Category: Impermanence

Wer schreibt, der bleibt

I fondly recall my late German neighbor, Günter Scheer, from whom I learned this expression.   "He who writes, remains."

But for how long? Any mark you make will in the end be unmade by time, in time, for all time. We do not write in indelible ink. Old Will said it well:

We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep. (Prospero in The Tempest)

Heraclitus of Ephesus famously wept over the impermanence of things and the vanity of existence as did a certain latter-day Heraclitean. "I am grieved by the transitoriness of things," wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in a letter to Franz Overbeck, dated 24 March 1887.

Heraclitus Weeping

Addendum (8/9/2025):

In a letter from 1881, Nietzsche wrote to Overbeck:

My dear friend, what is this our life? A boat that swims in the sea, and all one knows for certain about it is that one day it will capsize. Here we are, two good old boats that have been faithful neighbors, and above all your hand has done its best to keep me from 'capsizing'! Let us then continue our voyage — each for the other's sake, for a long time yet, a long time! We should miss each other so much! Tolerably calm seas and good winds and above all sun — what I wish for myself, I wish for you, too, and am sorry that my gratitude can find expression only in such a wish and has no influence at all on wind or weather.[1]

From Wikipedia.

Vanity

This empty world obtrudes upon our senses so persistently and with such regularity of effect that thoughts about how real it could be hardly gain purchase. A material world has no trouble getting the attention of  a material man. It punches us hard in our eyes and ears. One must retreat from the multiplicity-positing diaspora of the senses by taking thought in order properly to doubt its ultimacy. But how gossamer is thought as compared to the rude impacts of sensory reality!

And so we impute to this passing scene more reality and importance than it has. Its reality is in part our projection. Teetering on the brink of eternity we take time and its fleeting blandishments to be the end all and the be all.

Here is an old man, a flight of stairs away from a major coronary event, lusting after more loot and land. Hanging by a thread, he is yet convinced that he is securely suspended.

The Latest from Peter van Inwagen

This just over the transom:

Dear Sir, 

Recently I have been looking for some work by Peter van Inwagen and found his recent book Being A Study in Ontology. I believe the subject could be very interesting to you, because, as far as I know, you have written several times on his ontological views (even if there is deep disagreements between his and yours ontological views). 
 
I hope you are doing well in this messy and unpredictable world. 
 
Kind regards, 
Miloš Milojević 
 
Dear Mr. Milojević,
 
Thank you for bringing this book to my attention.  I will try to persuade the editor of a journal to send me a review copy. Failing that, I will happily shell out 75 USD for a copy. The undisputed 'king' of the 'thin theorists,' van Inwagen is wrong about Being, but brilliantly wrong and a formidable adversary. 
 
I have addressed his views many times in these pages and a few times in print.  Van Inwagen on Fiction, Existence, Properties, Particulars, and Method is one; "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" ( in Daniel D. Novotny and Lukas Novak (eds.), Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, Routledge. pp. 45-75. 2014.) is another.
 
Other articles of mine on Being and existence can be found via my PhilPeople page.
 
As for this "messy and unpredictable world," let's hope it holds together for a few more years. I see no reason to be optimistic, but I derive consolation both from philosophy and from old age. In the meantime we must do our part-time best to beat back the forces of darkness.  Only part-time, however, because this world is a vanishing quantity that does not merit the full measure of our love and attention. All things worldly must pass. "Impermanence is swift." (Dogen) "Work out your salvation with diligence." (Buddha)
 
Finally, Miloš, I  thank you for your correspondence over the years,
 
Bill
 
Musical addendum
 
If Harrison was the Beatle with spiritual depth, Lennon was the radical leftist shallow-pate, McCartney the romantic, and Starr the regular guy and good-time Charley.

Ash Wednesday

Vanitas2"Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.

How real can we and this world be if in a little while we all will be nothing but dust and ashes?

 

The typical secularist is a reality denier who hides from the unalterable facts of death and impermanence.  This is shown by his self-deceptive behavior: he lives as if he will live forever and as if his projects are ultimately meaningful even though he knows that he won't and that they aren't.  If he were to face reality he would have to be a nihilist.  That he isn't shows that he is fooling himself.

More here.

Christopher Hitchens has been dead for over eleven years now.  In Platonic-Augustinian-Christian perspective, what no longer exists never truly existed.  So here we have a man who never truly existed but who denied the existence of the Source of his own ephemeral quasi-existence. Curious.

Dust and Ashes

Vanitas 2"Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.

Luther's German:  Im Schweiße deines Angesichts sollst du dein Brot essen, bis daß du wieder zu Erde werdest, davon du genommen bist. Denn du bist Erde und sollst zu Erde werden.

Douay-Rheims: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return."

How real can we and this world be if in a little while we all will be nothing but dust and ashes?

