Knowledge Combats the Insipidity of the World
G'morning everyone,
After finishing Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism yesterday afternoon (you can check out my review of it on my page), I realized that I haven't been reading as much nonfiction as I would like to.
Philosophy, specifically.
I surveyed my bookshelf last night, searching for a philosophical work that I had started but had not finished (there are several). And then I came upon Arthur Schopenhauer's Essays and Aphorisms. I had read just over half the work, and I decided I would try to finish it.
Schopenhauer has always been one of my favorite thinkers (save for a few of this thoughts, including those on women). I cracked it open and started reading the section called "On Philosophy and Intellect."
As someone who has strong affinities to pessimistic literature and philosophy, one of the first passages I read was like a gut-punch.
It went as follows: "Considering the monotony and consequent insipidity of life one would find it unendurably tedious after any considerable length of time, were it not for the continual advance of knowledge and insight and the acquisition of even better and clearer understanding of all things, which is partly the fruit of experience, partly the result of the changes we ourselves undergo through the different stages of life by which our point of view is to a certain extent being continually altered, whereby things reveal to us sides we did not yet know. In this way, despite the decline in our mental powers, the day teaches the day still holds indefatigably true and gives life an ever-renewed fascination, in that what is identical continually appears as something new and different."
To simplify this passage, it could be said that Schopenhauer believed knowledge to be one of the only elements of human life that makes life endurable.
I couldn't agree more.
And it was precisely what I needed to hear—at a time when I haven't been reading as much as I would like. And since I've picked up reading again (almost full time), Schopenhauer's thought holds true: the acquisition of knowledge makes for a much less boring life.
So, here's to growing in knowledge—and hoping that we, as a species, never figure it all out. How boring an existence that would be!
After finishing Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism yesterday afternoon (you can check out my review of it on my page), I realized that I haven't been reading as much nonfiction as I would like to.
Philosophy, specifically.
I surveyed my bookshelf last night, searching for a philosophical work that I had started but had not finished (there are several). And then I came upon Arthur Schopenhauer's Essays and Aphorisms. I had read just over half the work, and I decided I would try to finish it.
Schopenhauer has always been one of my favorite thinkers (save for a few of this thoughts, including those on women). I cracked it open and started reading the section called "On Philosophy and Intellect."
As someone who has strong affinities to pessimistic literature and philosophy, one of the first passages I read was like a gut-punch.
It went as follows: "Considering the monotony and consequent insipidity of life one would find it unendurably tedious after any considerable length of time, were it not for the continual advance of knowledge and insight and the acquisition of even better and clearer understanding of all things, which is partly the fruit of experience, partly the result of the changes we ourselves undergo through the different stages of life by which our point of view is to a certain extent being continually altered, whereby things reveal to us sides we did not yet know. In this way, despite the decline in our mental powers, the day teaches the day still holds indefatigably true and gives life an ever-renewed fascination, in that what is identical continually appears as something new and different."
To simplify this passage, it could be said that Schopenhauer believed knowledge to be one of the only elements of human life that makes life endurable.
I couldn't agree more.
And it was precisely what I needed to hear—at a time when I haven't been reading as much as I would like. And since I've picked up reading again (almost full time), Schopenhauer's thought holds true: the acquisition of knowledge makes for a much less boring life.
So, here's to growing in knowledge—and hoping that we, as a species, never figure it all out. How boring an existence that would be!
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