Philosophy as a way of life

4 We find this distinction again in Plotinus and in Bergson, the latter linking together joy and creation; cf. Henri Bergson, L 'E11ergir spiri111elle, 1 4th c

5 Scncc11, Ll'llrr, 2.l, (),

Reflections on the Idea of the "Cultivation of the Self"

213

6 Ibid, 23, 7.

7 Seneca, Letter, 1 24, 23.

8 Seneca, Letter, 92, 27.

9 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7, 54; 9, 6; 8, 7.

10 Seneca, Letter, 46, 6.

1 1 B. Groethuysen, Anthropo/ogie philosophique, Paris 1952, repr. 1980, p. 80.

12 Cf. above.

13 ["Writing of the self"; M. Foucault, "L'ecriturc de soi," Corps ecrit 5 ( 1983), pp.

3-23 - Trans.]

14 Cf. above.

1 5 Art. cit., p. 8.

16 Above.

17 Cf. I. Hadot, "Epicure et l'enseignement philosophique hellenique et romain,"

in Actes du Ville Congres Bude, Paris 1969, p. 35 1 .

1 8 Loe. cit., pp. 1 1-13.

19 Cf. above.

ZO Reference [?]

Zl Marcus Aurelius, Meditatiom, 10, 28, 3.

Part IV

Them es

8

"Only the Present is our Happiness": The Value of the Present Instant in

Goethe and in Ancient Philosophy

"Then the spirit looks neither ahead nor behind. Only the present is our happiness." 1 In this verse from Goethe's Set'ond Fa11st, we find an expression of the art of concentrating on and recognizing the value of the present instant. It corresponds to an experience of time which was lived with particular intensity in such ancient philosophies as Epicureanism and Stoicism, and in what follows we shall be especially concerned with this type of experience. We ought not, however, to forget the literary context in which these lines arc spoken, the meaning they take on within the context of the Second Faw;/, and, more generally, within the work of Goethe. In the proces.o;, we will find that Goethe himself is a remarkable witness for the type of experience we have mentioned.

The verses quoted mark one of the climaxes of the Second Fa11s1; a moment when Faust seems to reach the culminating point of his "quest for the highest existencc." 2

Beside him, on the throne which he has had built for her, sits Helen, whom he had evoked in the first act, after a terrifying journey to the . realm of the Mothers, in order to amuse the emperor; but had since fallen hopelessly in love with her: Has the Source of Beauty, overflowing its banks, Flowed into the deepest recesses of my being? . . .

To you I dedicate the stirring of all strength, The essence too of passion;

To you, affection, love, worship, and madness.3

It is llcll·n for whom he has searched throughout the second act, throughout 1111 l hl' 111y1 hk11I formN of clntisical Green·. I le has spoken of her with 1hc

2 1 8

Themes

centaur Chiron, and with Manto the Sibyl, and finally, it is she who, in the third act, has come to take refuge in the medieval fortress -

perhaps Mistra in the Peloponnese - of which he appears as the lord and master.

It is then that the extraordinary encounter takes place between Faust and Helen; Faust, who, although he appears in the guise of a medieval knight, is really the personification of modern man, and Helen, who, although she is evoked in the form of the heroine of the Trojan War, is, in fact, the figure of beauty itself, and in the last analysis of the beauty of nature.

With consummate mastery, Goethe has succeeded in bringing these figures and symbols to life, in such a way that the encounter between Faust and Helen is as highly-charged with emotion as the meeting between two lovers, as laden with historical significance as the meeting between two epochs, and as fu ll of meaning as the encounter of a human being with his destiny.

The choice of poetic form is used very skillfully to represent both the dialogue of the two lovers and the encounter between two historical epochs.

Since the beginning of the third act, Helen had been speaking in the manner of ancient tragedy, and her words were set to the rhythm of iambic trimeters, while the chorus of captive Trojan women responded to her in strophe and antistrophc. Now, however, at the moment when Helen meets Faust and hears the watchman Lynccus speak in rhymed distichs, she is astonished and charmed by this unknown poetic form: No sooner has one word struck the car

Than another comes to caress its predccessor.4

The birth of Helen's love for Faust will, moreover, express itself in the same rhymed distichs, which Faust begins and Helen finishes, inventing the rhyme each time. As she learns this new poetic form, Helen learns, as Phorkyas says, to spell out the alphabet of love.; Helen begins: Tell me, then, how can I, too, speak so prettily?

"That's easy enough," replies Faust;

It must come from the heart,

And when one's breast with longing overflows,

One looks around, and asks -

llelt'n:

who sh11ll enjoy ii w ilh us.

"Only the Present is our Happiness "

219

Faust begins again:

Now the spirit looks not forward, nor behind

Only the present -

Helen:

is our happiness.

Faust: It is our treasure, our highest prize, our possession and our pledge.

But who confirms it?

