Essential unmodified excerpts on Stocism, Nihilism, Hedonism, and Absurdism from classical books and articles:
- Serenity (Apathia) of Stoicism
- Void (Abyss) of Nihilism
- Pleasure (Ennui) of Hedonism
- Responsibility (Angst) of Absurdism
- Conclusion
Serenity (Apathia) of Stoicism
Meditations, AD 170, by Marcus Aurelius
Maximus
Self-control and resistance to distractions.
Optimism in adversity - especially illness.
A personality in balance: dignity and grace together.
Doing your job without whining.
Other people's certainty that what he said was what he thought, and what he did was done without malice.
Never taken aback or apprehensive. Neither rash nor hesitant - or bewildered, or at a loss. Not obsequious -
but not aggressive or paranoid either.
Generosity, charity, honesty.
The sense he gave of staying on the path rather than being kept on it.
That no one could ever have felt patronized by him - or in a position to patronize him.
A sense of humor.
Body. Soul. Mind.
Sensations: the body.
Desires: the soul.
Reasoning: the mind.
To experience sensations: even grazing beasts do that. To let your desires control you: even wild animals do
that - and rutting humans, and tyrants (from Phalaris to Nero...).
To make your mind your guide to what seems best: even people who deny the gods do that. Even people who
betray their country. Even people who do <...> behind closed doors.
If all the rest is common coin, then what is unique to the good man?
To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a
mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God - saying nothing
untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don't acknowledge it - this life lived with simplicity,
humility, cheerfulness - he doesn't resent them for it, and isn't deterred from following the road where
it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful
unity with what must be.
The Serenity Prayer, 1937, by Reinhold Niebuhr
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
A Farewell to Arms, 1929, by Ernest Hemingway
I sat up straight and as I did so something inside my head moved like the weights on a doll's eyes and it hit me inside in back of my eyeballs. My legs felt warm and wet and my shoes were wet and warm inside. I knew that I was hit and leaned over and put my hand on my knee. My knee wasn't there. My hand went in and my knee was down on my shin.
I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.
Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation. Although that ceased when the carabiniere put his hands on my collar. I would like to have had the uniform off although I did not care much about the outward forms. I had taken off the stars, but that was for convenience. It was no point of honor. I was not against them. I was through. I wished them all the luck. There were the good ones, and the brave ones, and the calm ones and the sensible ones, and they deserved it. But it was not my show any more and I wished this bloody train would get to Mestre and I would eat and stop thinking. I would have to stop.
If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
So that was it. The baby was dead. That was why the doctor looked so tired. But why had they acted the way they did in the room with him? They supposed he would come around and start breathing probably. I had no religion but I knew he ought to have been baptized. But what if he never breathed at all. He hadn't. He had never been alive. Except in Catherine. I'd felt him kick there often enough. But I hadn't for a week. Maybe he was choked all the time. Poor little kid. I wished the hell I'd been choked like that. No I didn't. Still there would not be all this dying to go through. Now Catherine would die. That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.
I sat outside in the hail. Everything was gone inside of me. I did not think. I could not think. I knew she was going to die and I prayed that she would not. Don't let her die. Oh, God, please don't let her die. I'll do anything for you if you won't let her die. Please, please, please, dear God, don't let her die. Dear God, don't let her die. Please, please, please don't let her die. God please make her not die. I'll do anything you say if you don't let her die. You took the baby but don't let her die. That was all right but don't let her die. Please, please, dear God, don't let her die.
It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.
Void (Abyss) of Nihilism
The Gay Science, 1882, by Friedrich Nietzsche
The madman. - Haven't you heard of that madman who in the bright morning lit a lantern and ran around the marketplace crying incessantly, "I'm looking for God! I'm looking for God!" Since many of those who did not believe in God were standing around together just then, he caused great laughter. Has he been lost, then? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone to sea? Emigrated? - Thus they shouted and laughed, one interrupting the other.
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Where is God?" he cried; "I'll tell you! We have killed him - you and I! We are all his murderers. But how did we do this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Where is it moving to now? Where are we moving to? Away from all suns? Are we not continually falling? And backwards, sidewards, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an up and a down? Aren't we straying as though through an infinite nothing? Isn't empty space breathing at us? Hasn't it got colder? Isn't night and more night coming again and again? Don't lanterns have to be lit in the morning? Do we still hear nothing of the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we still smell nothing of the divine decomposition? - Gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!"
