If there are optimists who are planning to read this post, I suggest that you sell your wares in another place, because you will find nothing like that here and today. I am one who is a brother to those who suffer from "weltschmerz"--world weariness or pain. I have come to the conclusion after many years of reading and teaching Shakespeare's "Hamlet" that the reason I enjoy reading or teaching it is that Hamlet and I are practically the same person. We both find the world "...weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable." I live every day in angst as the product of a bleak childhood from which there is no escape. Oh, I'm not asserting that there have not been times when I've been very happy. One cannot go through a long life without being teased with those moments, however short or long they last. But I do not believe that the world has enjoyed those moments since the Greeks with Menelaus and Achilles sacked Troy, or since the Romans destroyed the Temple, or since the Inquisition committed multiple crimes, or since World War I, or since the Holocaust in WWII, or since the atomic bomb decimated Hiroshima, or since the invasion of Iraq. Those are events in the world that are "unprofitable." But the human race as individuals has suffered from unimaginable diseases like the Black Plague, or yellow fever, or Infantile Paralysis, or aids, or cancer for which there is still no cure. I'm not even going to go over the "...slings and arrows of outrageous fortune..." which come along with age, like spinal stenosis, or intermittant claudication, or atrial fibrillation, or congestive heart failure, or pneumonia, etc. And I'll just toss into this witches' brew of evil the result of combat in war, PTSD, which can last forever and for which there is also no cure. Therefore, in order to relieve these "...whips and scorns of time...", I've decided to go back to the love of Philosophy, one of my favorite studies in college, a study which engenders calm and wisdom..
Philosophy means "love of wisdom", and there is pleasure in philosophy. It deals with five branches of human endeavor: ethics, aesthetics, logic, politics, and metaphysics. Each of these studies provides hours and hours of medicinal help and comfort for anyone's weltschmerz. Most of us have known some golden days in the June of life when the love of some elusive Truth seemed more glorious than the dross of life. "Life has meaning," says Robert Browning, and to find it's meaning is the soul of philosophy. Philosophy attempts to provide answers to our questions. "Who's there?" shouts the sentry on the parapet of the castle in Elsinore. They are the first two words in "Hamlet." Two words which have led to the seeking of God and the establishment of religion, although the sentry only means to discover the origin of the sound a visitor makes. But one must constantly look for double meanings when reading the plays of Shakespeare. And one must always look to the philosophers for answers to the questions one might make who suffers from "...slings and arrows...". My favorite philosophers are Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Voltaire, Kant, and most of all, Schopenhauer who wrote the mastepiece, "The World as Will and Idea." And although this blog is meant primarily to provide a journal of our life in Florida, I must sometime vent my thoughts about life in general. And this I mean to do, and in doing so will help to relieve my weltschmerz. I am not at all finished with this discussion.
Oh, weltschmerz! My personal muse in senior year of high school!
ReplyDeleteI will be very interested in your discussion of philosophy. I never quite "got it" when I studied it in college, tho' I found it compelling and still do.
Are all philosophers pessimists? Are all religionists optimists?
How does one choose a favorite philosopher? Is it the one whose view of the world most agrees with ours?
Does the study of philosophy answer our questions or spur more?
If a wife nags in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, is she still nagging?
ReplyDeleteRobin: How very philosophical of you.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: A nag can only occur if there is a nagger and a naggee. In your example, there is no naggee; therefore, the wife could not have been nagging in the first place, so she cannot be "still nagging" at any point. However, if the husband was present when the wife's nagging commenced, and he slowly walked away until he was out of earshot, THEN the question could arise as to whether the nagging technically continues or not.