Il Giornale 21/08/2006
The Decline of the Will SCHOPENHAUER
The Adelphi has proceeds from this latest book titled posthumous writings of Schopenhauer painstaking art of Franco Volpi, The art of aging (pp. 112, € 8, translated by John Gurisatti), apparently for continuity with The Art of Being Happy , The art of treating women , The art of winning respect etc.. But he would have done better to name it after age-related, that is, to give him the same title, here shown as a subtitle, the author gave to the collection from which the fragments are derived.
It indicates in fact the true meaning. The 'quotes, thoughts, memories, conjectures scientific, psychological observations, rules of conduct and maximum of life 'in the book is, have little to do with the art of growing old.
are the last drops of wisdom of Schopenhauer's philosophical meditation, Volpi says, and it is true. But they are also the drops of bitterness, anger and quirks that accompany the full meditation of Schopenhauer. To find something on a real art to grow old, you have to resort to Aphorisms on the wisdom of life that are contained in Parerga and Paralipomena , as does Volpi, which gives a long passage, taken from the last chapter (' On the difference between the ages of life '). From this long passage, however, we get very little as the art of growing old. We just say you should age well because all you get back. But you do not specify how. However, all we can be good in old age appears to be a measure of calm, the cessation of agitation, which dominates the youth. But after as before, are the sad truths of life to overcome it: "Life is deprivation, poverty and want. So concern and care, and suction tension, grief and sorrow. " Art, in contrast, one can not exert much. Life is a misery, and suffering his only reality.
It cites Sophocles, who considered a good old age, because freed from the slavery of sex. But if you really need to ask the non-release of this slavery, that is precisely the persistence of desire, although scemino forces, rather than being, for most people, the more prickly thorn in the side of old age. The same calm, on the other hand, is nothing but empty, which, faute de mieux, permits, willing and able, thought and philosophy, instead of poetry and greedy and vain, but invigorating, pursuit of happiness. Not to mention the physical decay, which makes getting worse until "the day the same for all" ( unus dies par omni ). After climbing the mountain of life, you see really, on the other hand, death is at his feet, and that until then was known only by hearsay. All the forces you down, and this is even good, says Schopenhauer, because euthanasia help, so he does not mean the death by accident or illness, but for soft shutdown, which occurs even without one noticing.
So the art of growing old is not found in this booklet. Ben, however, is Schopenhauer, and not just with the remnants of his meditation, but with some peaks of his doctrine. For example, who gives his life for his country or for the species, he says, considers death the blink of an eye that does not interrupt the view and continue to live in the other, 'The reason why we age and die is not physical, but metaphysical, and the children always feel too old to be a sign that our core our essence does not change, because it is not in time and because it is indestructible. There are insightful observations, lightning strokes, "As soon as one speaks of God, I do not know what he's talking ',' The condition to be wise is to live in a world of fools ',' Getting married means do everything possible to each other venirsi nausea ',' Sure, it would be very nice if the death does not extinguish the intellect: it would bring the greek intact in the other world that we have learned in this. "
In tune with his conception of religions as mythologies built on fundamental truths dimly perceived, is the observation of the fragment on Christianity 116: "With His Christ that serves as a scapegoat, predestination, justification by faith, etc., so the intricate, tangled, lumpy rather mythology of Christianity is the daughter of two parents are very heterogeneous, it is born from the conflict between the truth and felt the existing Jewish monotheism, which is opposed in an essential way. "
As you see, not many in the pages of this book we meet with the philosopher and the moralist, the thinker and a bino, the Janus, which is unique in the history of thought. In it there are the philosophers and moralists, among them separate. Instead Schopenhauer is so is the other one is that Nietzsche, for example, has come to deny that he was philosopher to proclaim moral genius. But you can deny the philosophical value of building huge conceptual Schopenhauer, with his sense of being and of the mystery? Denying the revolution brought about in philosophy dall'irrompere the scene of the blind will to live powerful and unstoppable, and his bully on the right? While still other philosophers
largheggiano with the principles and theories, but they are greedy and examples of applications (the transition from the universal to the concrete bridge, the donkey is the philosophers), Schopenhauer has two operations almost independently of each other. Almost, because their particular value is their own union background. Extensive psychological analysis that fatten its volumes, ie, the phenomenology of life applications of the theories set forth, which therefore do not remain isolated observations, remote and almost casual, as in psychology, but will rise to the "Will" as a single source, the constant coming and going from theory to life and life to theories, in addition to providing proof of the validity and effectiveness of the theory itself, is a magnificent fresco of life and a study of the passions of unique insight, depth and consistency, and this explains precisely the distinction made by Nietzsche and his admiration of the moralist.
0 comments:
Post a Comment