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The Consolations of Philosophy

Unpopularity - Socrates

• rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval
• every society has notions of what one should believe and how one should have in order to avoid suspicion and unpopularity
• we think that societal conventions must have a sound basis because they have been adhered to by many people for a long time
• we refrain from questioning the status quo because we associate what is popular with what is right
• why do we assume that the task of directing one’s life could be undertaken without any sustained reflection on premises or goals?
• the established views have frequently emerged not through a process of faultless reasoning, but through centuries of intellectual muddle
• the correctness of a statement cannot be determined by whether it is held by a majority or has been believed for a long time
• a correct statement is one incapable of being rationally contradicted
• knowledge - understanding not only why something is true, but also why its alternatives are false
• the approval of others forms an essential part of our capacity to believe that we are right
• what should worry us is not the number of people who oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so
• don’t concentrate on the conclusions but on the logic used to reach them
• societal life is beset with disparities between others’ perceptions of us and our reality
• the validity of an idea or action is determined not by whether it is widely believed but by whether it obeys the rules of logic
• strive to listen to the dictates of logic and not just to the public opinion

Not Having Enough Money - Epicurus

• “Nothing satisfies the man who is not satisfied with a little.”
• objects mimic in a material dimension what we require in a psychological one
• we are enticed through the sly association of superfluous objects with our other, forgotten needs
• the needs which expensive goods cater to cannot be those on which our happiness depends
• happiness may be difficult to attain, but the obstacles are not primarily financial
• Happiness acquisition list:
  • Friendship
    • “Before you eat or drink anything, consider carefully who you eat or drink with rather than what you eat or drink.”
    • true friends do not evaluate us according to worldly criteria, it is the core self they are interested in
  • Freedom
    • accept a simpler way of life in exchange for independence
  • Thought
    • “There is nothing dreadful in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living.”

Frustration - Seneca

• at the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality
• sources of our satisfaction lie beyond our control and the world does not conform to our desires
• attain wisdom by learning not to aggravate the world’s obstinacy through our own responses
• what makes us angry are dangerously optimistic notions about what the world and other people are like
• rage is caused by a conviction that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life
• we will cease to be so angry once we cease to be so hopeful
• we are injured most by what we do not expect, so we must expect everything
• a subject’s agency is only one of the causal factors determining events in the course of his or her life
• the continuing belief that the world is fundamentally just is implied in the very complaint that there has been an injustice
• not everything which happens to us occurs with reference to something about us
• picture of a moral universe where external circumstances reflect internal qualities is flawed
• bad things probably will occur, but they are unlikely ever to be as bad as we fear
• once we look rationally at what will occur if our desires are not fulfilled, we will almost certainly find that the underlying problems are more modest than the anxieties they have bred
• it is tempting, when we are hurt, to believe that the thing which hurt us intended to do so
• “What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.” (– Hecato)
• “All outdoors may be bedlam, provided that there is no disturbance within.”
• wisdom lies in correctly discerning where we are free to mould reality according to our wishes and where we must accept the unalterable with tranquility
• we may be powerless to alter certain events, but we remain free to choose our attitude towards them
• “What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”

Inadequacy - Montaigne

• misplaced confidence in reason was the well-spring of idiocy - and, indirectly, also of inadequacy
• outlined a new kind of philosophy which acknowledged how far we were from the rational, serene creatures whom most of the ancient thinkers had taken us to be
• our bodies hold our minds hostage to their whims and rhythms
• learn to accept our physical faults as unalterable facts of our condition, neither so terrible nor so humiliating
• nothing that can happen to man is inhuman
• true wisdom must involve an accommodation with our baser selves
• in contrast to Epicurean and Stoic philosophies which has suggested that we could achieve mastery over our bodies
• people are quick and arrogant to divide the world into two camps, the camp of the normal and that of the abnormal
• the definition of normality proposed by any given society seems to capture only a fraction of what is in fact reasonable
• and unfairly condemns vast areas of experience to an alien status
• our country might have many virtues, but these did not depend on it being our country
• a foreign land might have many faults, but these could not be identified through the mere fact that its customs were unusual
• nationality and familiarity were absurd criteria by which to decide on the good
• unfamiliar =/= inadequate
• accusations of abnormality are regionally and historically founded
• a friend is someone kind enough to consider more of us normal than most people do
• “If man were wise, he would gauge the true worth of anything by its usefulness and appropriateness to his life.”
• Knowledge
  • Learning - logic, etymology, grammar, etc.
  • Wisdom - everything that could help a person to live well - happily and morally
• an incomprehensible prose-style is likely to have resulted more from laziness than cleverness
• if we attend properly to our experiences and learn to consider ourselves plausible candidates for an intellectual life, it is open to all of us to arrive at insights no less profound than those in the great ancient books
• a virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough

A Broken Heart - Schopenhauer

• will-to-life - an inherent drive within human beings to stay alive and reproduce
• will-to-life drives us towards people who will raise our chances of producing beautiful and intelligent offspring
• love is nothing but the conscious manifestation of the will-to-life’s discovery of an ideal co-parent
• “Everyone endeavours to eliminate through the other individual his own weaknesses, defects, and deviations from the type.”
• the pursuit of personal happiness and the production of healthy children are two radically contrasting projects, which love maliciously confuses us into thinking of as one
• we must never allow our suffering to be compounded by suggestions that there is something odd in suffering so deeply
• it is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan
• what we encounter in works of art and philosophy are objective versions of our own pains and struggles
• they explain our condition to us, and thereby hep us to be less lonely with, and confused by it
• there is consolation in realizing that our case is only one of thousands

Difficulties - Nietzsche

• difficulties of every sort are to be welcomed by those seeking fulfillment
• pain is natural and inevitable on the way to reaching anything good
• the sources of our greatest joys lie awkwardly close to those of our greatest pains
• in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation
• we suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfillment
• all lives are difficult; what makes some of them fulfilled as well is the manner in which pains have been met
• in life there may be difficult emotions and situations which can nevertheless result in the greatest achievements and joys
• most of us fail to recognize that anxiety and envy are valuable
• to cut out every negative root would simultaneously mean choking off positive elements that might arise from it further up the stem of the plant
• we should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them
• “Happiness and unhappiness are sisters and even twins that either grow up together or remain small together.”
• the New Testament consoles us by suggesting that many of our difficulties are not difficulties at all but rather virtues
• inventors of Christianity fashioned a hypocritical creed denouncing what they wanted but were too weak to fight for while praising what they did not want but happened to have
• addicted to ‘the religion of comfortableness’, Christians, in their value system, had given precedence to what was easy, not what was desirable, and so had drained life of its potential
• we all become Christians when we profess indifference to what we secretly long for but do not have
• approach our setbacks by continuing to believe in what we wish for, even when we don’t have it, and may never have it
• difficulties are critical prerequisites of fulfillment and saccharine consolations are ultimately more cruel than helpful
• not everything which makes us feel better is good for us and not everything which hurts may be bad
• “To regard states of distress in general as an objection, as something that must be abolished, is the supreme idiocy, in general sense a real disaster in its consequences…almost as stupid as the will to abolish bad weather.”