learning to love life
"for the ones who had a notion,
a notion deep inside
that it ain't no sin
to be glad you're alive..."
-b.s.
last week i turned in a paper i had been working on for the past six months. the paper looks at some of Socrates' statements about death and the fear of death. as i was working on the paper, i kept thinking that the fear of death couldn't be really understood apart from the love of life, and that it wasn't possible to grasp why death is an evil without seeing how life is a good.
we each seem to love our lives in a way that belongs to our biological, or animal, natures. i'm thinking here of our instinctive recoil from death and danger, our "pre-reflective" tendency toward self-preservation. to say we love our lives in this sense is to acknowledge a kind of drive or force within us. but its also true that, at least for humans, there is a love of life that belongs to our rational, and not merely biological, natures. this kind of love of life can be shaped by reflection and by habit. it is not like a blind force that we encounter within ourselves, but it is a kind of desire that shapes, and is shaped by, how we think about and perceive ourselves and the world.
what i have in mind is the idea that love of life, including the love our own lives, is the kind of thing that can be done well or poorly. it can appear in either virtuous or vicious forms. thus, it is not something that we are simply born with, but something that must be learned. of course, the idea of loving one's life may turn out to be so diffuse and complicated that it doesn't shed much light on the question of how to live well. i suspect that this is not the case, however, and that considering the proper way to love life may prove quite helpful.
when i think about a proper love of life, several things come to mind:
-it is possible to cultivate a love of life, and it is important that we do so. this was part of what i appreciated about don quixote: i felt it helped me to love life more. as i read, i found myself taking an appreciative pleasure in things i think i would have otherwise ignored. i was thankful for human life -including human silliness- in a new way.
-there is the issue of self-love. doesn't jesus say that the one who loves his life will lose it? aren't we all inclined to love our lives too much, and isn't love of our lives precisely what the gospel calls us away from, toward love of god and love of neighbor? of course self-love is a very tricky question, but i'm inclined to say that we ought to think that there is a love of life implicit in proper love of god and our neighbor, and that what we are called to is a truer way of loving our lives.
-connected to the previous point, there seems to be a connection between love of life and humanism. by 'humanism' i mean a conscious appreciation and affirmation of human existence, a cultivation of human possibility and celebration of human excellence. increasingly, i am inclined to say that what christians should work toward is a more vibrant christian humanism -the recognition that what the gospel proclaims us to is not the negation of humanity, but rather the possibility of being truly human. to think of christianity as the true humanism is not to downplay the notions of sin, repentance and judgment, but it is to make those notions secondary to -in the sense of being understood in terms of- the concepts of creation, redemption, new creation.
-in thinking theologically about the love of life, i keep returning to the incarnation. the life of god joined to the life of humanity, that the life of humanity might be raised up into the life of god. i grew up in a theological tradition that thought of redemption first in foremost in terms of atonement, and that understood in the incarnation in terms of the atonement. such an outlook tends to stress the forensic notions in scripture (law, debt, etc.) , and to overlook or downplay the organic notions (living water, fruit, etc.). but it is possible to think of redemption in a way that foregrounds the incarnation rather than the atonement, or, better, think so the atonement in terms of the incarnation.
-one of my first posts on this blog was about our responsiveness to the world, and to the feel of things. this point about how to feel the world seems connected to the love of life. i think the connection is at least two-fold. first, there is a point about delight. to love something is to delight in it, and when we love life we delight in being alive, we respond in a joyful way to the things within our life. (i am thinking here of augustine, but also of what aristotle says about the pleasure of perception and the pleasure of knowing that you are alive.) second, there is a point about attention. to love something is to attend to it, to focus one's concentration on it. (i am thinking here of simone weil). a love of life somehow seems to spill forth into a desire and an ability to attend to things, whether this means looking at a beautiful tree or building, or attending to one's own life.
-for a human, to love life well means that one does not love only one's own life, but also loves and values the life of others. this is true, of course, for other human lives. but it is also true, i think, that for a human to love life well means recognizing the value of non-human life. perhaps this is an instance of some more basic principle -that flourishing life spills out beyond itself, and it spills out in a way that is appreciative and upbuilding of what surrounds it.
my thoughts here are clearly quite scattered, and what is here is pretty much the first things that come to mind. but i would be quite interested to know if any of this resonates with other people, or what thoughts others might have.
a notion deep inside
that it ain't no sin
to be glad you're alive..."
