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by DyslexicAtheist
1838 days ago
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thanks for this wonderful William James quote and the links. I've yet to read him and I already sense from this quote I like his way with words. From what I understand Nietzsche himself didn't have too many great things to say about Schopenhauer. He must have rubbed people the wrong way wherever he went and perhaps the only way for him to ever be recognized is be dead long enough so the writing is removed as far as possible from the man. I'm going to read Santayana - thanks for the tip. Much appreciated. If you appreciate funny philosophers do check out Peter Wessel-Zapffe[1] a crazy Norwegian who loved his mountains and is quite dark[2] in a brilliant way. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Wessel_Zapffe [2] https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah |
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Well, one of Nietzsche's most amazing productions is one of his first, the short essay On Truth and Lie in a Nonmoral Sense (1873), somewhat in a similar vein to that Zapffe, but, uh, well, behold how it starts! :
In some remote corner of the universe that is poured out in countless flickering solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the most arrogant and the most untruthful moment in "world history" — yet indeed only a moment. After nature had taken a few breaths, the star froze over and the clever animals had to die.
Someone could invent such a fable and still not have illustrated adequately how pitiful, how shadowy and fleeting, how purposeless and arbitrary the human intellect appears within nature. There were eternities when it did not exist; and someday when it no longer is there, not much will have changed.
Further on, one of his most quoted passages:
What is truth? a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphisms, in short, a sum of human relations which were poetically and rhetorically heightened, transferred, and adorned, and after long use seem solid, canonical, and binding to a nation. Truths are illusions about which it has been forgotten that they are illusions, worn-out metaphors without sensory impact, coins which have lost their image and now can be used only as metal, and no longer as coins. We still do not know where the desire for truth originates; for until now we have heard only of the obligation which society, in order to exist, imposes: to be truthful, i.e., to use the customary metaphors, or in moral terms, the obligation to lie according to an established convention, to lie collectively in a style that is mandatory for everyone.
Actually he had a lot to say about him—check out Schopenhauer as Educator, a long essay from Nietzsche's first (full-sized) book, Untimely Meditations aka Unfashionable Observations aka Thoughts Out Of Season—it's a very grateful tribute.
William James wrote so many great essays, and one of the most accessible, and touching, is On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings and its sequel What Makes A Life Significant. OACBIHB has a lot of great long quotes from various places, actually that reminds me, I think I rediscovered Stevenson's essays from a long quote in that, which is itself a huge debt. I'm into writers who faced life with joy and courage, and who love passing on that gift—Emerson, Stevenson, Chesterton etc.
Santayana - I never got anything from the systemy Life of Reason or Realms of Being, maybe I should try again one day. Soliloquies in England etc are short nontechnical essays on all subjects. My favourite books of his are the ones with long essays on particular philosophers or philosophical/cultural scenes, like Character and Opinion in the US. And the chapters on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in Egotism in German Philosophy are among the best things written on those guys, as seems so often the case with Santayana. Cheers!
p.s. Come to think of it, this page on my website has links to a fair bit of James' stuff, and a few good quotes by and about him! http://www.adamponting.com/william-james/