[lit-ideas] Re: Life leads to death
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:56:39 -0700
...when others die, in what sense can they be said to have "done
it," justly or not?
In the sense of Solon's "the happy man is dead." Retrospectively.
That was a good back rub. That was a good life. That was a good
death. That was a great pastrami sandwich.
Never said it. Never came close to saying it. Misunderstood all his
life. Poor Solon. I say 'Poor Solon,' because nobody remembers what he
told Croesus, namely, that even though a man is living well, we cannot
say that his life is a happy one, for misfortune may befall him,
erasing his happiness; therefore, during a man's life, he may be
called fortunate, but not happy; only if we have seen the whole of his
life, including the manner of his death may we say that it was a happy
one (or not). [trans. R. Paul, with the help of The Cambridge Guide to
Greek Mathematics] Brief version: we can't judge a man's life happy
until we have seen the whole of it, and we cannot see the whole of it
until it's finished.
So, we judge retrospectively, but we do not call the dead happy; we
say that their lives were or were not happy, and as Wittgenstein says,
death is not an event in life; we do not live to experience death.
Morris Moreton
Department of Ancient and Modern Stuff
Mutton College
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