/lit/ - Literature

By committing suicide he told us that it is literally impossible to live in present and we're the puppets of forces out of out control.
Anyone who views his suicide as a separate gesture to his philosophy is a retard. His philosophy was the endpoint of his philosophical project.

>>17903099
It is exactly because his suicide was part of his philosophy, that his philosophy is absolute dogshit.

>>17903108
Filtered

>>17903118
Commit suicide, if you were not filtered, big boy.

>>17903092
yeh i didnt really get how people are saying that it gave them hope and changed their life. To be fully persuaded seems impossible, and just looks like a form of ascetism anyway. maybe someone can explain.

>>17903122
But I am already dead.

>>17903142
There's nothing to explain, the book is just >embrace ascetism dude but in a philosophical form that continuously wanks on itself

>>17903142
>be fully persuaded seems impossible
Carlo Michelstaedter knows well that to the impossible we are all held, and that what he calls the "right to live" (p. 78) is only snatched away at the price of a constant, infinite work, in fact: the "right to live" (p. 78) is a right to live. 78) can be torn off only at the price of a constant work, infinite in truth: "For just as the hyperbola approaches the asymptote infinitely, so the man who, in living, wants to be in possession of his life, approaches the straight line of justice infinitely; and just as the curve, however small the distance from a point of the hyperbola to the asymptote, must be infinitely prolonged to reach the contact, so the duty of a man towards justice, however modest what he asks as right for himself in his life, remains infinite" (pp. 77-8).
Difficult, perhaps even impossible to take, is the way, I said, the only way to salvation, and it is certain that the majority of us will always prefer to consolidate our meager assurances, to continue to sleep rather than to wake up: "But men are like the one who dreams of getting up and who, realizing that he is still lying down, does not get up but goes back to dreaming that he is getting up", while thus, Michelstaedter continues, "without getting up and without ceasing to dream, he continues to suffer from the vivid image that disturbs the peace of his sleep and from the immobility that renders vain the action of which he dreams" (p. 72).
And the author continues, not leaving in peace the one to whom he addresses, imagining well that the men, almost all the men, will not fail to oppose him a multitude of arguments which are so many cries betraying their fear, the fear of the death which pushes them to live without persuasion (cf. p. 77): "My legs are wobbly, and your path is impassable", and to these he replies: "There are the lame and the able-bodied - but man must strengthen his own hocks to walk - and go forward where there is no road. By the usual ways men walk in a circle that has no beginning and no end; they come and go, they compete, they hurry, busy as ants - perhaps they confuse each other, - but even if they walk, they are still where they were, for all places are the same, in the valley with no end. Man must make his way to life, not to move among others, to take others with him, not to claim the rewards that are not in the way of men" (p. 73).

>>17903817
>Carlo Michelstaedter knows well that to the impossible we are all held, and that what he calls the "right to live" (p. 78) is only snatched away at the price of a constant, infinite work, in fact: the "right to live" (p. 78) is a right to live. 78) can be torn off only at the price of a constant work, infinite in truth:
Carlo Michelstaedter knows well that to the impossible we are all held, and that what he calls the "right to live" (p. 78) is only snatched away at the price of a constant, infinite work, in fact: the "right to live" (p. 78) can be torn off only at the price of a constant work, infinite in truth:

Fixed

>>17903839
Why the fuck is this happening again?
Oh well, you got me.

>>17903092
That’s not what it says
>>17903099
>>17903108
You’re wrong

>>17903155
If you think the book is “embrace asceticism” then you seriously got filtered. In fact, it can be said that the book is almost specifically about how asceticism actually isn’t a solution.

The whole point is that asceticism, while positive, is at best a midway point between rhetoric and a true solution. The real solution is the acceptance and completion of rhetoric and transmutation of it into persuasion — to pursue instead of a resistant troubled mode of action to an extroverted passive mode of act in order to actually use privation (the cause of rhetoric) to actually achieve persuasion. The persuaded man isn’t free of lack. He possesses himself in spite of lack. In fact, he uses his lack as a means of self possession.