Helen:

My hand.6

The love duet ends, for the moment, with this sign of Helen's yielding, and the rhyme-play thus ends in a "confinnatio" which is now no longer the echo of a rhyme, but the gift of a hand. Faust and Helen then fall silent, and embrace each other without a word, while the chorus, adopting the tone of an epithalamion, describes their embrace. Then the dialogue of love - and also of rhyming verses - starts up again between Faust and Helen, and causes us to live a moment of such intensity and pregnancy that both time and the drama seem to stop. Helen says:

I feel myself so far away and yet so close;

And I say only too gladly: Here Am I! Here!

Faust: I can scarcely breathe; my words tremble and falter; This is a dream, and time and place have disappeared.

Helen: It seems to me that I am broken down with age, and yet I am so new;

Mingled with you, I am faithful to the Unknown.

Faust: Don't rack your brains about your destiny, so unique!

Existence is a duty, be it only for an instant.7

Here the drama seems to stop. We think that Helen and Faust have nothing left to desire, fulfilled as they are by each other's presence. But Mephistopheles, who, in order to adapt himself to the Greek world, has taken on the monstrous mask of Phorkyas, breaks off this perfect moment by announcing the menacing approach of the troops of Menelaus, and Faust reproaches him for his ill-timed interruption. The marvelous instant has now disappeared, but the dispositions of Faust anJ of I lclcn will still be reflected in the deS<..Tiption of the ideal Arcadia in which F11UNI 1111J Helen arc to engender Euphorion, the genius of poetry.

220

Themes

The dialogue we have quoted may be understood at several levels. First and foremost, it is the dialogue between two lovers, who, as such, resemble all lovers everywhere. Faust and Helen are two lovers absorbed by the living presence of the beloved: they forget everything - both past and future - which is other than this presence. Their excess of happiness gives them an impression of dreamlike unreality: time and space disappear. We are entering the unknown, and it is the moment of love fulfilled.

On a second level of interpretation, however, the dialogue takes place between Faust and Helen as symbolic figures, representing, on the one hand, modem man in his ceaseless striving, and on the other, ancient beauty in its soothing presence; both are miraculously reunited by the magic of poetry, which abolishes the centuries. In this dialogue, Faust as modern man tries to make Helen forget her past, so that she may be wholly in the present instant, which she is incapable of understanding. She feels herself to be so distant and yet so close, abandoned by life and yet in the process of rebirth, living in Faust, mingled with him, and trusting in the unknown. Faust asks her not to reflect upon her strange destiny, but to accept the new existence which is being offered to her. In this dialogue between two symbolic figures, Helen becomes "modernized," if one may say so; as she adopts rhyme, the symbol of modern interiority, she has doubts, and reflects upon her destiny. At the same time, Faust becomes "antiquated": he speaks as a man of antiquity, when he urges Helen to concentrate on the present moment, and not to lose it in hesitant reflection on the past and the future. As Goethe said in a letter to Zelter, this was the characteristic feature of ancient life and art: to know how to live in the present, and to know what he called "the healthiness of the moment." In antiquity, says Goethe, the instant was "pregnant;" in other words, filled with meaning, but it was also lived in all its reality and the fullness of its richness, sufficient unto itself. We no longer know how to live in the present, continues Goethe. For us, the ideal is in the future, and can only be the object of a sort of nostalgic desire, while the present is considered trivial and banal. We no longer know how to profit from the present; we no longer know - as the Greeks did - how to act in the present, and upon the present.8 Indeed, if Faust speaks to Helen as a man of the ancient world, it is precisely because the presence of Helen - that is, the presence of ancient beauty - reveals to him what presence itself is: the presence of the world,

"That splendid feeling of the present" (He"liches Gefiihl der Gegenwart) as Goethe wrote in the East- West Divan.9

This, finally, is the reason why the dialogue can be understood at a third level. Here, it is no longer the dialogue of two lovers, nor of two historical figures, but rather the dialogue of man with himself. The encounter with Helen is not only the encounter with ancient beauty emanating from nature; it is also the encounter wit h n living wisdom 1md art of living: that

"hcnhhincss of t he moment " which we mt•nt lnncd nhovc. The nlhili111 Fnust

"Only the Present is our Happiness "

221

had wagered with Mephistopheles that he would never say to an instant:

"Stay, you are so beautiful!" But now, following after humble Gretchen, it is ancient, noble Helen who reveals to him the splendor of being - that is, of the present instant - and teaches him to say yes to the world and to himself.

