Nietzsche and Proust on wisdom

Proust:

On ne reçoit pas la sagesse, il faut la découvrir soi-même après un trajet que personne ne peut faire pour nous, ne peut nous épargner, car elle est un point de vue sur les choses.

Nietzsche:

For he who proceeds on his own path in this fashion encounters no one: that is inherent in “proceeding on one’s own path”. No one comes along to help him: all the perils, accidents, malice and bad weather which assail him he has to tackle by himself. For his path is his alone - as is, of course, the bitterness and occasional ill-humour he feels at this ‘his alone’: among which is included, for instance, the knowledge that even his friends are unable to divine where he is or whither he is going, that they will sometimes ask themselves: ‘what? is he going at all? does he still have - a path?’

Denn wer auf solchen eignen Wegen geht, begegnet Niemandem: das bringen die „eignen Wege" mit sich. Niemand kommt, ihm dabei zu helfen; mit Allem, was ihm von Gefahr, Zufall, Bosheit und schlechtem Wetter zustösst, muss er allein fertig werden. Er hat eben seinen Weg für sich — und, wie billig, seine Bitterkeit, seinen gelegentlichen Verdruss an diesem „für sich": wozu es zum Beispiel gehört, zu wissen, dass selbst seine Freunde nicht errathen können, wo er ist, wohin er geht, dass sie sich bisweilen fragen werden „wie? geht er überhaupt? hat er noch — einen Weg?" 

Nietzsche and Proust

Proust says, that “les vrais livres doivent être les enfants non du grand jour et de la causerie mais de l’obscurité et du silence.”

Nietzsche:

I.

In diesem Buche findet man einen „Unterirdischen" an der Arbeit, einen Bohrenden, Grabenden, Untergraben- den. Man sieht ihn, vorausgesetzt, dass man Augen für solche Arbeit der Tiefe hat — , wie er langsam, besonnen, mit sanfter Unerbittlichkeit vorwärts kommt, ohne dass die Noth sich allzusehr verriethe, welche jede lange Entbehrung von Licht und Luft mit sich bringt; man könnte ihn selbst bei seiner dunklen Arbeit zufrieden nennen. Scheint es nicht, dass irgend ein Glaube ihn fuhrt, ein Trost entschädigt? Dass er vielleicht seine eigne lange Finsterniss haben will, sein Unverständliches, Verborgenes, Räthselhaftes, weil er weiss, was er auch haben wird: seinen eignen Morgen, seine eigne Erlösung, seine eigne Morgenröthe?... Gewiss, er wird zurückkehren: fragt ihn nicht, was er da unten will, er wird es euch selbst schon sagen, dieser scheinbare Trophonios und Unterirdische, wenn er erst wieder „Mensch geworden" ist. Man verlernt gründlich das Schweigen, wenn man so lange, wie er, Maulwurf war, allein war - -

We must be one with our lover

when I was alone, I could think about her, but she was not there, she was not mine. When she was there, I could speak to her, but was too removed from myself to be able to think.

seul, je pouvais penser à elle, mais elle me manquait, je ne la possédais pas. Présente, je lui parlais, mais j’étais trop absent de moi-même pour pouvoir penser.

Proust, Sartre, Cervantes, Plato

Albertine's taste for these pretty things was much sharper than the Duchesse's, because, like any obstacle placed in the way of possession (like illness, which made travel so difficult and so desirable for me), poverty, more generous in this than riches, gives women something more than the clothes they cannot buy: the desire for these clothes, which is the true way, detailed, thorough, of getting to know them.

Albertine avait pour toutes ces jolies choses un goût bien plus vif que la duchesse, parce que, comme tout obstacle apporté à une possession (telle pour moi la maladie qui me rendait les voyages si difficiles et si désirables), la pauvreté, plus généreuse que l’opulence, donne aux femmes, bien plus que la toilette qu’elles ne peuvent pas acheter, le désir de cette toilette qui en est la connaissance véritable, détaillée, approfondie. 

As usual, the idea, that if the obstacle didn't exist we would achieve happiness, or we would live true life we always desired, etc. is an illusion. Our mind is concentrated on this obstacle and we forget those which also prevented or will prevent us being happy. We think that if not this obstacle, the road towards the happiness would be clear. That is, major obstacle bars from our vision smaller ones which are also capable of making our lives impossible.

