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April 8, 2009
no blessed delusion!
For me there is no blessed delusion! With magic bonds I am chained to serious truth like Gandalin to the veiled, the longer the better. Without knowing in advance whether beauty or ugliness is concealed under the veil of truth, I am nonetheless ever attached to it alone, and whoever robs me of truth while I am struggling for it, that one I purse with restless avidity. Accordingly, I must seek what truth there is in life. Even if it should be nothing, if one is to be able to rejoice in life only when one is deceived, I would have to know that; and then to be deliberately unhappy or to have to scorn my existence would nonetheless give me a feeling that I would not want to exchange for the small happiness of those who grope in the dark. Yet, confidently and more happily than Gandalin and Sonnemon, I have already been living for a long time – the longer the better – in the firm belief that truth and happiness are but one. The latter is the form in which it shows itself to the fools and to human foolishness, to each in one’s way, and each sees what each imagines. The former is the form in which it reveals its existence, though quite rarely itself, to those who would like to cease being fools and to what is not foolishness in humanity. Thus happiness through deception is probably not so desirable.
Schleiermacher - What Gives Value To Life
Posted by amin at April 8, 2009 1:50 AM