We must now define the ancient experience of time which we saw expressed in the above-quoted verses from Faust. Basing ourselves on the letter from Goethe to Zeller we cited above, we might think that we have to do with a generalized, common experience of ancient man, and that it was natural for ancient man to be familiar with what Goethe calls the "healthiness of the moment." Moreover, following Goethe, many historians and philosophers, from Oswald Spengler10 to the logician Hintikka, 11 have alluded to the fact that the Greeks "lived in the present moment" more than did the representatives of other cultures. In his book Die Zauberflote,12 Siegfried Morenz gives a good summary of this conception: "No one has better characterized the particular nature of Greece than Goethe . . . in the dialogue between Faust and Helen: ' . . . then the spirit looks neither backwards nor ahead. Only the present is our happiness. ' "

We must certainly agree that the Greeks in general gave particular attention to the present moment, and this attention could take on several different ethical and artistic meanings. Popular wisdom advised people both to be content with the present, and to know how to utilize it. Being content with the present meant, on the one hand, being content with earthly existence.

This is what Goethe admired in ancient art, particularly in funerary art, where the deceased was represented not with his eyes raised toward the heavens, but in the act of living his daily life. On the other hand, knowing how to utilize the present meant knowing how to recognize and seize the favorable and decisive instant (kairos). Kairos designated all the possibilities contained within a given moment: a good general, for example, knows how to strike at the opportune kairos, and sculptors fix in marble the most significant kairos of the scene which they wish to bring to life.

It does seem, then, that the Greeks paid particular attention to the present moment. This, however, does not justify us in imagining - as did Winckelmann, Goethe, and Holderlin - the existence of an idealized Greece, the citizens of which, because they lived in the present moment, were perpetually bathed in beauty and serenity. As a matter of fact, people in antiquity were just as filled with anguish as we are today, and ancient poetry often preserves the echo of this anguish, which sometimes goes as far as despair. Like us, the ancients bore the burden of the past, the uncertainty of the future, and the fear of death. Indeed, it was for this human anguish that ancient philosophies

- particularly F.picurcanism and Stoicism - sought to provide a remedy.

These philo!IUllhics were therapies, intended to provide a cure for anguish, and to hrintc f'rt•t•dom and self-mastery, and their goal was to allow people to

222

Themes

free themselves from the past and the future, so that they could live within the present. Here we have to do with an experience of time wholly different from the common, general experience we have been describing. As we shall see, this experience corresponds precisely to that expressed in the verses from Faust: "Only the present is our happiness . . . don't think about your destiny.

Existence is a duty." We are dealing with a philosophical conversion, implying a voluntary, radical transformation of one's way of living and looking at the world. This is the true "healthiness of the moment," which leads to serenity.

Despite the profound differences between Epicurean and Stoic doctrine, we find an extraordinary structural analogy between the experiences of time as it was lived in both schools. This analogy will perhaps allow us to glimpse a certain common experience of the present underlying their doctrinal divergences. We can define this analogy as follows: both Epicureanism and Stoicism privilege the present, to the detriment of the past and above all of the future. They posit as an axiom that happiness can only be found in the present, that one instant of happiness is equivalent to an eternity of happiness, and that happiness can and must be found immediately, here and now. Both Epicureanism and Stoicism invite us to rcsituate the present instant within the perspective of the cosmos, and to accord infinite value to the slightest moment of existence.

To begin with Epicureanism: it is a therapy of anguish, and a philosophy which seeks, above all, to procure peace of mind. Its goal is consequently to liberate mankind from everything that is a cause of anguish for the soul: the belief that the gods are concerned with mankind; the fear of post-mortem punishment; the worries and pain brought about by unsatisfied desires; and the moral uneasiness caused by the concern to act out of perfect purity of intention.

Epicureanism does away with all this. With regard to the gods, it affirms that they themselves live in perfect tranquillity. They are not troubled by the worry of producing or governing the universe, since the latter is the result of a fortuitous coming together of eternally existent atoms. With regard to death, Epicureanism asserts that the soul docs not survive the body, and that death is not an event within life. With regard to desires, it affirms that they trouble us to the extent that they are artificial and useless. We must reject all those desires which are neither natural nor necessary, and satisfy - with prudence

- those of our desires which are natural but not necessary. Above all, we are to satisfy those desires which are indispensable for the continuation of our existence. As for moral worries, they will be completely appea.o;ed once we realize that man, like all other living beings, is always motivated by pleasure.

If we seek for wisdom, this is simply because it brings peace of mind: in other words, a pleasurable state.

What Epicureanism proposes is a fom1 of wisdom, which tc11chcs Uli how to relax and to suppre11s our worries. This only appc11rs to be easy, mcll'covcr;

"Only the Present is our Happiness "

223

for we must renounce a great deal, in order that we may desire only that which we are certain of obtaining, and submit our desires to the judgment of reason. What is required, in fact, is a total transformation of our lives, and one of the principal aspects of this transformation is the change of our attitude toward time. According to Epicureanism, senseless people - that is, the majority of mankind - are tormented by vast, hollow desires which have to do with wealth, glory, power, and the unbridled pleasures of the flesh. 13 What is characteristic of all these desires is that they cannot be satisfied in the present. This is why, for the Epicureans,

senseless people live in hope for the future, and since this cannot be certain, they are consumed by fear and anxiety. Their torment is the most intense when they realize too late that they have striven in vain after money or power or glory, for they do not derive any pleasure from the things which, inflamed with hope, they had undertaken such great labors to procure. H

