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June 28, 2007

the man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence

I cannot bend the happenings of the world to my will: I am completely powerless.
I can only make myself independent of the world-and so in a certain sense master it-by renouncing any influence on happenings.
The world is independent of my will.

Even if everything that we want were to happen, this would still only be, so to speak, a grace of fate, for what would guarantee it is not any logical connection between will and world, and we could not in turn will the supposed physical connection.

And in this sense Dostoevsky is right when he says that the man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence.

Or again we could say that the man is fulfilling the purpose of existence who no longer needs to have any purpose except to live. That is to say, who is content.

The solution of the problem of life is to be seen in the disappearance of this problem.
But is it possible for one so to live that life stops being problematic? That one is living in eternity and not in time?
Isn’t this the reason why men to whom the meaning of life had become clear after long doubting could not say what this meaning consisted in?


Wittgenstein

Posted by amin at June 28, 2007 9:50 PM