The typical secularist is a reality denier who hides from the unalterable facts of death and impermanence.  This is shown by his self-deceptive behavior: he lives as if he will live forever and as if his projects are meaningful even though he knows, at a level deeper than his self-deception,  that he won't and that they aren't.  If he were to face reality he would have to be a nihilist.  That he isn't shows that he is fooling himself.

More here.

You Are Going to Die.

Christopher Hitchens has been dead for over ten years now.  In Platonic perspective, what no longer exists never truly existed.  So here we have a man who never truly existed but who denied the existence of the self-existent Source of his own ephemeral quasi-existence. Curious.

On the still life: A meatless skull in the gathering darkness, the candle having just gone out, life's flame having gone to smoke, unable to read, with no need for food. The globe perhaps signifies the universality of the skull owner's predicament and fate.

Between Time and Eternity

Tom O. asks,

How does one reconcile the temporal with the eternal, in a personal/spiritual or experiential manner? The political situation of our time strikes me as dire and incredibly important. Yet such things are transitory and will, ultimately, pass away, and so in another sense are not so important. I am torn between these two extremes on a daily basis. The latter is a source of hope and peace, the former a source of anxiety and unrest. Focusing more on one at the expense of the other seems to only intensify the problem, since doing that seems to downplay the importance of one of the extremes, when what I am after is a reconciliation of the two that does not dismiss or downplay either. But perhaps that goal itself is unattainable.

We are made for eternity, but we find ourselves in time. Both spheres are real and neither can be dismissed or pronounced unreal.  You and I agree on that.  You want a reconciliation of the two "that does not dismiss or downplay either" while suspecting that such a reconciliation is "unattainable."

Here I think lies the germ of an answer. One of the spheres needs to be "downplayed." For if there are these two spheres, they cannot be equally important. 

Why can't they be equally important?

Within time, we rightly value the relatively permanent over the relatively impermanent. We reckon him a fool who sacrifices a lifetime of satisfactions for a moment's pleasure.  John Belushi, for example, threw away his life and career for a ride on the 'Speedball Express.' Elliot Spitzer trashed his career and marriage to a beautiful  woman because he could not resist the siren songs of the high-class hookers. And then there is David Carradine who died of auto-erotic asphyxiation in Bangkok. Examples are easily multiplied beyond necessity. 

Infinitely more foolish is one who sacrifices an eternity of bliss for a lifetime of legitimate mundane satisfactions.  One who believes that both spheres are real, and thinks the matter through, ought to understand that the temporal is inferior to the eternal in point of importance.  That there are these two spheres is a matter of reasoned faith, not of knowledge.  (It is 'metaphysical bluster' to claim to have certain knowledge in this area. One cannot prove God, the soul, or man's eternal destiny. Or so say I; plenty of dogmatists will disagree.)

I therefore make the following suggestion in alleviation of my reader's existential problem. Devote the majority of your time and energy to the quest for the Absolute, but without ignoring the temporal. The quietist must needs be a bit of an activist in a world in which his spiritual life and quest is endangered by the evildoers in the realm of time and change.  

MonkFor spiritual health a daily partial withdrawal from society is advisable.  It needn't be physical: one can be in the world but not of it. 

A partial withdrawal can take the form of a holding free of the early morning hours from any contamination by media dreck.  Thus no reading of newspapers, no checking of e-mail, no electronics of any sort.  Electricity is fine: you don't have to sit in the dark or burn candles.  No talking or other socializing. Instead: prayer, meditation, spiritual and philosophical reading and writing, in silence, and alone.

So for a few pre-dawn hours each day you are a part-time monk.

Boethius and the Second Death of Oblivion: Ubi nunc fidelis ossa Fabricii manent?

We die twice. We pass out of life, and then we pass out of memory, the encairnment in oblivion more final than the encairnment in rocks. Boethius puts the following words into the mouth of Philosophia near the end of Book Two of the Consolations of Philosophy.

Where are Fabricius's bones, that honourable man? What now is Brutus or unbending Cato? Their fame survives in this: it has no more than a few slight letters shewing forth an empty name. We see their noble names engraved, and only know thereby that they are brought to naught. Ye lie then all unknown, and fame can give no knowledge of you. But if you think that life can be prolonged by the breath of mortal fame, yet when the slow time robs you of this too, then there awaits you but a second death.

And why are these engraved names empty? Not just because their referents have ceased to exist, and not just because a time will come when no one remembers them, but because no so-called proper name is proper. All are common in that no name can capture the haecceity of its referent. So not only will we pass out of life and out of memory; even in life and in memory our much vaunted individuality is ineffable, and, some will conclude, nothing at all.

"We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep." (Shakespeare, The Tempest.) 

The Monk and the Worldling

Monk: The world you love cannot last  and betrays its vanity thereby. Its impermanence argues its unreality. It is unworthy of your love, noble soul!

Worldling: The God you love is worthy of your love should he exist, but he does not, or at least you have no proof that he does; no proof sufficient to render reasonable your rejection  of  this passing world and its finite satisfactions for a possibility merely believed in.