According to an Epicurean saying, "The life of a foolish man is fearful and unpleasant; it is swept totally away into the future." 15 Thus, Epicurean wisdom proposes a radical transformation, which must be active at each instant of life, of mankind's attitude toward time. We must, it teaches, learn how to enjoy the pleasure of the present, without letting ourselves be distracted from it. If the past is unpleasant to us, we are to avoid thinking about it, and we must not think about the future, insofar as the idea of it provokes in us fears or unbridled expectations. Only thoughts about what is pleasant - of pleasure, whether past or future - are to be allowed into the present moment, especially when we are trying to compensate for current suffering. This transformation presupposes a specific conception of pleasure, peculiar to Epicureanism, according to which the quality of pleasure depends neither on the quantity of desires it satisfies, nor on the length of time it lasts.

The quality of pleasure does not depend on the quantity of desires it satisfies. The best and most intense pleasure is that which is mixed to the least extent with worry, and which is the most certain to ensure peace of mind. It can therefore be procured by the satisfaction of natural and necessary desires; that is, those desires which are essential and necessary for the preservation of existence. Now, such desires can easily be satisfied, without our having to rely on the future for them, and without our being exposed to the worry and uncertainty of lengthy pursuit. "Thanks be to blessed nature, who made necessary things easy to obtain, and things which are hard to obtain unnecessary. " 111

What causes us to think about the past or the future are such illnesses of the sou l llN 1 hc human passions, desires for wealth, power, or depravity; but the purc111 , 11111111 in1 cni;c pleasure can easily be obtained within the present.

224

Themes

Not only does pleasure not depend upon the quantity of satisfied desires, but -

above all - it does not depend upon duration. It has no need to be long-lasting in order to be perfect: "An infinite period of time could not cause us more pleasure than can be derived from this one, which we can see is finite." 17

"Finite time and infinite time bring us the same pleasure, if we measure its limits by reason. " 18 This may seem paradoxical, but it is founded on a theoretical conception. As the Stoics were to repeat, a tiny circle is no more of a circle than a large one. 19 The Epicureans thought of pleasure as a reality in and for itself, not situated within the category of time. Aristotle had said that pleasure is total and complete at each moment of its duration, and that its prolongation does not change its essence.2° For the Epicureans, a practical attitude is joined to this theoretical representation: if pleasure limits itself to that which procures perfect peace of mind, it attains a summit which cannot be surpassed, and it is impossible for it to by increased by duration. In the words of Guyau: "In enjoyment, there is a kind of inner plenitude and over-abundance which makes it independent of time, as well as of everything else. True pleasure bears its infinity within itself." 21

Thus, pleasure is wholly within the present moment, and we need not wait for anything from the future to increase it. Everything we have been saying so far could be summed up in the following verses from Horace: "Let the soul which is happy with the present learn to hate to worry about what lies ahead." 22 The happy mind does not look towards the future. If we limit our desires in a reasonable way, we can be happy right now. Not only can we be happy, but we mus/: happiness must be found immediately, here and now, and in the present. Instead of reflecting about our lives as a whole, calculating our hopes and worries, we must seize happiness within the present moment.

The matter is urgent; in the words of an Epicurean saying: We are only born once - twice is not allowed - and it is necessary that we shall be no more, for all eternity; and yet you, who are not master of tomorrow, you keep on putting off your joy? Yet life is vainly consumed in these delays, and each of us dies without ever having known peace. 23

Once again, we find the echo of this idea in Horace: "While we are talking, jealous time has fled. So seize the day [carpe diem], and put no trust in tomorrow." H Horace's carpe diem is by no means, as is often believed, the advice of a sensualist playboy; on the contrary, it is an invitation to conversion. We are invited to become aware of the vanity of our immensely vain desires, at the same time as of the imminence of death, the uniqueness of life, and the uniqueness of the present instant. From this perspective, each instant appears as a marvclom1 gift which fillH itR recipient with grat itude:

"Only the Present is our Happiness "

225

Believe that each new day that dawns will be the last for you: Then each unexpected hour shall come to you as a delightful gift. 25

There is perhaps an echo here of the Epicurean Philodemus: "Receive each additional moment of time in a manner appropriate to its value; as if one were having an incredible stroke of luck." 26

We have already encountered the Epicureans' feelings of gratitude and astonishment, in the context of the miraculous coincidence between the needs of living beings and the facilities provided for them by nature. The secret of Epicurean joy and serenity is to live each instant as if it were the last, but also as if it were the first. We experience the same grateful astonishment when we accept the instant as though it were unexpected, or by greeting it as entirely new: "If the whole world were appear to mortals now, for the first time; if it was suddenly and unexpectedly exposed to their view; what could one think of more marvelous than these things, and which mankind would less have dared to believe?" 27 In the last analysis, the secret of Epicurean joy and serenity is the experience of infinite pleasure provided by the consciousness of existence, even if it be only for a moment. In the words of an Epicurean saying: "The cry of the flesh is: Not to be hungry, not to be thirsty, not to be cold. Whoever has these things, and hopes to keep on having them, can rival in happiness with Zeus himself." 28 The lack of hunger and thirst is thus the condition for being able to continue to exist, being conscious of existing, and enjoying this consciousness of existing. God has nothing more than this.

