"When philosophy paints its grey in grey then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk." -- G.W.F. Hegel, 'Preface', Philosophy of Right.
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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx
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Seneca: On the Happy Life
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January 03, 2007
This is a quote from Seneca's essay On the Happy Life, where he is arguing for virtue against pleasure:
Let virtue go first, let her bear the standard. We shall none the less have pleasure, but we shall be the master and control her; at times we shall yield to her entreaty, never to her constraint. But those who surrender the leadership to pleasure, lack both; for they lose virtue, and yet do not possess pleasure, but are possessed by it, and they are either tortured by the lack of it or strangled by its excess - wretched if it deserts them, more wretched if it overwhelms them - they are like sailors who have been caught in the waters around the Syrtes, and now are left on the dry shore, and again are tossed by the seething waves. But this results from a complete lack of self- control and blind love for an object; for, if one seeks evils instead of goods, success becomes dangerous. As the hunt for wild beasts is fraught with hardship and danger, and even those that are captured are an anxious possession - for many a time they rend their masters - so it is as regards great pleasures; for they turn out to be a great misfortune, and captured pleasures become now the captors. And the more and the greater the pleasures are, the more inferior will that man be whom the crowd calls happy, and the more masters will he have to serve.
It is a passage that has relevance today. It can be interpreted as directed at those utilitarian hedonists (Epicureans) who maintain that the pleasures of the market give us a happy and fulfilled life. The happy life, for them, is the most pleasant or pleasurable life. Seneca is concerned with how we should live.
Seneca's classical Stoic response is that happineness is secured by the good, virtue is what is good, and virtue is the human excellences. It is within the Socratic tradition's concern with the importance of improving one's character to make possible the living of a happy life. This requires a lot of work for ordinary human beings as distinct from sages. As Dr. K. H. Seddon says Seneca offers guidance and techiques for self-improvement to help:
find new and improved perspectives on one’s specific concerns, to arrive eventually at a point where our worries are defeated, or our fears abolished, and our passions tempered. The endeavour to do this, and to live abiding by the insights attained constituted living as a philosopher.
This involves a transformation.
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Gary, These two items by my favourite "philosopher" provide a unique understanding on the origins & consequences of the urge to Happiness with a capital H.
1. www.dabase.net/happytxt.htm
2. www.dabase.net/dualsens.htm