Hamilton 2019 hope and rapture Flashcards
philosophy does not know
rapture
[philosophy] deflates suspects dissects organises
controls places distinguishes
[philosophy] always wants to say more
and say what it says for others
[philosophy] it does not allow itself to be carried away
to long to yearn
[philosophy] does not wear and it does not know
the melancholy tone, the nostalgia
religion knows the yearning and
the longings
how can It be that philosophy has overlooked the importance of
such moments in a life, moments that can be filled with so much hope
there are many different versions of such moments
silence and delicacy
you have missed one of the most important dimensions of
human experience
philosophical ethics is in love with duty, obligation
(…) it shuns sensuality of the body, longing and yearning, the grief of loss of things never had, or had only fleetingly
lying in bed, with his hands on her breasts, is no answer to limitless evil and indifference
it solves nothing
it is a miracle that it is still possible
(…) the kind of moment he [Berger] describes is a hope of better human life
if you tell someone what to believe, he or she will most likely resist and become more
embedded in his or her life as it is
(berger) his is a philosophy of the
subjunctive (Kierkegaard)
the assertions of literary culture are written
spoken, in the subjunctive
we should not strip literature of whatever it is in it- many things-
that baffles us
[literature] it addresses the ways in which one’s life is knotted,
seemingly hopelessly tangled, that is true
to think of that address in manly moral terms is to fail to see the ways in which
literature goads us, that need not to be a moral matter at all
Simone Weil: the vulnerability of precious things is beautiful
because vulnerability is a mark of existence
when we sleep, we are enclosed in our humanity. we are innocent. our humanity, that is, shows up as innocent when we sleep
sleep is therefore hope for us, the absence of sleep, a curse
man, he [Cioran] says is the only animal that
can not sleep when it wants to
we move in such sacred places and think
they are just spaces
all our movements are influenced, inflicted, moulded, set in train
hampered by the material environment in which we exist
the snow, today, tomorrow, makes their world
and who they are
this is their version, at this moment in life, of Bergers holding his beloved’s breasts and
listening to the piano
you can know this and still not have
learnt it
pierre Bonnard painted canvases of his wife, Mathe. Marthe suffered from mental afflictions that led her to an obsession with washing
Bonnard painted her washing on countless occasions: soaking herself in water, getting out of or into the bath
[Bonnard] his sense of colour and the absolute importance of colour in life
is first of order
in Bonnard rooms are filled with light and open onto gardens and landscapes of plants and trees, flowers, lawns
and everywhere there is colour
when I look at Bonnard’s canvases I feel hope. you will have something in your life that will convince you that the world is not
simply a random collection of disjointed objects
you may have noticed your need for such things because the world does not strike you as being shabby as it does me
but that just means that there are more things in the face of which you find hope
if you do not have something like that which I have in Bonnard your life
will be correspondingly deprived of hope
I am saying that the religious attitude does not need
the hope of life after death
how could loving the world not be
religious when everything in it invites one, goads one, to the opposite
Camus invites us to find the gods
in our lives
one must never forget that some lead lives of misery
in which the gods will never find a place
[Nietzsche and pandoras box] hope here is an evil. it is
what binds us to the world
without hope, life gives us nothing- or not enough-
to carry on
Everything in Nietzsche speaks of a search for rapture (…)
philosophy held out little hope for him, for, despite his protestations, he sought hope everywhere, in default of which his whole idea of life affirmation would have come to nothing
there is no hope
in philosophy
[Philosophy] finds nature and excess dangerous in the face
of its deep desire to subdue the world morally
[Nietzsche] morality for him meant: I stake everything I am on finding out who I am, refusing to suppress the recalcitrant self-
the fascination with violence, the horror of mediocrity the contempt and disgust, the endless waves of emotion, passion, affect- without giving these in their due, owning them, letting them speak or find their voice
[Nietzsche] the moral seriousness he condemned is that form of it that wishes, not to place these excesses of life
since they must be placed, but to rush past such things and to get elsewhere, before they are understood, before they can teach us who we are
I am saying this: energy for life, the energy that binds us to life, is the energy of
rapture; and the rapture can be that of Dionysus or of art or of the sunshine or holding ones beloved
[religion] their limitless love of life so close to , feeding from, a limitless scorn for life, al the blood, all the tears: none of this can be
contained to philosophy
Berger’s ecstasy is a lesson
so much more delicate, subtle
this rapture is always religious because it is always
sacred
[rapture] it consecrates itself to particularity
this consecration is hope
can philosophy offer such hope?
(…) might its capacity to dissect and analyse be its strength?
if you spend years reading philosophy and seek to think honestly about your life and try to bring philosophy into connection with it- it is hard to
think there is no help, no hope, to be had from philosophy
you cannot know you will cope with suffering until you
are faced with it
philosophy is in this way placed by life. this who are suspicious o philosophy, of philosophers, are right, if their suspicion is as I have tried to describe it
from this point of view, philosophy must leave itself open to repudiation. it rarely does so
[philosophy] its gesture of aggression is not worthy of it, but has accompanied it from its beginnings
despite its better possibilities
it is always said that moral thinking and experience has been irrevocably changed by Auschwitz. but no one believes it.
As always in human life, when we say that everything has changed we find that it goes on as normal
a question philosophy does not ask often enough: How is it
possible to live in a world where Auschwitz has taken place
[Auschwitz] one can have this sense: I do not want to exist in the world where such things happen
do not want to be part of such a world
no one can reasonably expect to be at home in the
world after Auschwitz
Richard Swinburne (…) goes on to argue that there are
good reasons why God would have allowed these things to happen
[Swinburne] wants us to forget how surprising it is that we can feel at home
in the world, by turning hope into conviction, conviction supplied by a philosophical argument
Swinburne mistakes where to find strength in philosophy: it will come only if philosophy is able to
find its own limits and learn when it has nothing to say.
Swinburne’s is contrary to what he thinks
a counsel of despair, not hope
christianity has always been a divided religion
torn between the affirmation of the world as something good and a rejections of materiality as a distraction from God
the hope of religion, for religion, is that be capable, as Berger was, of loving such a world
that is not something that any system can provide; it is something it is easy to think one is doing when one is not
what is crucial is the spirit than animates life. seeing that spirit in another provides hope
because it shows it to be a genuine human possibility
I have met many who call themselves christians in whom there is no such spirit; and others who would reject any claim that they are Christian
or in any sense religious, and in whom such a spirit is alive
Robert Notzick once noted that auschwitz was the second fall of man and that we human beings had
now lost the right to exist- it would not be a tragedy if there were no longer human beings
whether or not Auschwitz was unprecedented in its barbarity, it seals
our knowledge of what we are
Notzicks thought makes us wonder whether we have the
right to find the world enough
but is Christianity is, however moth -eaten, still something that in its interstices, offers hope, as I have been suggesting it can, then it can only be in
turning towards the world
anyone who genuinely felt he or she had no right to find the world enough would be in such a state of
wretchedness that his or her mind would blank ant the glare, to borrow again from Larkin
McGhee said that “we have to learn when thinking can be shared, when its communication can only be indirect
and when we have to stay silent”
if I have a hope for philosophy it is that it could find a space for
such a working out of anxiety