It could be objected that God's pleasure consists in his knowledge that he has the happiness of existing forever. Not so, replies Epicurus; for the pleasure of one instant of existence is just as total and complete as a pleasure of infinite duration, and man is just as immortal as God, because death is not a part of life.2'1

In order to show that one single instant of happiness is enough to give such infinite pleasure, the Epicureans practiced telling themselves each day: "I have had all the pleasure I could have expected." In the words of Horace: "He will be master of himself and live joyfully who can say, every day: 'I have lived.' " ·10 Seneca also takes up this Epicurean theme: When we are about to go to sleep, let us say in joyous cheerfulness: "I have lived; I have travelled the route that fortune had assigned to me."

If God should grant us tomorrow as well, let us accept it joyfully. That person is most happy and in tranquil possession of himself who awaits tomorrow without worries.31 Whoever says: "I have lived", gets up every day to receive unexpected riches.32

We c11n Rhm sec here the role played in Epicureanism by the thought of deat h . T11 1111 y , cn•ry c\•cning: "I have lived," is to say "my life is over." It is

226

Themes

to practice the same exercise as that which consists in saying: "Today will be the last day of my life." Yet it is precisely this exercise of becoming aware of life's finitude which reveals the infinite value of the pleasure of existing within the present instant. From the point of view of death, the mere fact of existing

- even if only for a moment - seems to be of infinite value, and gives us pleasure of infinite intensity. Only once we have become aware of the fact that we have already - in one instant of existence - had everything there was to be had, can we say with equanimity: "my life is over."

It is here, moreover, that the cosmic perspective comes into play. The Epicureans had their own particular vision of the universe. As Lucretius put it: thanks to the doctrine of Epicurus, which explained the origin of the universe by the fall of atoms in a void, the walls of the world burst open for the Epicurean: he saw all things come into being within the immense void,33 and traversed the immensity of the all. Alternatively, he exclaims, in the words of Metrodorus: "Remember that, born a mortal, with a limited life-span, you have risen up in soul to eternity and the infinity of things, and that you have seen all that has been and all that shall be." 34 Here again, we encounter the contrast between finite and infinite time.

Within finite time, the sage grasps all that takes place within infinite time, or as Leon Robin puts it in his commentary on Lucretius: "The sage places himself within the immutability of eternal Nature, which is independent of time." 35

Thus, the sage perceives the totality of the cosmos within his consciousness of the fact of existing. Nature gives him everything within an instant, and since she has already given him everything, she has nothing left to give him, as she says in Lucretius' poem: "You must always expect the same things, even though the span of your life should triumph over all the ages; nay, even were you never to die." ·11•

The fundamental attitude that the Stoic must maintain at each instant of his life is one of attention, vigilance, and continuous tension, concentrated upon each and every moment, in order not to miss anything which is contrary to reason. We find an excellent description of this attitude in Marcus Aurelius:

Here is what is enough for you:

1 . the judgment you are bringing to bear at this moment upon reality, as long as it is objective;

2. the action you are carrying out at this moment, as long as it is accomplished in the service of the human community; and 3. the inner disposition in which you find yourself at this moment , as long as it is a disposition of joy in the face of the conjunction of events caused by cx1 rnncom1 cnus11lit y . 11

"Only the Present is our Happiness "

227

Thus, Marcus used to train himself to concentrate upon the present moment; that is, upon what he was thinking, doing, and feeling within the present instant. "This is enough for you," he tells himself, and the expression has a double meaning:

It is enough to keep you busy; you have no need to think about anything else; and

2 It is enough to make you happy; there is no need to seek for anything else.

This is the spiritual exercise Marcus himself calls "delimiting the present." 38

Delimiting the present means turning one's attention away from the past and the future, in order to concentrate it upon what one is in the process of doing.

The present of which Marcus speaks is a present delimited by human consciousness. The Stoics distinguished two ways of defining the present.39 The first consisted in understanding the present as the limit between the past and the future: from this point of view, no present time ever actually exists, since time is infinitely divisible. This, however, is an abstract, quasi-mathematical division, with the present being reduced to an infinitesimal instant.

The second way consisted in defining the present with reference to human consciousness. In this case, the present represented a certain "thickness" of time, corresponding to the attention-span of lived consciousness. When Marcus advises us to "delimit the present," he is talking about this lived present, relative to consciousness. This is an important point: the present is defined by its reference to man's thoughts and actions.

