When you get there, there is no there, there.
In Late Antiquity, happiness meant nothing else than to withdraw from the world of appearances, to retire to shady suburbs, die with an open book in one's hands. And we, we modern Eloi, have lost even the desire to flee or dream. Sit, and sip lemonade under imageless pale blue skies, as ice clinks and melts and a tune from the 1970's is heard buzzing from a radio in the distance.
'The body,as it is swallowed by the blue, a vanishing-act watched by absences'.
--Robert Hughes.
When we live we occupy a certain space.
And when we don't live? Hockney, Icarus.
If you're happy and you know it then you aren't happy.
From a letter by Mozart:
'To live respectably and to live happily are two very different things, and the latter will not be possible for me without some kind of magic; for this, something truly supernatural would have to happen'
'Any happiness commensurate with man is always hubris...magic is not a knowledge of names but a gesture, a breaking free from the name'
---Agamben.
In a room full of mirrors. And still there's nothing real about you. The more you see, the more you see through. A life-any life-is made up of an awful lot of blank spaces. Time before, and time after. But more: time within time, like the dream of a monk.
How do you weigh up a good life? An instant, an ascending curve to truth, beauty? Or, less ambitiously, does the avoidance of x, y, z constitute the good life? How do you take account of, speak about, things which have no dimensions?
---Agamben.
In a room full of mirrors. And still there's nothing real about you. The more you see, the more you see through. A life-any life-is made up of an awful lot of blank spaces. Time before, and time after. But more: time within time, like the dream of a monk.
How do you weigh up a good life? An instant, an ascending curve to truth, beauty? Or, less ambitiously, does the avoidance of x, y, z constitute the good life? How do you take account of, speak about, things which have no dimensions?
5 comments:
roxana said:
"I went out into the gentle rain and saw the rainbow. It deepens; it shone down into the sea and it faded: it was gone. The small gentle rain fell on the other side of the world. Frail - Frail. I felt Life was no more than this."
Katherine Mansfield
oh but Katherine said that, not Roxana (and R discovered that thanks to Antonia, so ultimately you should thank her)
"How do you weigh up a good life? An instant, an ascending curve to truth, beauty?" - can there be more important questions? however, i should have thought that 'an ascending curve to beauty' would be more my take on the problem (though when i was young it would have been 'truth', rather - i have changed) - and i would have expected you to say: 'goodness/kindness'.
sorry, roxana, I should have been clearer: I was just copying this comment from you the last time I posted this!
I hear what you're saying and certainly a part of me agrees with you on beauty/truth. but, but ...i dunno, i think there's a need for thinking more pragmatically: the good life not as a life of contemplation , beauty, nobility, Truth (the capitalization itself makes me sceptical) but, rather, simple 'do-able' things like : adequate food, shelter, security, access to water, education, justice.
And I think with words like goodness (or kindness) one must remember Christ's (incredible) words here: "why callest me good?"
As always, thank you for dropping in here with your interesting comments.
take care,
b.
that's exactly my point, this was the perspective i would have expected you to dwell upon.
but now i see, you asked those questions as part of an inner interrogation leading to their refutation...
(i know you will put on your c.r.-hat and say: what interrogations, these are only meaningless strayings - no? :-)
no, roxana, not refutation nor interrogation.
jeez! I just saw the rest of what you'd written! :-)
I was just about to say these were stray thoughts! :-0
Err..so predictable!
i do wish I had a c.r. hat..then I could say: I'll eat my hat if I'm wrong :-)
in economics we typically have very little to say about the 'substance' of goodness (and more on the structure of it). I need to read Adam smith's TMS this summer..but from Griswold's great book on him it does appear that he favours a more worldly-if that's the correct word-approach to goodness. and i think that that's right (much better than talking about so-called spiritual goodness).
On the other hand, I know the religious will turn back and say how can you talk about goodness or improving the goodness of people's lives without FIRST striving to be a good person yourself.
What do you think?
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