Geulincx And Love

Arnold Geulincx, Ethics, tr. Martin Wilson (Leiden: Brill, 2006), treatise I., ch. I. On Virtue in general, §1. Love, sect. I., pp. 11-12 (added two annotations included in page 169 et seq.):

Love has a variety of meanings; and first of all, it signifies a certain Affect, or passion, which caresses the human mind, and fills it with tenderness. In fact, this passion, which is widely called Love, is the entire, exclusive, and sole delight of the human mind, insofar as it is human and joined to a body. For even though the human mind, insofar as it is a mind, is capable of more elevated pleasures (such as the mere approbation of its own actions, when they accord with Divine Law), nevertheless, insofar as it is joined to a body, and born to act on it, and in turn to receive something from it, and as it were be acted upon by it, it knows no other tenderness than passion. Hence, Joys, Delights, Merriment, Laughter, Rejoicing, Jubilation, and the like, are only diverse names for Love. What is tender in Desire, Hope, Trust, and the like, and positively affects and calms the mind, is indeed Love;3 but what troubles and afflicts the mind, is not Love but some other affection that is involved with them at the same time as Love. Now the pleasure of a mind separated and withdrawing itself from the body (which, as I have said, consists in the bare approbation of its own actions, inasmuch as they assent to Divine Law) seems for the most part so meagre, so tenuous and rarefied, that men hardly or not at all consider it to be worthy of the name of Pleasure. And when this spiritual delight is sterile, and does not produce5 the corporeal and sensible pleasure (passionate Love) which in other cases it usually does produce, they complain that they have to live a life of sorrow and austerity, that they are wasting away, and that for all that they obey God and Reason, they are destitute of all reward and consolation.

3 Desire is nothing other than love of something absent; and it therefore contains in itself both tenderness (love), and affliction or bitterness (the anguish caused by the absence of the thing loved). Hope is nothing other than love directed towards a future good of which we can be frustrated; and again therefore it contains tenderness (that is, passionate love) and bitterness (that is, fear of being frustrated of that good). And trust is nothing other than great hope, that is, great love combined with a little fear. I do not offer these definitions in order to show what these things are (they are perfectly well-known from consciousness itself, as I noted just now), but, since they affect us partly for good and partly for ill (as our feelings make quite clear), in order to show why they please us, or harm and afflict us, according as they involve respectively love or some other emotion.

5 When we approve of some action of ours inwardly and in our mind, with our conscience assuring us that it accords with right Reason, that is, the law of God, it often leads to pleasure, or passionate love, of indescribable sweetness. Virtuous men may be so ravished by this passion that they make light of those calamities commonly known as ruin, infamy, the harshness of imprisonment, torments, and a thousand natural shocks, in fact do not seem even to feel them. But sometimes this mental pleasure is not accompanied by bodily pleasure, which consists wholly in some passion or other; for passion depends on the constitution of our body, and may have a mental cause that on account of the incapacity of the body does not pass into our body itself. On the other hand, passion may have no mental cause, but nevertheless pass into our body on account of the capacity of the body: in this case we feel pleasure without any underlying cause of pleasure.

Things That Characterise The Philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, 3rd Essay, sect. 8 (Horace B. Samuel):

But a spirit who is sure of himself speaks softly; he seeks secrecy, he lets himself be awaited. 

A philosopher . . . shuns every glaring light: therefore he shuns his time and its «daylight.» Therein he is as a shadow; the deeper sinks the sun, the greater grows the shadow. As for his humility, he endures, as he endures darkness, a certain dependence and obscurity: further, he is afraid of the shock of lightning, he shudders at the insecurity of a tree which is too isolated and too exposed, on which every storm vents its temper, every temper its storm. His «maternal» instinct, his secret love for that which grows in him, guides him into states where he is relieved from the necessity of taking care of himself, in the same way in which the «mother» instinct in woman has thoroughly maintained up to the present woman's dependent position. After all, they demand little enough, do these philosophers, their favourite motto is, «He who possesses is possessed.» All this is not, as I must say again and again, to be attributed to a virtue, to a meritorious wish for moderation and simplicity; but because their supreme lord so demands of them, demands wisely and inexorably; their lord who is eager only for one thing, for which alone he musters, and for which alone he hoards everything—time, strength, love, interest. 

This kind of man likes not to be disturbed by enmity, he likes not to be disturbed by friendship, it is a type which forgets or despises easily. It strikes him as bad form to play the martyr, «to suffer for truth»—he leaves all that to the ambitious and to the stage-heroes of the intellect, and to all those, in fact, who have time enough for such luxuries (they themselves, the philosophers, have something to do for truth). They make a sparing use of big words; they are said to be adverse to the word «truth» itself: it has a «high falutin'» ring.

Two Ways With Philosophy

Entry from my personal Journal, written in November 24, 2022:

There are at least two ways in dealing with and making use of Philosophy, deciding what kind of person you are, and what kind of will you do harbour: 1) One either raises himself to what he learns and is made aware of through reading Philosophy and then absorbing every last iota of that read, cultivating within everything in need of being cultivated and altered, and turning it into a truly lived experience, or 2) one goes the way of what I call learned cherry-picking, as he, out of Philosophy and the Philosophers' opinions, only makes use of that which might justify his already espoused virtues, habits, opinions, convictions, articles of behaviour, traits of personality, etc. 

Now, one might be just too well-pleased with himself that he won't notice the fact that he leads the second way. To lead the two ways concomitantly is fine, as we humans have our weaknesses; but to lead only the second way is not fine, nor is it fine to miss noticing that one might be leading the two ways together.