The present suffices for our happiness, because it is the only thing which belongs to us, and depends upon us. For the Stoics, it was essential to distinguish between what does and does not depend upon us. The past does not belong to us, since it is definitively fixated, and the future does not depend on us, because it docs not yet exist. Only the present depends on us, and it is therefore the only thing which can be either good or bad, since it is the only thing which depends upon our will. Since the past and the future do not depend on us, they do not come under the category of moral good or evil, and must therefore be indifferent to us.�0 It is a waste of time to worry about what is long gone, or what will perhaps never occur; we must therefore

"delimit the present." "All the happiness you are trying to achieve by long, roundabout ways: you can have it all right now . . . . that is, if you leave everything past behind you, entrust the future to providence, and if you arrange the present in accordance with piety and justice. " �1

Elsewhere, Marcus describes the exercise of delimiting the present in the following terms:

if you licpnrntc from yourself, that is, from your thought . . . everything you h11\'l' 1111id or done in the past, everything that disturbs you about

228

Themes

the future; all that . . . attaches itself to you against your will . . . if you separate from yourself the future and the past, and apply yourself exclusively to living the life that you are living - that is to say, the present - you can live all the time that remains to you until your death, in calm, benevolence, and serenity.0

Seneca describes the same exercise as follows:

Two things must be cut short:43 the fear of the future and the memory of past discomfort; the one does not concern me any more, and the other does not concern me yet.44

The sage enjoys the present without depending on the future . . . .

Liberated from the burden of worries which torture the mind, he does not hope for or desire anything. He does not plunge forward into the unknown, for he is happy with what he has [i.e. the present, which is all that belongs to us]. And don't believe that he is content with not very much, for what he has is everything.45

Here we witness the same transformation of the present that we encountered in Epicureanism. In the present, say the Stoics, we have everything, and only the present is our happiness. There are two reasons why the present is sufficient for our happiness: in the first place, Stoic happiness - like Epicurean pleasure - is complete at every instant and does not increase over time. The second reason is that we already possess the whole of reality within the present instant, and even infinite duration could not give us more than what we have right now.

Happiness, then - that is, for the Stoics, moral action or virtue - is always total and complete, at each moment of its duration. Like pleasure for the Epicurean sage, the happiness of the Stoic sage is perfect. It lacks nothing, just as a circle, whether it is large or small, still remains a circle. The same is true of a propitious or opportune moment or favorable opportunity: it is an instant, the perfection of which depends not on its duration, but rather on its quality, and the harmony which exists between one's exterior situation and the possibilities that one has.46 Happiness is nothing more nor less than that instant in which man is wholly in accord with nature.

Just as was the case for the Epicureans, one instant of happiness is, according to the Stoics, equivalent to an eternity. In the words of Chrysippus:

"If a person has wisdom for one instant, he is no less happy than he who possesses it for an eternity." 47 Similarly, as for the Epicureans, so for the Stoics: we will never be happy if we arc not so right now . It's now or never.

The matter is urgent : we must hurry, for death is imminent, 1md nil we require in order Lo he hnppy h1 tu "''"'' 10 he No. The 11nNt nnJ t he f'utur�· nrc

"Only tire Present is our Happiness "

229

of no use. What is needed is the immediate transformation of our way of thinking, of acting, and of accepting events. We must think in accordance with truth, act in accordance with justice, and lovingly accept what comes to pass. In the words of Marcus Aurelius: "How easy it is to find oneself, right away, in a state of perfect peace of mind." 411 In other words, it is enough just to want it.

For the Stoics, as for the Epicureans, it is the imminence of death which gives the present instant its value. "We must carry out each action of our lives as if it were the last." 49 This is the secret of concentration on the present moment: we are to give it all its seriousness, value, and splendor, in order to show up the vanity of all that we pursue with so much worry: all of which, in the end, will be taken away from us by death. We must live each day with a consciousness so acute, and an attention so intense, that we can say to ourselves each evening: "I have lived; I have actualized my life, and have had all that I could expect from life." In the words of Seneca: "He has peace of mind who has lived his entire life every day. 11 5o We have just seen the first reason why the present alone is sufficient for our happiness: namely, that one instant of happiness is equivalent to a whole eternity of happiness. The second reason is that, within one instant, we possess the totality of the universe. The present instant is fleeting - Marcus insists strongly on this point51 - but even within this flash, as Seneca says,

"we can proclaim, along with God: 'all this belongs to me.' 11 52 The instant is our only point of contact with reality, yet it offers us the whole of reality; precisely because it is a passage and a metamorphosis, it allows us to participate in the overall movement of the event of the world, and the reality of the world's coming-to-be.

