Ethics_A Very Short Introduction by Simon Blackburn

Author:Simon Blackburn [Blackburn, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780192804426
Goodreads: 678049
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2001-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I breathed a bit stertorously.

‘He said that, did he?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well you can tell him from me he’s an ass. Are my things packed?’

As Bertie judiciously remarks later: ‘I doubt, as a matter of fact, if Marcus Aurelius’s material is ever the stuff to give the troops at a moment when they have just stubbed their toe on the brick of Fate. You want to wait till the agony has abated.’

Philosophers and poets who try to reconcile us to death usually do so not by arguments as terse as the Stoics’, nor by Stoical fatalism, but on the contrary by moaning about life itself. We have all heard the woeful refrain. The human world is nothing but strife, disorder, and instability. Life is wearisome, a burden. Its hopes are delusive, its enjoyments are hollow. Desire is infinite and restless; gratification brings no peace. Carpe diem (seize the day) – but you cannot seize the day, for it vanishes into the past as you try. Everything tumbles into the abyss, nothing is stable; palaces and empires crumble to dust, the universe grows cold, and all will be forgotten in the end.

Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What profit hath a man for all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

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