Robert said
I think of it only as ‘shorthand’ for an outlook, but as such it does not contain one’s whole philosophy of life. How one contextualizes this saying in one’s life can be profoundly moral or immoral, it seems to me.
This “outlook” is not a systematic philosophy that admits of conversion or apostasy. It is a predilection, an orientation, a response to pain that does not fetishize pointless suffering. When it wants to put on some swank it might call itself Epicureanism but it is just as clearly expressed in a child dancing in the rain.
Stephen said
Robert said
I think of it only as ‘shorthand’ for an outlook, but as such it does not contain one’s whole philosophy of life. How one contextualizes this saying in one’s life can be profoundly moral or immoral, it seems to me.
This “outlook” is not a systematic philosophy that admits of conversion or apostasy. It is a predilection, an orientation, a response to pain that does not fetishize pointless suffering. When it wants to put on some swank it might call itself Epicureanism but it is just as clearly expressed in a child dancing in the rain.
Mere sophistry. Of course it certainly isn’t a systematic philosophy, which is precisely the problem, especially when it is offered as some kind of useful answer to the question of a life purpose. You don’t actually get to offer it as a “response to pain,” and demand that it is above criticism. You also do not get to simultaneously assert it as a mere “predilection” or “orientation” and complain that others are unfairly calling it shallow, when that is exactly how you are proposing it.
I guess you could bend it anyway you like. Similarly, is the phrase “why worry be happy”. What about “eat, drink and be merry because if we don’t, we’ll die.”? But seriously, wasn’t eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die, some kind of a war preparation by a certain older C.E. celtic group?
JAS you aren’t really having a conversation with me anymore but with someone you’ve created. With all due respect I will step away and leave the two of you to it.
Jill I have great sympathy for my ancestors being a bit of a fatalist myself. Like Qoheleth. I often recall Emerson’s line about growing giddy gazing at the spinning wheels of history. This is why we must be pitiful to each other. There is no “may die“. But then happiness too is inevitable.
“He often noted that meaning required the public words provided and a more hidden private context. There is, of course, a large body of shared experience that makes general communication with words possible, but the further we move from this shared context, the more problems we encounter.”
This seems to fit right in with ideas about memory, particularly social memory, that Bart discussed in “Jesus Before the Gospels”.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
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Robert
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