To Live “according to nature”… Nietzsche

 

“Sensuality often hastens the ‘Growth of Love’ so much that the roots are weak and easily torn up.”  – Friedrich Nietzsche

“He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.”  – Michel de Montaigne

“Let us give nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.”                      – Michel de Montaigne

Do you want to live “according to nature”? O you noble Stoics, what a verbal swindle! Imagine a being like nature – extravagant without limit, indifferent without limit, without purpose and consideration, without pity and justice, simultaneously fruitful, desolate, and unknown – imagine this indifference itself as a power – how could you live in accordance with this indifference? Living – isn’t that precisely a well to be something different from what this nature is? Isn’t living appraising, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different? And if your imperative “live according to nature” basically means what amounts to “live according to life” – why can you not just do that? Why make a principle out of what you yourselves are and must be? The truth of the matter is quite different: while you pretend to be in raptures as you read the canon of your law out of nature, you want something which is the reverse of this, you weird actors and self-deceivers! Your pride wants to prescribe to and incorporate into nature, this very nature, you morality, your ideal. You demand that nature be “in accordance with the stoa,” and you’d like to make all existence merely living in accordance with your own image of it – as a huge and eternal glorification and universalizing of stoicism! With all your love of truth, you have forced yourselves for such a long time and with such persistence and hypnotic rigidity to look at nature falsely, that is, stoically, until you’re no longer capable of seeing nature as anything else – and some abysmal arrogance finally inspires you with the lunatic hope that, because you know how to tyrannize over yourselves – Stoicism is self-tyranny – nature also allows herself to be tyrannized. Is the Stoic then not a part of nature?… But this is an ancient eternal story: what happened then with the Stoics is still happening today, as soon as a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates a world in its own image. It cannot do anything different. Philosophy is the tyrannical drive itself, the spiritual will to power, to a “creation of the world” to the causa prima |first cause|

– Friedrich Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil

 

“It is better to change an opinion than to persist in a wrong one.” – Socrates.

 “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” – Aristotle                                             

“To find yourself think for yourself.” – Socrates

 

Time is precious and each of us is allotted a relatively small portion. Self-examination is crucial and a necessary investment in ourselves, routine maintenance so to speak. If we can’t be firm in our convictions, do we have any? Or do we simply parrot those of another? If we don’t change our minds, from time-to-time, examine our beliefs, are we sure we are capable of doing so. The world does not stand still and we need to be mindful that even the road less traveled bends, rises, and falls.

Bisous, Léa

Wednesday’s Words to Ponder

“People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.”     – Eric Hoffer  

“ It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.”                    – Eric Hoffer

 

Eric Hoffer – 25 July, 1902 – 21 May, 1983

Born in New York City to immigrant parents (Alsace) he authored ten books. His first book, The True Beliver, was recognized as a classic and received critical acclaim from Scholars and laymen alike. In the author’s own opinion his finest work was, The Ordeal of Change. Shortly before his death, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Regan. An early reader, he read voraciously in both English and German.

In 1920, after the death of his father, he departed New York for Los Angeles by bus. With three hundred dollars to his name, he spent the next decade living on L.A.’s skid row. Taking any job that came his way he tried selling, oranges, door to door. Alas, he discovered he was a natural and at the end of his first day, dismayed by his success.  

In the thirties, he began following the migrants harvesting crops across California. During a sojourn in the hopes of discovering gold he found himself snowed through the winter. He made great use of that time when he discovered the essays of Michel de Montaigne which would have a profound effect on his perspective.

During the 1940’s he arrived in San Francisco and after being rejected by the military for war duty, he took to working as a longshoreman. A voracious reader since childhood, he continued this passion and began to write his stories. He stayed working on the docks until retirement at age 65.

In 1970 he endowed the Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Laconic Essay Prize for students, faculty and staff at the University of California, Berkeley.

Bisous,

Léa

Quotes that deserve to be shared, again and again…

For those willing to pick up the gauntlet, choose at least one quote, read it out loud and then write where it leads you.  Share it if you wish.

 

“He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that his reason is weak.” – Michel de Montaigne

 

“Every movement reveals us.”  – Michel de Montaigne

 

“Why do people respect the package rather than the man?”  – Michel de Montaigne

 

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”  – Franz Kafka

 

“Remember then: there is only one time that is important — NOW! It is the most important time because it is the only time we have any power.” – Leo Tolstoy

 

“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.” – Leo Tolstoy

 

“If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.” – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

 

“When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all dunces are in a confederacy against him.”  – Jonathan Swift

 

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”  – Jonathan Swift

 

“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through,”  – Jonathan Swift

 

Bisous,

Léa