Excerpts from Thoughts on the Futility of Life from the Ancient Greeks to the Present by Alan R. Pratt
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Sweetness is always tainted with bitterness ~ Petrinius Arbiter d. A.D.66 "Satyricon"
It was fear that first brought gods into the world.~ Petrinius Arbiter d. A.D.66 "Satyricon"
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For men who are fortunate, life is short; but for those who fall into misfortune, one night is an infinite time. ~ Lucian,
Epigram c. A.D. 170
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The Medieval World: Very Dark Ages, Indeed A.D. 500-1350
While Christianity created a great deal of emotional stress for believers, its impact on the intellectual life of the time was disastrous. Even the earliest Christians felt that rational analysis was unreliable in matters of faith. Tertullian, for example, rejected reason altogether and seriously argued that the most persuasive evidence for belief was its patent absurdity. Eventually the all-encompassing Church became the unquestioned, final authority on both ecclesiastical and secular affairs. Some of the negative results of this development included a bloodthirsty inquisition, the tortured and unintelligible logic of the scholastic philosophers, and centuries of intellectual intolerance and stagnation.
He [God] fashioned hell for the inquisitive.
As far as this life of mortals is concerned, which is spent and ended in a few days, what does it matter under whose government a dying man lives?~ St. Augustine A.D. 374-430
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BOETHIUS (Remember Toole's Confederacy of Dunces? This was the author of
The Consolations of Philosophy, the book cherished by the main character, Ignatius Reilly)
Who hath so much happiness that he is not on some part offended with the condition of his estate?
In every adversity of fortune, to have been happy is the most unhappy kind of misfortune.
An everlasting law is made,
That all things born shall fade.___________________________________________________________
It is a misery to be born, a pain to live, a trouble to die.~ St. Bernard of Clairvaux 1090-1153,
De ConsiderationeTell me, O mortal man, tell me about the putridity of the worm;
Tell me o flesh, o dust, what good is the glory of Flesh?
O man wretch, why do you take pride in putridity?
Learn what you are, what you will be; remember that you will die.
First you were sperm, then stench, then food for worms, then dust,
And thence nothing; what then, does a man have to be proud about?
As the rose pales when it feels the sun draw near, so man will vanish:
Now he is, now he has ceased to be.~ Cambridge University Library MS Ee, Vi. 29, fol. 17 c.1200
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The Renaissance: The Rebirth of Angst 1350-1625
Dissatisfaction with the growing wealth and unchecked corruption of the Roman Catholic church helped to disrupt and eventually break down the static medieval worldview, and the long hibernation of free inquiry slowly began to end. For the first time in a thousand years, investigations into the nature of the world could be conducted without ecclesiastical interference and the threat of heresy.
For the masses, then, there was no Renaissance, for, as in ages past, they were preoccupied with the same day-to-day struggle for survival that had consumed the lives of their ancestors, a struggle made more difficult, no doubt, by crumbling myths and traditions.
While I thought I have been learning to live, I have been learning to die.~ Leonardi Da Vinci, 1452-1519,
NotebooksCondemned and doomed to die, we are all shut up in the prison of this world.~ St. Thomas More 1478-1535,
On the Vanity of this LifeIt is more secure to be feared than to be loved.~ Niccolo Machiavelli 1469-1527, from
The PrinceTo speak of the people is to speak of madmen, for the people is a monster full of confusion and error, and its vain beliefs are as far from truth as is Spain from India.~ Francesco Guicciardini,
The Story of Italy 1853
Will is the pimp of appetite.~ Lope De Vega 1562-1635,
Los Locos de Valencia_________________________________________________________
In Michel De Montaigne's [1533-1592] masterpiece of self-analysis, the collected Essays (1560-1580), one can follow the evolution of his thought from stoicism to skepticism. The more carefully he pursued knowledge, the less he knew. His motto "What do I know? What does it matter?" sums up his skeptical reaction to all things. His answer, "It may be and it may not be," suggests his dissillusionment and cynicism and testifies to his awareness that relativity is everywhere, that there are no absolutes.
We imagine ourselves superior to all creatures by virtue of our reason, he concludes, but all rational theorizing has not revealed even one universal truth. What is, we cannot know.
From
Essays:
There is no animal in the world so treacherous as man.
In the midst of compassion we inwardly feel a kind of malicious delight to see others suffer.
We are no nearer heaven on top of Mount Cenis than at the bottom of the sea.
Pleasure itself is painful in its depth.From "Apology for Raymond Sebond" in
Essays II:
Of all the part of what we know is the least part of what we know not.
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known.
By this variety and instability of opinions they lead us as by the hand, tacitly, to this conclusion of their inconclusiveness ... They do not openly to profess ignorance and the imbecility of human reason so as not to frighten the children: but they reveal it to us clearly enough under the guise of a muddled and inconsistent knowledge.
Now, since our condition accommodates things to itself and transforms them according to itself, we no longer know what things are in truth, for nothing comes to us except falsified and altered by our senses. The uncertainty of our senses makes everything they produce uncertain.
Since the senses cannot decide or dispute, being themselves full of uncertainty, it must be reason that does so. But no reason can be established without another reason: there we go retreating back to infinity.That last one reminded me very much of Holden's "
philosophical skepticism concerning the validity of the foundations of mathematics," when he writes:
We can spend our time working on mathematical proofs ,but surely, we cannot overlook the fact that the Dolciani book lays down what is intended to be secure base of absolute truth:the axioms of logic,the intuitively certain principles of mathematics, the self-evident axioms and rules.Each of these foundations is assumed without demonstration,leaving them open to challenge and doubt.This book uses deductive logic to demonstrate the truth of theorems of mathematics.Consequently,the book fails to establish the absolute validity of mathematical truth.For deductive logic can only transmit truth,not inject it,and the conclusion of a proof is no more certain than the weakest premise.
and
The quest for certainty in mathematics leads inevitably to a vicious cycle.Any mathematical system depends on a set of assumptions,and trying to establish their certainty by proving them leads to infinite regression. There is no way of discharging the assumptions.Without proof,the assumptions remain fallible beliefs,not necessary knowledge.All that can be done is to minimise them,to get a reduced set of axioms,which have to be accepted without proof.The only alternative is to replace one set of assumptions by another.But replacement merely starts off a further circuit of the vicious cycle.
Hence,
no reason can be established without another reason: there we go retreating back to infinity.
O senseless man, who cannot make a maggot and yet will make gods by the dozen!_________________________________________________________
Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed.
In one selfe place, for where we are is hell,
And where hell is, must we ever be.~ Christopher Marlowe,
Doctor FaustusHope is the fawning traitor of the mind, while, under color of friendship, it robs it of its chief force of resolution.~ Sir Philip Sidney,
Arcadia 1590
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