In order to understand the preceding, we must bear in mind what moral action, virtue, and wisdom meant for the Stoics. Moral good - for the Stoics, the only kind of good there is - has a cosmic dimension: it is the harmonization of the reason within us with the reason w�ich guides the cosmos, and produces the chain of causes and effect which makes up fate. At each moment, we must harmonize our judgment, action, and desires with universal reason. In particular, we must joyfully accept the conj unction of events which results from the course of nature. At each instant, we must therefore resituate ourselves within the perspective of universal reason, so that, at each instant, our consciousness may become a cosmic consciousness.

Thus, if one lives in accord with universal reason, at each instant his consciousness expands into the infinity of the cosmos, and the entire universe is present to him. For the Stoics, this is possible because there is a total mixture and mutual implication of everything with everything else: Chrysippus, for example, spoke of a drop of wine being mixed with the whole of the sea, and spreading to the entire world.53 "He who sees the present moment secs all thnr hns happened from all eternity, and all that will happen t h rouicho u l i n fi n i l l' l ime. 11 �� This explains the attention given to each current

230

Themes

event, and to what is happening to us at each instant. Each event implies the entire world: "Whatever happens to you has been prepared for you from all eternity, and the mutual linkage of cause and effect has, from all eternity, woven together your existence and the occurrence of this event." 55

One could speak here of a mystical dimension of Stoicism. At each moment and every instant, we must say "yes" to the universe; that is, to the will of universal reason. We must want that which universal reason wants: that is, the present instant, exactly as it is. Some Christian mystics have also described their state as a continuous consent to the will of God. Marcus, for his part, cries out: "I say to the universe: 'I love along with you.' " 56 We have here a profound feeling of participation and identification; of belonging to a whole which transcends our individual limits, and gives us a feeling of intimacy with the universe. For Seneca, the sage plunges himself into the whole of the universe (toti se inserens mundo).57

Because the sage lives within his consciousness of the world, the world is constantly present to him. In Stoicism, even more than in Epicureanism, the present moment takes on an infinite value: it contains within it the entire cosmos, and all the value and wealth of being.

It is quite remarkable that the two schools of Stoicism and Epicureanism, in other respects so opposed, should both place the concentration of consciousness upon the present moment at the very center of their way of life.

The difference between the two attitudes consists only in the fact that the Epicurean enjoys the present moment, whereas the Stoic wills it intensely; for the one, it is a pleasure; for the other, a duty.

Our scene from Faust echoes this double motif in two key phrases: "Only the present is our happiness," and "Existence is a duty." SR

In his conversations with Falk,.�1 Goethe had spoken of certain beings who, by virtue of their innate tendencies, arc half Stoic and half Epicurean. He found nothing surprising, he said, in the fact that they accepted the fundamental principles of the two systems at the same time, and even that they tried to unite them as far as was possible. One might say that Goethe himself, in his way of living the present moment, was also "half Stoic and half Epicurean." He enjoyed the present moment like an Epicurean, and willed it intensely like a Stoic.

In Goethe, we re-encounter most of the themes we have enumerated above; in particular, the delimitation of the present followed by expansion into the totality of the cosmos, which we observed in Epicureanism and in Stoicism.

In this regard, Goethe could have mentioned an opposition that was dear to him: that between "systole" and "diastole."

First of all, let us consider concentration on and delimitation of the present.

In moments of happiness, these processes take place spontaneously: "Then the spirit looks neither forward nor behind . " This verse from Faust is ed10ed by a poem dedicated to Count Puar:w

"Only the Present is our Happiness "

23 1

Happiness looks neither forward nor backwards;

And thus the instant becomes eternal.

The present instant is perceived as a grace which is accorded us, or an opportunity we are offered.

The mind may also, however, turn voluntarily away from the past and the future, in order to more fully enjoy the present state of reality. Such is the attitude of Goethe's Egmont:61

Do I live only in order to think about life? Must I prevent myself from enjoying the present moment, that I may be sure of the one that follows, and then waste that one, too, in cares and useless worries? . . . Does the sun illuminate me today, that I may ponder what happened yesterday?

That I may guess at and arrange that which cannot be guessed nor arranged: the fate of the oncoming day?

This is the same secret of happiness which Goethe formulated in the "Rule of Life":62

Would you model for yourself a pleasant life?

Worry not about the past

Let not anger get the upper hand

Rejoice in the present without ceasing

Hate no man . . . .

And the future? Abandon it to God.

This is the height of wisdom; the wisdom of the child in the Marienbad Elegy:63

Hour by hour, life is kindly offered us

We have learned but little from yesterday

Of tomorrow, all knowledge is forbidden,

And if I ever feared the coming evening, ·

The setting sun still saw what brought me joy.

Do like me, then: with joyful wisdom

Look the instant in the eye! Do not delay!

Hurry! Run to greet it, lively and benevolent, Be it for action, for joy or for love!

Wherever you may be, be like a child, wholly and always; Then you will be the All; and invincible.