Cervantes says that hunger is the best sauce.

Do you remember Sartre's phrase that France has never been so free?

What is a philosopher according Plato (Symposium), someone who desires wisdom. Not someone who is a sage, but someone who wants to become one.

We are able to know something or someone only through love.

Pyrrho Technics

He, too, can be considered a somewhat extravagant Socrates. In any case, he deserves our attention, because we are once again in the presence of a philosopher who … did not even write; instead, he simply lived …

His behavior was completely unpredictable. Sometimes he retired into complete solitude; at other times he went off traveling without telling anyone, taking whomever he met on the way as a traveling and conversation partners. He confronted all kinds of risks and dangers, defying prudence, and kept talking even when his audience had gone. One day he saw his master Anaxarchus who had fallen into a swamp; he continued on his way without helping him, and Anaxarchus congratulated on his for his indifference and insensitivity. Unlike the Cynics, however, he seems to have behaved in a simple manner, in perfect conformity with the lifestyle of other people. This is suggested by an ancient historian: “He lived piously with his sister, who was a midwife. Sometimes he went to the market to sell chickens or pigs. He did housekeeping with indifference, and it is said he bathed a pig with indifference, too.” Let us note in passing that this anecdote reminds us of what Chuang-tzu reports about Lao-tzu … “For three years he locked himself up, performing household tasks for his wife and serving food to the pigs as he would have served it to men; he made himself indifferent to everything, and eliminated all ornamentation, in order to rediscover simplicity.”

… Pyrrho was completely indifferent to everything. He therefore always remained in the same state; in other words, he felt no emotions or change in his dispositions under the influence of external things. He attached no importance to the fact that he was present at such-and-such a place or meeting such-and-such a person. He made no distinction between what is usually considered dangerous and what is harmless, between tasks judges to be superior and those considered inferior; between what is called suffering and what is called pleasure; between life and death. For the judgments people make about the value of such things are based on mere conventions. In fact, it is impossible to know whether a given thing is good or bad in itself. People’s unhappiness comes from the fact that they want to obtain what they think is good, or to escape what they think is bad. If we refuse to make this kind of distinction between things, and refrain from making value judgments about them or from preferring one thing above another … we will achieve peace and inner tranquility…

Plato on Diogenes

 Plato is supposed to have said of Diogenes that he was “Socrates gone mad.” (110)

He does not thank the gods for having elevated him to the Empire, nor for having granted him victory over the Germans, but for having guided him toward the philosophical life... 

What it means to act seriously?

... And so you will, if only you do each act as though it were your last...

Marcus Aurelius about glory

... Well, then, shall mere glory distract you? Look at the swiftness of the oblivion of all men; the gulf of endless time, behind and before; the hollowness of applause, the fickleness and folly of those who seem to speak well of you, and the narrow room in which it is confined. This should make you pause. For the entire earth is a point in space, and how small a corner thereof is this your dwelling place, and how few and how paltry those who will sing your praises here! ... (IV, 3)

You can be one of the happiest men who have ever lived even from this moment on

Be like the headland on which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and about it the boiling waters sink to sleep. 'Unlucky am I, because this has befallen me.' Nay rather: 'Lucky am I, because, though this befell me, I continue free from sorrow, neither crushed by the present, nor fearing what is to come.' For such an event might have befallen any man, but not every man would have continued in it free from sorrow. On what grounds then is this ill fortune more than that good fortune? Do you, speaking generally, call what is not a deviation from man's nature a man's ill fortune, and do you suppose that what is not opposed to his natural will is a deviation from his nature? Very well, you have been taught what that will is. Can what has befallen you prevent your being just, high-minded, temperate, prudent, free from rash judgements, trustful, self-reverent, free, and whatever else by its presence with him enables a man's nature to secure what is really his? Finally, in every event which leads you to sorrow, remember to use this principle: that this is not a misfortune, but that to bear it like a brave man is good fortune.

