciousness, he affirms man, man concrete and real, affirms the true humanism-the humanism of man, not of the things of m

d feeling rather than notion, this teleological feeling, is born only where the

t to the worlds; but it would also and above all think that the worlds existed in order that it

mortal leap of which I have spoken, all this is simply a fight for consciousness. If consciousness is, as some inhuman thinker ha

radiction? To be sure! The contradiction of my heart that says Yes and of my head that says No! Of course there is contradiction. Who does not recollect those words of the Gospel, "Lord, I believe, help thou

dantic label-mongers, pedants by nature and by grace, who remind me of that man who, purposing to console a father whose son has suddenly died in the flower of his years, says to him, "Patience, my friend, we all m

cual tú, sól

a mas que in

he soul, with the blood, with the marrow of the bones, with the heart, with the lungs, with the belly, with the life. And the people who think only with the brain deve

n-to knock out his opponent. A blow given by a non-professional will not have so much immediate, objective efficiency; but it will more greatly vitalize the striker, causing him to bring into play almost the whole of his body. The one is the bl

y branch of science-of chemistry, of physics, of geometry, of philology-may be a work of differentiated specialization, and even so only within very na

ectual necessities of life-answers to a necessity which is no less real because it is intellectual, to a reason of economy in thinking, to a principle of unity and continuity of consciousness. But just as a scientific fact has its finality in the rest of knowledge, so the philosophy that we would make our own has also its extrinsic object-it refers to our whole destiny, to o

ccupied, even if only confusedly, with the first beginning and the ultimate end of all thi

ust be felt. And the would-be leader of men who affirms and proclaims that he pays no heed to the things of the spirit, is not worthy

, suffer, and, although they do not wish to die, die; men who are ends in themselves, not merely means; men who must be themselves and not others; men, in fine, who seek that which we call happiness. It is inhuman, for example, to

those who suffer from affective stupidity, and who, for the rest, may be persons of a certain cerebral distinction. For it is possible to posse

he pricks. It is as if one should say to a man whose leg has had to be amputated that it does not help him at all to think about it. And w

uestioner is plainly seen. And I am convinced that we should solve many things if we all went out into the streets and uncovered our griefs, which perhaps would prove to be but one sole common grief, and joined together in beweeping them and crying aloud to the heavens and calling upon God. And this, even though God should hear us not; but He wo

peoples. And this sense does not so much flow from ideas as determine them, even though afterwards, as is manifest, these ideas react upon it and confirm it. Sometimes it may originate in a chance illness-dyspepsia, for example; but at other times it is constitutional. And it is useless to speak, as we shall see, of men who ar

ife. I recall now Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, Pascal, Rousseau, René, Obermann, Thomson,[9] Leopardi

peoples who possess this

rn our attention, beginning with

TNO

lto mortal, used to denote the dangerous aerial somersault

ciousness and conscience. If the latter is specifically intended, the

uan de lo

t intelligence is the necessary qu

author of The Cit