>>17903891
>If you think the book is “embrace asceticism” then you seriously got filtered
It's exactly asceticism

>"Persuasion does not live in him who does not live only of himself: but is son and father, slave and master of what surrounds him, of what there was before, of what must come after: thing among things" (p. 43).

>>17903092
What is this book even about?

>>17904013
we live in a society

>>17904023
Is it better than other books of this type? (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Cioran, Sartre?)

>>17904045
No, and those others aren't good either. Pessoa and Petrarch are the writers about living in a society, also the desert fathers of monachism in their own way.

>>17904064
Oh, ok

>>17904045
Not as liberating as Nietzsche, not as systematic as Heidegger, not as "my diary desu" as Cioran, not as pseud as Sartre.

>>17904081
yes, Michelstaedter is more cryptic, the pre-Socratics probably rubbed off on him quite a bit

>>17904081
>>17904064
To be honest, at the first glace I thought that this book is self-help for boomers ar something like that

This book is batshit from the first to the last line

>yo bro you eat you poop you follow your needs you die
>you know nothing bro if you read you still know nothing if you write you're still nothing lel
What did he do? Eat, poop, followed his needs, started with Greeks, wrote some some shit, kys'd himself.
And you wanna take advice from or simply listen to this pseud?

Don't waste your time with this pathetic flow of Jewish nonsense, read poetry instead. Read Dante, Leopardi, Goethe, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Dickinson, Pound, Eliot, Montale, Pessoa. Leave this piece of shit of a book in the trash bin.

>>17903891
>The real solution is the acceptance and completion of rhetoric and transmutation of it into persuasion — to pursue instead of a resistant troubled mode of action to an extroverted passive mode of act in order to actually use privation (the cause of rhetoric) to actually achieve persuasion. The persuaded man isn’t free of lack. He possesses himself in spite of lack. In fact, he uses his lack as a means of self possession
Incredibly amazing chain of buzzwords, bro. Now, how about you try to explain in concrete terms what it means?
Be aware that you're talking with a person (me) who 1) has read the book, 2) is well-trained in philosophy, 3) doesn't speak English (I point this out just in case it is a problem of understanding *you* rather than the book itself).
Now please, go straight ahead. The stage is yours.

>>17904045
Heidegger is infinitely better than this teen punk ante litteram. At least Heidegger actually valued Being and whatever life is worth living for. In Michelstaedter that which is always under the surface is sorrow, nothingness: his solution? To live "persuaded", even though he himself admits it's impossible. Yeah, it does sound like a fucking joke. In Heidegger it is basically the opposite, that which is always under the surface is Being. This is why life is not to be thrown away, despite all the misery and the affliction.

What I hate the most about this dude is that he used to have that pretentious know-all tone, while offering literally nothing. "I teach you the truth, but you won't gain anything". Then do not teach, jerk. At least those who committed suicide (among which are many people that I highly respect, from Caraco to Celan) did it for despair, not because they claimed to have found the solution of existence. And if the solution of existence is killing yourself, be sure you are in the presence of a bullshit-core philosophy.

Read pic related, if you're interested in these topics.

>>17904746
The level of coping
Michelstaedter is right. How did Heidegger overcome dukkha? He did not. Only Jesus, Buddha, etc., conquer life and fully possess themselves. It is normal that the way seems impossible, but it is the only way, whether you like it or not.

>And the author continues, not leaving in peace the one to whom he addresses, imagining well that the men, almost all the men, will not fail to oppose him a multitude of arguments which are so many cries betraying their fear, the fear of the death which pushes them to live without persuasion (cf. p. 77): "My legs are wobbly, and your path is impassable", and to these he replies: "There are the lame and the able-bodied - but man must strengthen his own hocks to walk - and go forward where there is no road. By the usual ways men walk in a circle that has no beginning and no end; they come and go, they compete, they hurry, busy as ants - perhaps they confuse each other, - but even if they walk, they are still where they were, for all places are the same, in the valley with no end. Man must make his way to life, not to move among others, to take others with him, not to claim the rewards that are not in the way of men" (p. 73).

