Category: Lavelle
-
Louis Lavelle on the Stoic Wisdom
Substack latest. I am a lover of the Stoics. Why waste time on New Age hucksters when one can read Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius? But while the Stoics can take us a good stretch down the road to wisdom, they cannot bring us to the end — a fact long appreciated by first-rate minds.…
-
Lavelle on Living in the Present
Louis Lavelle (1883-1951), The Dilemma of Narcissus, tr. W. T. Gairdner (New York: Humanities Press, 1973), p. 153: Life breaks the surface of reality and emerges at the present moment; we must not hold our gaze fixed on a future which, when it comes, will be merely another present. The unhappy man is he who…
-
Louis Lavelle on the Stoic Wisdom and its Limitations
I am a lover of the Stoics. Why waste time on New Age hucksters when one can read Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius? But while the Stoics can take us a good stretch down the road to wisdom, they cannot bring us to the end — a fact long appreciated by first-rate minds. In late…
-
Louis Lavelle on Our Dual Nature
Louis Lavelle, The Dilemma of Narcissus, tr. Gairdner, Allen and Unwin, 1973, p. 165: The centaur, the sphinx, and the siren express the idea that man emerges out of an animal, and that he never sheds his hoofs, his claws, his scales. Man is a mixture; his dual nature is what makes him man; it…
-
Louis Lavelle on the Need for Enemies
Louis Lavelle, The Dilemma of Narcissus, p. 125: I need the reassurance and the help of friends, but I need men's hatred too. It tests me, forces me to become aware of my limitations, to grow, to perform a work of ceaseless self-purification; it makes me more and more faithful to myself, protects me against…
-
Advice for the Disputatious
Louis Lavelle, The Dilemma of Narcissus, tr. W. T. Gairdner (New York: Humanities Press, 1973), p. 156: We must refrain from every dispute in which the victory counts for more than what one wins by it. If the defeat of our enemy is also the defeat of the truth, it is our defeat too. It…