Beyond Philosophy

Don't wait for life to happen, driving you down paths chosen for you haphazardly by events. Seize the reason that shows you the straight way to wisdom, a path that folk walk deliberately, as they choose. Your way to death should not be chaotic, as the way of fortune is. Quomodo ergo inquis me expediam? Effugere non potes necessitates, potes vincere. Fit via; et hanc tibi viam dabit philosophia. Ad hanc te confer si vis salvus esse, si securus, si beatus, denique si vis esse, quod est maximum, liber; hoc contingere aliter non potest. Humilis res est stultitia, abiecta, sordida, servilis, multis affectibus et sa ev issimis subiecta. Hos tam graves dominos, interdum alternis imperantes, interdum pariter, dimittit a te sapientia, quae sola libertas est. Una ad hanc fert via, et quidem recta; non aberrabis; vade certo gradu. Si vis omnia tibi subicere, te subice rationi; multos reges, si ratio te rexerit. Ab illa disces quid et quemadmodum aggredi debeas; non incides rebus. Neminem mi...

Marcus takes two views of the world: first an Epicurean view that sees all outcomes as accidental, emanating from contingency that lacks any unifying integrity; then, a Stoic one that sees them serving a greater purpose, essential somehow to the integrity of the whole. Ἤτοι κυκεὼν καὶ ἀντεμπλοκὴ καὶ σκεδασμὸς ἢ ἕνωσις καὶ τάξις καὶ πρόνοια. εἰ μὲν οὖν τὰ πρότερα, τί καὶ ἐπιθυμῶ εἰκαίῳ συγκρίματι καὶ φυρμῷ τοιούτῳ ἐνδιατρίβειν; τί δέ μοι καὶ μέλει ἄλλου τινὸς ἢ τοῦ ὅπως ποτὲ αἶα γίνεσθαι; τί δὲ καὶ ταράσσομαι; ἥξει γὰρ ἐπ’ ἐμὲ ὁ σκεδασμός, ὅ τι ἂν ποιῶ. εἰ δὲ θάτερά ἐστι, σέβω καὶ εὐσταθῶ καὶ θαρρῶ τῷ διοικοῦντι. The world is either a mess—a mad brew seething with momentary entanglement and scattering—or the opposite: a unified integrity marked by order and rational anticipation. If the former is our situation, then why would I wish to persist in any fixed position as part of a random heap, carried on in total disorder? Why does it matter to me that the earth be one way rather than anot...

Unamuno finishes presenting his initial portrait of God as the personification of the universe, which latter believers like him regard as an external, material expression of interior consciousness or awareness (cf. mind as imagined by Anaxagoras) that cannot be portrayed or conceived in purely, merely, or simply rational terms. Cuando la compasión, el amor nos revela al universo todo luchando por cobrar, conservar y acrecentar su conciencia, por concientizarse más y más cada vez, sintiendo el dolor de las discordancias que dentro de él se producen, la compasión nos revela la semejanza del universo todo con nosotros, que es humano, y nos hace descubrir en él a nuestro Padre, de cuya carne somos carne; el amor nos hace personalizar al todo de que formamos parte. En el fondo, lo mismo da decir que Dios está produciendo eternamente las cosas, como que las cosas están produciendo eternamente a Dios. Y la creencia en un Dios personal y espiritual se basa en la creencia en nuestra propia pers...

Seneca tells Lucilius how to be a philosopher in the army. Quod maximum vinculum est ad bonam mentem, promisisti virum bonum, sacramento rogatus es. Deridebit te, si quis tibi dixerit mollem esse militiam et facilem. Nolo te decipi. Eadem honestissimi huius et illius turpissimi auctoramenti verba sunt: uri, vinciri ferroque necari. Ab illis qui manus harenae locant et edunt ac bibunt quae per sanguinem reddant cavetur ut ista vel inviti patiantur: a te ut volens libensque patiaris. Illis licet arma summittere, misericordiam populi temptare: tu neque summittes nec vitam rogabis; recta tibi invictoque moriendum est. Quid porro prodest paucos dies aut annos lucrificare? sine missione nascimur. You promised the army a good man, and now the time is come to honor that solemn oath, the strongest tie that binds us to a sound mind. If anyone ever tells you that military service is soft and easy, he is definitely mocking you. I don't want you to be deceived. Your real wages are best summed ...

Unnatural events? Impossible, for Marcus Aurelius. Κατὰ τὴν τῶν ὅλων φύσιν ἕκαστα περαίνεται· οὐ γὰρ κατ’ ἄλλην γέ τινα φύσιν ἤτοι ἔξωθεν περιέχουσαν ἢ ἐμπεριεχομένην ἔνδον ἢ ἔξω ἀπηρτημένην. Everything achieves its final form in keeping with the nature of all things together, for there is no other nature containing it, whether we look within the whole of all things or in some realm beyond it.

Unamuno imagines our moments of awareness as soul, which leaves its trace in material that we know as our bodies (with feelings, emotions, and expression). As our bodily cells have moments of awareness whose totality is an expression personally ours, so he imagines the universe having moments of larger awareness that include but also supersede us, subsuming us into a universal personality that is larger than humanity—that is, in fact, divine. Ancient philosophers precede him on this path, though they often speculate that the individual vanishes in the collective, whose immortality or mortality is not the same as the immortality or mortality of the individual. Unamuno's desire is to retain some personal soul or awareness that is still uniquely his though it be part of something much vaster than he could ever be. He wants to be an constant, recurring current in the ocean of being, rather than a just a momentary wave. Tal vez la inmensa vía láctea que contemplamos durante las noches c...

The natural cycle of life must be punctuated by death, which we should accept fearlessly, as part and parcel of what it means to be alive. Sed postea diligentius docebo omnia quae videntur perire mutari. Aequo animo debet rediturus exire. Observa orbem rerum in se remeantium: videbis nihil in hoc mundo exstingui sed vicibus descendere ac surgere. Aestas abit, sed alter illam annus adducet; hiemps cecidit, referent illam sui menses; solem nox obruit, sed ipsam statim dies abiget. Stellarum iste discursus quidquid praeterit repetit; pars caeli levatur assidue, pars mergitur. Denique finem faciam, si hoc unum adiecero, nec infantes nec pueros nec mente lapsos timere mortem et esse turpissimum si eam securitatem nobis ratio non praestat ad quam stultitia perducit. Vale. But I shall teach you hereafter how all things that appear to perish are really only changed from one state to another. The man destined to return must take his leave with a mind at ease. Witness the world of things always ...