"How can we console ourselves, the murderers of all murderers! The holiest and the mightiest thing the world has ever possessed has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood from us? With what water could we clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what holy games will we have to invent for ourselves? Is the magnitude of this deed not too great for us? Do we not ourselves have to become gods merely to appear worthy of it? There was never a greater deed - and whoever is born after us will on account of this deed belong to a higher history than all history up to now!"
Crime and Punishment, 1886, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
I simply hinted that an 'extraordinary' man has the right... that is not an official right, but an inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep... certain obstacles, and only in case it is essential for the practical fulfillment of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of benefit to the whole of humanity).
I maintain that if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not have been made known except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred, or more men, Newton would have had the right, would indeed have been in duty bound... to eliminate the dozen or the hundred men for the sake of making his discoveries known to the whole of humanity.
Pleasure (Ennui) of Hedonism
Letter to Menoeceus: Avoid Pain, 300 BC, by Epicurus
Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we always come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing.
Crime and Punishment, 1886, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
In this vice at least there is something permanent, founded indeed upon nature and not dependent on fantasy, something present in the blood like an ever-burning ember, for ever setting one on fire and maybe, not to be quickly extinguished, even with years. You'll agree it's an occupation of a sort.
I agree, that it is a disease like everything that exceeds moderation. And, of course, in this one must exceed moderation. But in the first place, everybody does so in one way or another, and in the second place, of course, one ought to be moderate and prudent, however mean it may be, but what am I to do? If I hadn't this, I might have to shoot myself. I am ready to admit that a decent man ought to put up with being bored, but yet...
An Opponent-Process Theory of Motivation, 1974, by Richard Solomon and John Corbit
Selected Examples of Hedonic-Affective phenomena| First few stimulations | After many stimulations | |||
| Example | State A (input present) | State B (input gone) | State A' (input present) | State B' (input gone) |
| Opiate users, intravenous injection, moods and feelings | euphoria, rush, pleasure | craving, aversive withdrawal signs, short duration | loss of euphoria, normal feeling, relief | intense craving, abstinence agony, long duration |
| Epstein's parachutists, free fall, gross behavior, physiology | terror, autonomic nervous system arousal | stunned, stony-faced | tense, eager, expectant | exhilaration, jubilation |
| Dogs in Pavlov harness, 10-second shocks, gross behavior | terror, panic | stealth (subdued, cautious, inactive, hesitant) | unhappy (annoyed, anxious, afraid) | joy (euphoric, active, social), happy |
After repeated dosages of opiates over several weeks, State A begins to weaken, and at the same time State B begins to intensify and takes longer to return to baseline. State A' is called "normal" rather than euphoric. The rush is no longer experienced. Yet, State B' is more physiologically disturbing than B was, and lasts much longer than did State B. The craving aspect of State B' is now extremely intense, aversive, and enduring. It is called abstinence agony. It can be months before B' returns to baseline. Perhaps it never really does. It is a ghastly experience.
The repeated use of some drugs results in the behavioral phenomenon of addiction. People find themselves craving a substance in which they previously had little interest.
Addiction is not viewed as an abnormality. Instead, it is the inevitable consequence of a normally functioning system which opposes affective or hedonic states. We assume, for example, that love is an addiction phenomenon characterized by habituation to the presence of the loved one and intensified aversion in the absence of the loved one. In the same vein, we assume that imprinting in precocial birds is an addiction phenomenon. In the case of aversive stimulation, we assume that masochistic phenomena are the consequence of a normally functioning system which opposes affect. These phenomena are characterized by habituation to the presence of the feared or unpleasant event and intensified pleasure after the termination of that event.
Letter to Menoeceus: Avoid Pain, 300 BC, by Epicurus
When we say, therefore, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice, or willful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883, by Friedrich Nietzsche
Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star.
Alas, the time of the most contemptible man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself.
Behold, I show you the last man.
'What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?' thus asks the last man, and he
blinks.
The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small.
His race is as ineradicable as the flea-beetle; the last man lives longest.
'We have invented happiness,' say the last men, and they blink.
They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth.
One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth.
