pt.6: ON PHILOSOPHY (TRAINING FOR DEATH)

THE PLAYERS AND THEIR ARGUMENTS

And so, Kierkegaard said: Life is not a problem to be solved,

but a reality to be experienced. Just as trouble is

the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, Don't forget to love yourself.

Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all. Love God.

A man who as a physical being is always turned

toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.

These are the truths, for most men pursue pleasure

with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

Make time for prayer, as prayer does not change God,

but it changes him who prays. God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners. Thus, be virtuous:

People commonly travel the world to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human;

they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence

and they think they have seen something.

This: a concept, and concepts, like individuals, have their histories

and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time

as are individuals. But in and through all this they retain

a kind of homesickness for the scenes of their childhood.

This is the paradox, which is really the pathos of intellectual life

and just as only great souls are exposed to passions

it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.

What thoughts are born or boredom! And since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder then that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads.

This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world.

The Gods were bored; therefore, they created human beings. Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited by outward appearances. From death, we turn to faith:

Faith is the highest passion in a human being.

Many in every generation may not come that far,

but none comes further.

Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment

when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other,

to let their souls blend in a soft whisper,

so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can,

as it were, creep into God.

And If I am not capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.

And so, God teaches me to be noble and just – to refrain from sin

To the Christian, love is the works of love.

To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind

is an unchristian conception of love.

That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic

and everything of that nature.

But to the Christian love is the works of love.

Christ's love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what not,

it was the work of love which was his life.

Thus, God teaches me to love and to be just, so that if I may die

I may die a martyr.

For if I be a tyrant, I am consigned to the fate of all villains:

The tyrant dies and his rule is over,

the martyr dies and his rule begins.

Thus, philosophers are poets: but what is a poet?

An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish

in his heart

but whose lips are so formed

that as sighs and cries pass over them

they sound like beautiful music.