{"id":7582,"date":"2014-11-17T04:32:59","date_gmt":"2014-11-17T04:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/11\/17\/lichtenberg-on-religion-and-stoicism\/"},"modified":"2014-11-17T04:32:59","modified_gmt":"2014-11-17T04:32:59","slug":"lichtenberg-on-religion-and-stoicism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/11\/17\/lichtenberg-on-religion-and-stoicism\/","title":{"rendered":"Lichtenberg on Religion and Stoicism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books<\/em>, tr. R. J. Hollingdale, New York Review Books, 1990, p. 112, Notebook G, Aph. #24:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

To make man as religion wants him to be resembles the undertaking of the Stoics: it is only another grade of the impossible.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I agree completely with Herr Lichtenberg that the Stoic ideal is an impossible one. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Stoic sage would be as impassible as God is impassible. But here's something to think about: Jesus on the cross died in agony like a man, even though, if he was God, he could have realized the Stoic ideal.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is the lesson? Perhaps that to be impassible<\/em> is for us impossible<\/em>, and so no ideal at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

What Lichtenberg overlooks is that while Stoicism is a self-help therapeutic, religion, or at least Christianity, is not: no Christian who understands his doctrine fancies that he is able by his own power to effect genuine, deep-going, and lasting self-improvement.<\/span><\/p>\n

What Lichtenberg fails to appreciate is that what is impossible for us, both individually and collectively, is not impossible with divine assistance.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you deny the possibility of divine assistance, then you ought to abandon the project of ameliorating in any truly fundamental way the human condition: just accept it as it is, else you may end up like the Communists who murdered 100 million in the 20th century alone in quest of their u-topia.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, tr. R. J. Hollingdale, New York Review Books, 1990, p. 112, Notebook G, Aph. #24: To make man as religion wants him to be resembles the undertaking of the Stoics: it is only another grade of the impossible. I agree completely with Herr Lichtenberg that the Stoic ideal is … Continue reading “Lichtenberg on Religion and Stoicism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[677,139,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lichtenberg-georg","category-religion","category-stoicism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}