The German word "geistig"

“Dancing, business, theatre, cards, dares, horses, women, drink, travel, all these are powerless in the face of the boredom that arises when a lack of intellectual needs makes intellectual pleasures impossible.”—Schopenhauer

The “geistige Bedürfnisse” of which Schopenhauer speaks could also be translated as “spiritual needs.” To our ears, this would give the passage an entirely different meaning. “Intellectual” and “spiritual” might be considered synonymous, both referring to the mind. But unfortunately the word “spiritual” has been usurped by those for whom care of the intellect is a lazy and undisciplined affair. It is as if the word “athletic” had been usurped by those who watch television all day. We may consider ourselves fortunate that, at least for now, the word “intellectual” retains an association with discipline. In our paradisiacal democracy, where we are ruled by those who, in addition to representing the majority, also represent the intellectual level of the majority, this is unlikely to last for long.

Pop culture

“Pop culture is created by capitalists intent upon profit, not by humanitarians intent upon educating, improving or ennobling mankind.”

“And who gets to decide what constitutes an improvement? You, I suppose?”

“That’s just the thing. It’s not as if the producers of pop culture have an idea of what ennobles and improves mankind different from my own. They have none at all. They just don’t care about those things. They want to be popular. They want to make a profit. Culture that educates and improves has to also challenge. And most people don’t want a challenge. Pop culture is the cultural equivalent of fast food. Rather than trying to nourish, it bypasses conscience and appeals directly to the palate.”

Theory and practice

When mathematicians, physicists and philosophers say, “Practice is for lesser minds. I concern myself only with theory,” their statement is more than merely arrogance. It represents a conscious decision about priorities. It represents a choice to place intellectual life on a higher plane than material life. It is, in essence, the same decision made by Christians who renounce the kingdom of means for the Kingdom of God, by Buddhists who renounce the world of action for the world of contemplation. The intellectual forms the mathematician or physicist plays with are different from those the mystic plays with. But the belief in the superiority of intellectual life is the same.

Love and desire

“If people were told: what makes carnal desire imperious in you is not its pure carnal element. It is the fact that you put into it the essential part of yourself—the need for Unity, the need for God—they wouldn’t believe it. To them it seems obvious that the quality of imperious need belongs to the carnal desire as such. In the same way it seems obvious to the miser that the quality of desirability belongs to gold as such, and not to its exchange value.”—Simone Weil

A desire comes from nature, and to obey it is to obey nature, to acquiesce in the role of created being. But the neighbor’s desire is as much a part of nature as my own. To satisfy my own while leaving his unsatisfied ceases to be an act of reverence to nature. It becomes instead an act of rebellion against it. Unlike the ascetic’s rebellion, however, it is hard to imagine this being a rebellion on behalf of something higher. Desire can retain its innocence only so long as it is no more imperious than love.

Work

The typical bourgeois endures tedious and unfulfilling work for the sake of extravagant entertainment and sumptuous meals. An existence in which such passive activities are the center and focus is but a pale shadow of what it might have been, had work been its center and focus. It isn’t consumption that satisfies. It’s creation.

One visible effect of the bourgeoisification of the professions is that, over time, the houses of professionals become more and more grand and opulent, while the offices where we perform our work become more and more austere. If work were the center of our life, rather than merely a means, it would be just the other way.

If we expect to find gratification in insignificant things (entertainments and sumptuous meals) and not in significant things (thinking, creating, producing), we will find only an insignificant gratification. Profound happiness will elude us.

The difference between genius and bourgeois is not that genius has more talent, ability or intelligence. It is that for genius work is an end in itself. Genius is gratified by its exercise. The bourgeois refuses to find and exercise his genius. Instead, we find him at the theater and the opera, vainly trying to be gratified by the genius of others. His passivity is a tragedy in its own right, if only he would understand it rightly.

The division of labor efficiently provides for basic necessities, so genius may focus upon developing itself and not be distracted. But it brings with it an unfortunate temptation to sit back and watch others exercise their genius instead of finding and developing our own.

Dirty money

According to Harper’s magazine, the estimated net worth of George Washington, in today’s dollars, is $525 million. The fact that politics is corrupted by money is not a new problem. The new problem is that the people with money are no longer educated in the humanities. The only virtues they know are shopkeeper virtues.

Aphorisms

1. No one expects aristocratic virtues from a laborer. In America we all define ourselves as laborers so that no one will ever expect aristocratic virtues from us.

2. To understand the nature of truth, one has to understand the knower as well as the known. There is no deep philosophy without psychology. And in order to understand the psyche, one has to understand the genealogy of its ideas. There is no deep psychology without history.

3. Virtue is to the psychologist as plumage to the ornithologist, or blossoms to the botanist. When the peacock spreads his tail, we appreciate its beauty. But at the same time we know it was contrived by nature merely as a testament to health.