-b.s.
last week i turned in a paper i had been working on for the past six months. the paper looks at some of Socrates' statements about death and the fear of death. as i was working on the paper, i kept thinking that the fear of death couldn't be really understood apart from the love of life, and that it wasn't possible to grasp why death is an evil without seeing how life is a good.
we each seem to love our lives in a way that belongs to our biological, or animal, natures. i'm thinking here of our instinctive recoil from death and danger, our "pre-reflective" tendency toward self-preservation. to say we love our lives in this sense is to acknowledge a kind of drive or force within us. but its also true that, at least for humans, there is a love of life that belongs to our rational, and not merely biological, natures. this kind of love of life can be shaped by reflection and by habit. it is not like a blind force that we encounter within ourselves, but it is a kind of desire that shapes, and is shaped by, how we think about and perceive ourselves and the world.
what i have in mind is the idea that love of life, including the love our own lives, is the kind of thing that can be done well or poorly. it can appear in either virtuous or vicious forms. thus, it is not something that we are simply born with, but something that must be learned. of course, the idea of loving one's life may turn out to be so diffuse and complicated that it doesn't shed much light on the question of how to live well. i suspect that this is not the case, however, and that considering the proper way to love life may prove quite helpful.
when i think about a proper love of life, several things come to mind:
-it is possible to cultivate a love of life, and it is important that we do so. this was part of what i appreciated about don quixote: i felt it helped me to love life more. as i read, i found myself taking an appreciative pleasure in things i think i would have otherwise ignored. i was thankful for human life -including human silliness- in a new way.
-there is the issue of self-love. doesn't jesus say that the one who loves his life will lose it? aren't we all inclined to love our lives too much, and isn't love of our lives precisely what the gospel calls us away from, toward love of god and love of neighbor? of course self-love is a very tricky question, but i'm inclined to say that we ought to think that there is a love of life implicit in proper love of god and our neighbor, and that what we are called to is a truer way of loving our lives.
-connected to the previous point, there seems to be a connection between love of life and humanism. by 'humanism' i mean a conscious appreciation and affirmation of human existence, a cultivation of human possibility and celebration of human excellence. increasingly, i am inclined to say that what christians should work toward is a more vibrant christian humanism -the recognition that what the gospel proclaims us to is not the negation of humanity, but rather the possibility of being truly human. to think of christianity as the true humanism is not to downplay the notions of sin, repentance and judgment, but it is to make those notions secondary to -in the sense of being understood in terms of- the concepts of creation, redemption, new creation.
-in thinking theologically about the love of life, i keep returning to the incarnation. the life of god joined to the life of humanity, that the life of humanity might be raised up into the life of god. i grew up in a theological tradition that thought of redemption first in foremost in terms of atonement, and that understood in the incarnation in terms of the atonement. such an outlook tends to stress the forensic notions in scripture (law, debt, etc.) , and to overlook or downplay the organic notions (living water, fruit, etc.). but it is possible to think of redemption in a way that foregrounds the incarnation rather than the atonement, or, better, think so the atonement in terms of the incarnation.
-one of my first posts on this blog was about our responsiveness to the world, and to the feel of things. this point about how to feel the world seems connected to the love of life. i think the connection is at least two-fold. first, there is a point about delight. to love something is to delight in it, and when we love life we delight in being alive, we respond in a joyful way to the things within our life. (i am thinking here of augustine, but also of what aristotle says about the pleasure of perception and the pleasure of knowing that you are alive.) second, there is a point about attention. to love something is to attend to it, to focus one's concentration on it. (i am thinking here of simone weil). a love of life somehow seems to spill forth into a desire and an ability to attend to things, whether this means looking at a beautiful tree or building, or attending to one's own life.
-for a human, to love life well means that one does not love only one's own life, but also loves and values the life of others. this is true, of course, for other human lives. but it is also true, i think, that for a human to love life well means recognizing the value of non-human life. perhaps this is an instance of some more basic principle -that flourishing life spills out beyond itself, and it spills out in a way that is appreciative and upbuilding of what surrounds it.
my thoughts here are clearly quite scattered, and what is here is pretty much the first things that come to mind. but i would be quite interested to know if any of this resonates with other people, or what thoughts others might have.
posted by micah at 7:57 PM
1 Comments:
Hi Micah,
Reading this entry reminded me of a line from Augustine's 'Confessions' that I found both paradoxical, but also to have a true feeling to it. After the death of his unnamed friend (before his own conversion), Augustine says, 'I was at once utterly weary of life and in great fear of death.' (Book Four, Ch. VI)
Although on the surface it looks like Augustine disagrees with you--saying that one needn't love life in order to fear death--, I don't think he does entirely. He says before, 'I was wretched, and every soul is wretched that is bound in affection of mortal things: it is tormented to lose them, and in their loss becomes aware of the wretchedness which in reality it had even before it lost them.'
Things are complicated for Augustine, since he thinks that there is a way of being physically alive that is being spiritually dead. And there is therefore a way of loving (physical) life that is loving (spiritual) death.
The person he describes (the person he was) is therefore dead already, in the most important sense of the word--and this manifests itself in his wretchedness, whether he is acutely aware of that wretchedness or not yet so. But he clings to this death through his 'love of life'. This love of life is a love of death. And this is, I think, a kind of slow suicide--someone who would never put a gun to his head, and would fight anyone who did, but who embraces his own death every moment he lives.
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