The "rule of life" - that "high wisdom" - consists in looking neither forwnrd 1101· hehind, but in becoming aware of the uniqueness and

232

Themes

incomparable value of the present. In Goethe, then, we find the same exercise of delimitation of the present that we had encountered in ancient philosophy.

This exercise is, however, inseparable from another exercise, which consists in becoming aware of the inner richness of the present, and of the totality contained within the instant. By delimiting the present, consciousness, far from shrinking, swells to fill the dimensions of the world; for that vision which "looks the instant in the eye" is the disinterested vision of the artist, the poet, and the sage, which is interested in reality for its own sake.

Enjoying the present, without thinking about the past or the future, does not mean living in total instantaneousness. Thoughts about the past and the future are to be avoided only insofar as rehashing past defeats, and cowering in fear of future difficulties, can cause distractions, worries, hopes, or despair, which turn our attention away from the present, where it ought to be concentrated. When we do concentrate our attention on the future, however, we discover that the present itself contains both the past and the future, insofar as it is the genuine passage within which the action and movement of reality are carried out. It is this past and this future which are seized by the artist's vision, in the instant which he chooses to describe or to reproduce. The artists of antiquity, says Goethe, knew how to choose the "pregnant" instant, heavy with meaning, "which marks a decisive turning-point between time and eternity." "' To use one of Goethe's favorite terms, such instants "symbolize" an entire past, and an entire future.

Likewise, when an artist seizes an instant of the movement of a dancer, it allows us to glimpse both the "before" and the "after": "The marvelous suppleness with which a dancer moves from one figure to another, and provokes our admiration in the face of such artistry: it is fixated for a moment, so that wc can see, simultaneously, the past, the present and the future, and wc are thus transported into a supra terrestrial state." 65

Whoever practices the art of living must also recognize that each instant is pregnant: heavy with meaning, it contains both the past and the future; not only of the individual, but also of the cosmos in which he is plunged. This is what Goethe gives us to understand in his poem "The Testament:" "'

Let reason b e present everywhere

Where life rejoices in life.

This point at which life rejoices in life iK nothing other thnn t he prcitcnt instnnt. "Then," cont in ucN Goet he,

"Only the Present is our Happiness "

233

the past has gained steadfastness

The present is alive beforehand,

The Instant is eternity.

Goethe is even more explicit on this point in one of his conversations with Eckermann:67 "Hold fast to the present. Every circumstance, every instant is of infinite value, for it is the representative of an entire eternity."

Some commentators have believed they could explain Goethe's conception of the instant as eternity by Neoplatonic or Pietistic influence.68 It is true that we do find within these traditions the representation of God as eternal present; but such a conception is not to be found in Goethe's writings. When Goethe speaks of the eternal in his poem entitled "Testament," for example, he is talking about the eternity of the cosmic process of becoming: Throughout all things, the Eternal pursues its course . . . .

Being is eternal, for laws

Protect the living treasures

With which the All adorns itself.

In order to explain the Goethean notion of the instant as representative of eternity, we must rather think of the Epicurean and Stoic tradition of which I have spoken above. This tradition affirmed, in the first place, that one instant of happiness is equivalent to an eternity; and, secondly, that one instant of existence contains the whole eternity of the cosmos. In Goethean terms, this second idea could be expressed by saying that the instant is the symbol of eternity. Goethe defined the symbol as "the living, instantaneous revelation of the unexplorable," 69 but we could just as well define the instant as "the living symbol of the unexplorable." The idea of the

"unexplorable" corresponds to what, for Goethe, is the inexpressible mystery at the basis of nature and of all reality. It is its very fleetingness and perishable nature that make the instant the symbol of eternity, because its ephemeral nature reveals the eternal movement and metamorphosis which is, simultaneously, the eternal presence of being: "All that· is perishable is only a symbol." 70

It is here that the thought of death comes into play, for life itself is perpetual metamorphosis, and, inseparably, the death of every instant.

Sometimes, for Goethe, this theme takes on a mystical tone: In order to find himself in the Infinite

The individual willingly accepts to disappear.

It is a pleasure to abandon oneself.71

l would 1m1i11&: the living creature who aspires to death in the flame.72

234

Themes

In the last analysis, then, it is eternity - that is, the totality of being - which gives the present moment its value, meaning, and pregnancy. "If the eternal remains present to us at each instant, we do not suffer from the fleetingness of time." 73 The ultimate meaning of Goethe's attitude toward the present is thus, as it was for ancient philosophy, the happiness and the duty of existing in the cosmos. It is a profound feeling of participation in and identification with a reality which transcends the limits of the individual. "Great is the joy of existence, and greater yet the joy we feel in the presence of the world." 7�

"Throughout all things, the Eternal pursues its course. Hold on to Being with delight!" 75

We ought here to cite the entire song of the watchman Lynceus near the end of the Second Faust:

In all things, I see