3/20/2023 0 Comments Sisyphus mythBeginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Of an apartment-building manager who had killed himself I was told that he had lost his daughter five years before, that he had changed greatly since, and that that experience had “undermined” him. One evening he pulls the trigger or jumps. An act like this is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of art. ![]() On the contrary, we are concerned here, at the outset, with the relationship between individual thought and suicide. Suicide has never been dealt with except as a social phenomenon. I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions… Grappling with Our Existence I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). On the other hand, I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. To tell the truth, it is a futile question. Whether the earth or the sun revolves around the other is a matter of profound indifference. Galileo, who held a scientific truth of great importance, abjured it with the greatest ease as soon as it endangered his life. I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument. If I ask myself how to judge that this question is more urgent than that, I reply that one judges by the actions it entails. ![]() These are facts the heart can feel yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. All the rest-whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories-comes afterwards. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.
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