Becoming sick and harboring suspicion are sinful to them: one proceeds with caution.
A fool who still stumbles over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams.
And much poison at the end, for a pleasant death.
One still works, for work is a form of entertainment.
But one is careful lest the entertainment be too strenuous.
One no longer becomes poor or rich: both are too burdensome.
Who still wants to rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes
voluntarily into a madhouse.
'Formerly all the world was mad,' say the most refined, and they blink.
One is clever and knows everything that has ever happened: so there is no end of derision.
One still quarrels, but is soon reconciled - otherwise it upsets the stomach.
One has one's little pleasure for the day and one's little pleasure for the night: but one has a regard for
health.
'We have invented happiness,' say the last men, and they blink.
Responsibility (Angst) of Absurdism
Existentialism is a Humanism, 1946, by Jean-Paul Sartre
...if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence - a being whose existence comes before its essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept of it. That being is man, or, as Heidegger put it, the human reality. What do we mean here by "existence precedes essence"? We mean that man first exists: he materializes in the world, encounters himself, and only afterward defines himself. If man as existentialists conceive of him cannot be defined, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature since there is no God to conceive of it. Man is not only that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be, and since he conceives of himself only after he exists, just as he wills himself to be after being thrown into existence, man is nothing other than what he makes of himself. This is the first principle of existentialism. Subjectivism means, on the one hand, the freedom of the individual subject to choose what he will be, and, on the other, man's inability to transcend human subjectivity. The fundamental meaning of existentialism resides in the latter. When we say that man chooses himself, not only do we mean that each of us must choose himself, but also that in choosing himself, he is choosing for all men. In fact, in creating the man each of us wills ourselves to be, there is not a single one of our actions that does not at the same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for any of us unless it is good for all. If, moreover, existence precedes essence and we will to exist at the same time as we fashion our image, that image is valid for all and for our whole era. Our responsibility is thus much greater than we might have supposed, because it concerns all mankind. This allows us to understand the meaning behind some rather lofty-sounding words such as "anguish," "abandonment," and "despair." As you are about to see, it is all quite simple. First, what do we mean by anguish? Existentialists like to say that man is in anguish. This is what they mean: a man who commits himself, and who realizes that he is not only the individual that he chooses to be, but also a legislator choosing at the same time what humanity as a whole should be, cannot help but be aware of his own full and profound responsibility. True, many people do not appear especially anguished, but we maintain that they are merely hiding their anguish or trying not to face it. Certainly, many believe that their actions involve no one but themselves, and were we to ask them, "But what if everyone acted that way?" they would shrug their shoulders and reply, "But everyone does not act that way." In truth, however, one should always ask oneself, "What would happen if everyone did what I am doing?" The only way to evade that disturbing thought is through some kind of bad faith. Someone who lies to himself and excuses himself by saying "Everyone does not act that way" is struggling with a bad conscience, for the act of lying implies attributing a universal value to lies. This is what "abandonment" implies: it is we, ourselves, who decide who we are to be. Such abandonment entails anguish.That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free: condemned, because he did not create himself, yet nonetheless free, because once cast into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. As for "despair," it has a very simple meaning. It means that we must limit ourselves to reckoning only with those things that depend on our will, or on the set of probabilities that enable action. From the moment that the possibilities I am considering cease to be rigorously engaged by my action, I must no longer take interest in them, for no God or greater design can bend the world and its possibilities to my will. In the final analysis, when Descartes said "Conquer yourself rather than the world," he actually meant the same thing: we should act without hope.The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942, by Albert Camus
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.A Commentary on The Stranger, 1947, by Jean-Paul Sartre
The absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusion and without resignation, either. The absurd man asserts himself by revolting. He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination liberates him. He experiences the "divine irresponsibility" of a man sentenced to die. Since God does not exist and we all must die, everything is permissible. One experience is as good as another, so what matters is simply to acquire as many of them as possible. "For the absurd man, the ideal is the ever-conscious spirit." Confronted with this "quantitative ethic," all values collapse. Projected into this world, the absurd man, rebellious and irresponsible, has "nothing to prove." He is innocent, as innocent as Somerset Maugham's primitive tribesmen before the clergyman comes to teach them Good and Evil, what is permitted and what is forbidden. For this man, everything is permissible. He is as innocent as Prince Mishkin, who "lives in a perpetual present, tinged with smiles and indifference." Innocent in every sense of the word, an "idiot," too, if you like.The Trial, 1925, by Franz Kafka
Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.One afternoon - it was just before the final mail pickup and K. was very busy - K.'s Uncle Karl, a small landowner from the country, shoved his way between two assistants bringing in documents and entered the room. K. felt less alarm at seeing him than he had some time ago imagining his arrival. His uncle was bound to come, K. had been sure of that for over a month. At long last K. had decided to withdraw his case from the lawyer. Doubts as to whether it was the right thing to do could not be totally rooted out, but the firm conviction of its necessity outweighed them. "Don't deceive yourself," said the priest. "How am I deceiving myself?" asked K. "You're deceiving yourself about the court," said the priest, "in the introductory texts to the Law it says of this deception: Before the Law stands a doorkeeper. A man from the country comes to this doorkeeper and requests admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he can't grant him admittance now. The man thinks it over and then asks if he'll be allowed to enter later. 'It's possible,' says the doorkeeper, 'but not now.' Since the gate to the Law stands open as always, and the doorkeeper steps aside, the man bends down to look through the gate into the interior. When the doorkeeper sees this he laughs and says: 'If you're so drawn to it, go ahead and try to enter, even though I've forbidden it. But bear this in mind: I'm powerful. And I'm only the lowest doorkeeper. From hall to hall, however, stand doorkeepers each more powerful than the one before. The mere sight of the third is more than even I can bear.' The man from the country has not anticipated such difficulties; the Law should be accessible to anyone at any time, he thinks, but as he now examines the doorkeeper in his fur coat more closely, his large, sharply pointed nose, his long, thin, black tartar's beard, he decides he would prefer to wait until he receives permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at the side of the door. He sits there for days and years. He asks time and again to be admitted and wearies the doorkeeper with his entreaties. The doorkeeper often conducts brief interrogations, inquiring about his home and many other matters, but he asks such questions indifferently, as great men do, and in the end he always tells him he still can't admit him. The man, who has equipped himself well for his journey, uses everything he has, no matter how valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. And the doorkeeper accepts everything, but as he does so he says: 'I'm taking this just so you won't think you've neglected something.' Over the many years, the man observes the doorkeeper almost incessantly. He forgets the other doorkeepers and this first one seems to him the only obstacle to his admittance to the Law. He curses his unhappy fate, loudly during the first years, later, as he grows older, merely grumbling to himself. He turns childish, and since he has come to know even the fleas in the doorkeeper's collar over his years of study, he asks the fleas too to help him change the doorkeeper's mind. Finally his eyes grow dim and he no longer knows whether it's really getting darker around him or if his eyes are merely deceiving him. And yet in the darkness he now sees a radiance that streams forth inextinguishably from the door of the Law. He doesn't have much longer to live now. Before he dies, everything he has experienced over the years coalesces in his mind into a single question he has never asked the doorkeeper. He motions to him, since he can no longer straighten his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend down to him, for the difference in size between them has altered greatly to the man's disadvantage. 'What do you want to know now,' asks the doorkeeper, 'you're insatiable.' 'Everyone strives to reach the Law,' says the man, 'how does it happen, then, that in all these years no one but me has requested admittance.' The doorkeeper sees that the man is nearing his end, and in order to reach his failing hearing, he roars at him: 'No one else could gain admittance here, because this entrance was meant solely for you. I'm going to go and shut it now.'" On the eve of his thirty-first birthday - it was around nine in the evening, when the streets are quiet - two gentlemen entered K.'s lodgings. In frock coats, pale and fat, with top hats that seemed immovable. But the hands of one man were right at K.'s throat, while the other thrust the knife into his heart and turned it there twice. With failing sight K. saw how the men drew near his face, leaning cheek-to-cheek to observe the verdict. "Like a dog!" he said; it seemed as though the shame was to outlive him.
Conclusion
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974, by Robert M. Pirsig
"Well, you talked all night about it. You said at the top of the mountain we'd see everything. You said you
were
going to meet me there."
I think he's been dreaming. "How could I meet you there when I'm already with you?"
The only Zen you find on top of the mountain is the Zen you bring up there.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921, by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.