Plato on life and death

The most famous practice is the exercise of death. Plato alludes to it in the Phaedo, whose theme is precisely the death of Socrates. Here, Socrates declares that a man who has spent his life in philosophy necessarily has the courage to die, since philosophy in nothing other than an exercise of death. It is an exercise of death because death is the separation of the soul and the body, and the philosopher spends his time trying to detach his soul from his body. (67)

Socrates on knowledge

When Socrates said that virtue is knowledge, he was not using “knowledge” to mean pure, abstract knowledge of the good. Rather, he meant knowledge which chooses and wants the good - in other words, an inner disposition in which thought, will, and desire are one. (65)

We said above that for Plato, knowledge is never purely theoretical. It is the transformation of our being; it is virtue. And now we can say that it is also affectivity. (70)

Pascal and Plotinus

Pascal: You would not seek me if you had not already found me.

Plotinus: If something were totally deprived of the good, it would never seek the good. (40)

Legendary Socrates

when the sun had already come up. Socrates… got up and left. He headed in the direction of Lyceum, and after performing his ablutions, he spent the rest of the day just he would have any other. (40)

To be an individual?

30

It is in Alcibiades’ speech in praise of Socrates that the representation of the Individual appears, perhaps for the first time in history. This is the Individual dear to Kierkegaard - the Individual as unique and unclassifiable personality.

Why we act?

28-9

The point was thus not so much to question the apparent knowledge we think we have, as to question ourselves and the values which guide our own lives. In the last analysis, Socrates’ interlocutor, after carrying on a dialogue with him, no longer has any idea of why he acts.

Habit and its absurdity

We should note that the regularity of a habit is usually a function of its absurdity.

Il est du reste à remarquer que la constance d'une habitude est d'ordinaire en rapport avec son absurdité.

 'So we are contending,' he said, 'for no ordinary prize, but for whether we are to be sane or insane.'

XI, 38

Written pages are already dead

51

Dogmas are not mathematical rules, learned once and for all and then mechanically applied. Rather, they must somehow become achievements of awareness, intuitions, emotions, and moral experiences which have the intensity of a mystical experience or a vision. ... it is not enough to reread what has already been written. Written pages are already dead, and the Meditations were not made to be reread. What counts is the reformulation: the act of writing or talking to oneself, right now, in the very moment when one needs to write. It is also the act of composing with the greatest care possible: to search for that version which, at a given moment, will produce the greatest effect, in the moment before it fades away, almost instantaneously, almost as soon as it is written. Characters traced onto some medium do not fixe anything: everything is in the act of writing. Thus, we witness a succession on new attempts at composition, repetitions of same formulas, and endless variations on the same themes: the themes of Epictetus.

The goal is to reactualize, rekindle, and ceaselessly reawaken an inner state which is in a constant danger of being numbed or extinguished. The task - ever-renewed - is to bring back to order an inner discourse which becomes dispersed and diluted in the futility of routine.

50

Marcus writes only in order to have the dogmas and rules of life always present to his mind. He is thus following the advice of Epictetus, who, after having set forth the distinction between what does and does not depend on us - the fundamental dogma of Stoicism - adds:

It is about this that philosophers ought to meditate; this is what they should write down every day, and it should be the subject of their exercises

You must have these principles at hand both night and day; you must write them down; you must read them.

The Stoic philosophical life consists essentially in mastering one's inner discourse. Everything in in an individual's life depends on how he represents things to himself.

Kierkegaard and Shakespeare and Marcus Aurelius

A procession's vain pomp, plays on a stage, flocks, herds, sham fights, a bone thrown to puppies, a crumb into fishponds, toiling and moiling of ants carrying their loads, scurrying of startled mice, marionettes dancing to strings. Well, then, you must stand up in all this, kindly and not carrying your head proudly; yet understand that every man is worth just so much as the worth of what he has set his heart upon. (VII, 3)

"Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more."

Reality that is given

these costumes were not a trivial decoration which could have been replaced by any other, but an inescapable reality, poetic in the same way as the weather, or the light peculiar to a certain time of day.

ces toilettes n’étaient pas un décor quelconque, remplaçable à volonté, mais une réalité donnée et poétique comme est celle du temps qu’il fait, comme est la lumière spéciale à une certaine heure.

Mais je sentais qu’au contraire cette couleur n’était ni inertie, ni caprice, mais nécessité et vie.