Читать книгу A Brief History of Thought - Luc Ferry - Страница 20

As one contemporary philosopher, André Comte-Sponville, has emphasised, Stoicism here is very close to one of the most subtle tenets of Oriental wisdom, and of Tibetan Buddhism in particular: contrary to the commonplace idea that one ‘cannot live without hope’, hope is the greatest of misfortunes. For it is by nature an absence, a lack, a source of tension in our lives. For we live in terms of plans, chasing after objectives located in a more or less distant future, and believing that our happiness depends upon their accomplishment.

What we forget is that there is no other reality than the one in which we are living here and now, and that this strange headlong flight from the present can only end in failure. The objective accomplished, we almost invariably experience a puzzling sense of indifference, if not disappointment. Like children who become bored with their toys the day after Christmas, the possession of things so ardently coveted makes us neither better nor happier than before. The difficulties of life and the tragedy of the human condition are not modified by ownership or success and, in the famous phrase of Seneca, ‘while we wait for life, life passes’.

Perhaps you like imagining what you would do if you were to win the lottery: you would buy this and that; you would give some of it to this friend or that cousin; you would definitely give some of it to charity; and then you would take off on a trip around the world. And then what? In the end, it is always the gravestone that is silhouetted against the horizon, and you come to realise soon enough that the accumulation of all imaginable worldly goods solves nothing (although let us not be hypocrites: as the saying goes, money certainly does make poverty bearable).

Which is also why, according to a celebrated Buddhist proverb, you must learn to live as if this present moment were the most vital of your whole life, and as if those people in whose company you find yourself were the most important in your life. For nothing else exists, in truth: the past is no longer and the future is not yet. These temporal dimensions are real only to the imagination, which we ‘shoulder’ – like the ‘beasts of burden’ mocked by Nietzsche – merely to justify our incapacity to embrace what Nietzsche called (in entirely Stoic mode) amor fati: the love of reality for itself. Happiness lost, bliss deferred, and, by the same token, the present receding, consigned to nothingness whereas it is the only true dimension of existence.

It is with this perspective that the Discourses of Epictetus aimed to develop one of the more celebrated themes of Stoicism: namely, that the good life is a life stripped of both hopes and fears. In other words, a life reconciled to what is the case, a life which accepts the world as it is. As you can see, this reconciliation cannot sit alongside the conviction that the world is divine, harmonious and inherently good.

Here is how Epictetus puts the matter to his pupil: you must chase from your ‘complaining’ spirit

all grief, fear, desire, envy, malice, avarice, effeminacy and in temperance. But these can be expelled only by looking to God, and attaching yourself to him alone, and con and con secrating yourself to his commands. If you wish for anything else, you will only be following what is stronger than you, with sighs and groans, always seeking happiness outside yourself, and never able to find it: for you seek it where it is not, and neglect to seek it where it is. (Discourses, II, 16, 45–7)

This passage must of course be read in a ‘cosmic’ or pantheistic sense, rather than in a monotheistic sense (monotheism: the belief in only one God).

Let us be very clear about this: the God of whom Epictetus speaks is not the personal God of Christianity, but merely an embodying of the cosmos, another name for the principle of universal reason which the Greeks named the Logos: the true face of destiny, that we have no choice but to accept, and should yearn for with our entire soul. Whereas, in fact, victims as we are of commonplace illusions, we keep thinking that we must oppose it so as to bend it to our purposes. As the master advises his pupil, once more:

We must bring our own will into harmony with whatever comes to pass, so that none of the things which happen may occur against our will, nor those which do not happen be wished for by us. Those who have settled this as the philosopher’s task have it in their power never to be disappointed in their desires, or fall prey to what they wish to avoid, but to lead personal lives free from sorrow, fear and perturbation. (Discourses, II, 14, 7–8)

Of course, such advice seems absurd to ordinary mortals: amounting to an especially insipid version of fatalism. This sort of wisdom might pass for folly, because it is based upon a vision of the world which requires a conceptual effort out of the ordinary to be grasped. But this is precisely what distinguishes philosophy from ordinary discussion, and, to me, why it possesses an irreplaceable charm.

I am far from being an advocate of Stoic resignation, and later on, when we touch upon contemporary materialism, I will explain more fully why this is so. However, I admire the fact that – when things are going well! – Stoicism can seem to offer a form of wisdom. There are moments when we seem to be here not to transform the world, but simply to be part of it, to experience the beauty and joy that it offers to us. For example, you are in the sea, scuba diving, and you put on your mask to look at the fish. You are not there to change things, to improve them, or to correct them; you are there to admire and accept things. It is somewhat in this spirit that Stoicism encourages us to reconcile ourselves to what is, to the present as it occurs, without hopes and regrets. Stoicism invites us to enjoy these moments of grace, and, to make them as numerous as possible, it suggests that we change ourselves rather than the order of things.

To move on from this concept to another essential Stoic counsel: because the only dimension of reality is the present, and because, of its nature, the present is in constant flux, it is wise for us to cultivate indifference or non-attachment to what is transient. Otherwise we store up the worst sufferings for ourselves.