Tamed and domesticated

When Jonas Salk gave his vaccine to mankind, asking for nothing in return, he sent a message to the world. Science is something apart from commerce, something higher than commerce. Its goals are humanitarian rather than commercial in nature.

If this message was heard at all, it was soon forgotten.

Capitalism represents the most successful attempt yet to tame and domesticate genius, to make it useful to the rulers of the regime. Genius is qualitatively different from anything in the bourgeois world. Once traded for a sum of money, no matter how large, it ceases to be qualitatively different, and enters the realm where values are measured by accountants. By succumbing to the lure of comforts and rewards, genius ceases to be genius and becomes just another bourgeois asset. Tamed and domesticated genius is no longer genius.

In order to avoid the necessity of trading itself for wages, genius must of course have a certain amount of wealth. The error of the bourgeois is to mistake how much that amount is. He wants opulence and a corps of servants like the wealthy, but unlike the wealthy, to whom these things come unbidden, he must destroy his genius in order to obtain them.

Intellectual discipline and ascetic discipline

"That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest."—Thoreau

When I spend more money than necessary, I give others more power over me than necessary. Unfortunately, the ones to whom I cede power are usually not the wisest. Wise men are few, and to make money requires a large market.

For those of us who are not wealthy, ascetic discipline is an inevitable component of intellectual discipline. Without it we are forced to take orders from the undisciplined, and all our discipline amounts to naught.

Reason and conscience

The ordinary way of organizing the mind is to make reason the instrument of our desires, and let conscience be the brake. But conscience was never match for reason. Reason is always crafty enough to find a loophole, a detour, a way of placating conscience and getting exactly what it wants. A mind organized this way amounts to a life of petty egoism restrained only by prudence, in which genuine virtue has no part. Only when reason is on the side of what is highest in ourselves can we hope to elevate ourselves above the ordinary.

Aphorisms

1. Some books inspire us to think. Others inform us that someone else is thinking, and that we, therefore, need not.

2. The works of a great man are not a call to adulate him. They are not a call to emulate him. They are a call to be as great as he.

3. Wisdom and virtue will not allow themselves to be accumulated as the miser accumulates his treasure. As soon as we begin to regard them as a treasure stored up within us, rather than as something we must conquer anew in each moment, we cease to possess them.

4. Anyone who can appreciate fine possessions can also appreciate the leisure he must sacrifice to obtain them.

5. Smalltalk: the intellectual equivalent of petty crime.

6. Those fond of incoherent abstractions quickly become impatient with abstract discussions.

7. The regime that seeks to compel justice makes every just act into a cowardly one.

8. Consensus: a suicide pact for seekers of truth.

9. The more we persevere in tasks which bore us, the more boring we become.

10. The philosopher whose books are tedious to read reveals what sort of life he recommends.

11. To say "I am not a saint" is a confession of moral laxity. To say “I am not a genius” is a confession of intellectual laxity. Both adopt the guise of modesty in order to conceal indolence.

12. While we previously imagined that the intellect was something supernatural, we now know it resides in the material world—usually, in the servants’ quarters.

13. At the end of a play, we applaud not only the hero, but also the villain and the fool. If only we were so discerning in life.

14. An unwelcome passion, like an unwelcome guest, should be ejected as politely as possible.

15. The mind of the commercial man conforms itself to whatever shape is conducive to commerce—not the most beautiful shape, but the most useful.

16. All the sciences have their origin in love of truth, just as all human beings have their origin in sexual love.

17. The flight attendant's version of Matthew 7:3: "Secure your own virtues before assisting others."

18. Forming one’s character without reflection will produce results similar to grooming oneself without a mirror.

19. A taste for wine destines a man to become a sot; a taste for epiphany, a sage.

20. Aphorism: a post-it note on the bedpost in the amnesiac ward of wisdom.

21. We are perfectly content to be ignorant, but abhor being idle, so we acquire only that little bit of knowledge we need in order to act.

22. The argumentum ad laborum: “I have invested years of my life in learning this doctrine. Therefore, it must be true.”

23. Amassing a fortune, a detour which the less fortunate are compelled to make from the path to greatness, is often mistaken for the path itself.

24. Everyone is the child of his age. The question is, how much is he willing to misbehave?

Comte

The problem with Auguste Comte's proposal to put man in the place of God as the "grand être" is that it puts a real thing in place of an abstraction. An abstract God can represent the intellectual achievements of the greatest men and ignore the intellectually insignificant. By elevating "man" above his intellectual products, we have granted a place to nonintellectuals in intellectual life which they do not deserve. The great products of the human intellect—science, mathematics, philosophy—are worthy of reverence because they are true, and because they are difficult, not because they are useful to nonintellectuals.