Book of Wisdom by Constantin Noica - The meaning of life is to raise the problem of the meaning of life

 Book of Wisdom by Constantin Noica

-          The meaning of life is to raise the problem of the meaning of life

 

Constantin Noica is revered as one of the, if the not the most important philosopher and thinker in the Romanian culture.

He has established a school of thought, the School of Paltinis, which for some time under Communism worked as a dissident center as well.

I was first taken aback by the magnitude and the difficulty of coming anywhere near the heights, peaks of thought expressed by this great man when I was about seventeen.

Since I was too young to make any sense of the great ideas written in Tales About Man, that experience marked me in two ways...

First of all I was astonished by the amazing power of the human mind, which seemed to be at work in the highest spheres.

But the negative side effect was that it scared the hell out of the teenager who reached the conclusion that it will always be dizzying and incompressible.

In the meantime, a few things have changed- after an initial infatuation with the concepts of the two people who have come to represent Noica most, I became disillusioned.

The major disappointment came from politics, which is frivolous, but then, if in whatever area they can be so foolish –how can one be in awe at their ability to…think??

Having digressed, I return to the book in question-

Book of Wisdom does have plenty of wise words and pronouncements from which you can learn, albeit that can be difficult.

I am not sure what Noica meant to say quite often, but then his mind was so much better than mine and he worked with it much more diligently, feeding it the proper nourishment, not like the rest of us, mere mortals.

Here are some of the quotes that caught my attention, from what is a collection of his best definitions, thoughts:

-          The meaning of life is to raise the problem of the meaning of life

-          To answer that life has no meaning is the biggest limitation

-          The rhythm of history in philosophic thinking:

o   The simplicity of the Pre-Socratic element 

o   The simplicity of the

o   self knowing with Socrates

o   Of the Idea with Plato

o   Of Form, Logic with Aristotle

o   Of subjectivity with Christianity

o   Of the Divine with medieval philosophy

o   Of simple natures with Descartes

o   Of perceptions and representation with empiricists

o   Of the monad with Leibniz

o   Transcendental conscience with Kant

o   Of Self with Fichte

o   Of Spirit with Hegel

There are a number of pronouncements that can be intriguing, disputed but are nevertheless interesting:

-          In India culture was “made „under the trees – Upanishads- sit by me-

-          In Greece through poets

-          In the Arabian world sitting cross-legged – Turkish style

-          Civilization is necessary in culture

-          But first of all you need culture

-          Do we have enough resources to move the interior limits?

And then another short description of cultures

-          The Greek culture is reduced to 70-80 books- you start with Homer, move on to Theogonia by Hesiod, orphic fragments, Presocratics, an anthology of Greek lyric, a few historians, tragedies, novels, Aristophanes, Lukian, two weeks with twenty two Dialogues of Plato, an complete edition of Aristotle, read stoics, Plutarch, Teofrast, and end with Sextus Empiricus and Plotin

-          The Russian culture of the 19^th century has only about 50-60 books: start with Pushkin, go through the rest and eventually stop at Leonid Andreev

-          It is more difficult with French culture, which numbers about 300 books and which you have to read in the original.

I guess very few people take the advice contained in this book, which does not make it any less meaningful.