>>17904045
He is better. More close to Cioran.

>>17904800
The fact that he you haven't killed yourself proves that you're wrong, because if you agreed with Michelstaedter you'd kill yourself. Look at you, poor thing, you are so pathetic that you pretend to agree with him while simultaneously proving him wrong by remaining alive.
The absolute state of philosophy cocksuckers.

>>17904987
>The fact that he you haven't killed yourself proves that you're wrong, because if you agreed with Michelstaedter you'd kill yourself
False. I agree with Michelstaedter on the diagnosis (dukkha) but I think there is another way out than death: transcendence (nirvana, samadhi, moksha, etc). He also talks about it in his book, but never reached it, hence his death.

>"I have never met the Absolute, but I know him as he who suffers from insomnia knows sleep, as he who looks at the darkness knows the light" (p. 93).

>>17903894
That quote reinforces what I just said but I could see how if you didn’t read any of this or actually think about it then you’d come to the conclusion. It’s made blatantly obvious that it is, in fact, not asceticism.

>>17904561
> distill down a work of philosophy in a 4chan post for me or you’re dumb
No. Why don’t you just read the book if this interests you? The conclusion is something like “turn work into play”. Beyond that, you’re on your own and I can’t give you your cliff notes.

>>17904746
Fuck Heidegger, he became a christcuck in order to cope with existence.

>>17905060
>It’s made blatantly obvious that it is, in fact, not asceticism.
>Michelstaedter calls for cutting all ties with the world to be radically self-sufficient, but this is not asceticism
Yeah... Sure.

>>17905071
he was a christcuck, he became a lutheran atheist

>>17904561
Everything that was said was perfectly clear if you read the book, Mr. Philosophy. Read Heidegger if you want. Recall that for Michelstäedter, rhetoric is is the inherent incompleteness and imperfection of action so thus, the antithesis of rhetoric, persuasion, is not the absence of action but rather the completion and perfection of action. He wants you to actually use your lack rather than run from it. The I is thirsty so it drinks and in so far as it drinks, it continues to thirst. The solution then is not to run from your condition of thirst but to actually use it to carry you to something more complete.

>>17903817
great post anon thanks

>>17905196
The persuasion is the right life, something like the sprezzatura, perhaps, of Cristina Campo, in any case a life without artifice that is not constrained, like a weight, to fall indefinitely, because "it is not given to him to be satisfied", in other words: "The weight can never be persuaded" (p. 42, the author emphasizes). The persuasion is thus the essential freedom which is not given to the man, since this last must conquer it: "The persuasion does not live in the one who does not live only of himself: but is son and father, slave and master of what surrounds him, of what there was before, of what must come after: thing among things" (p. 43, the author underlines). The one who does not live in the persuasion lives in the dispossession, synonymous of the rhetoric, because "each one turns around his pivot, which is not his, and the bread that he does not have, he cannot give it to the others", being persuaded "the one who has in himself his life", "the soul naked in the islands of the Blessed", perhaps (p. 44, the author underlines).
Living in dispossession, the men who refuse persuasion hide the sordid truth of their state, which is none other than: the fear of pain. Has Carlo Emilio Gadda read Carlo Michelstaedter? I don't know, but after all, why not, as it is obvious from The Knowledge of Pain that this text was not written for laughs. The persuaded man is a free man, the man who is not persuaded is a slave because, listen to this secret, perhaps the most obvious and yet the best hidden in the world, man is only a slave of his own fear: "Men are afraid of pain and to escape from it they apply as a plaster faith in a power in accordance with the infinity of the power they do not know and load it with the weight of pain they do not know how to bear. The god that they honor, to whom they abandon everything [...] it is the pleasure; such is their familiar god, the dear, the affable, the known" (pp. 56-7).
Freedom is frightening, and it is necessary to imagine that, eager to break the chains which maintain him in slavery, the man, before being able to pretend (to no one but himself, the persuasion not suffering any publicity) persuaded, risks to cross a very difficult period where, having renounced to the easy consolations, his "projects for the next day and the day after tomorrow" will stop: then, "the man is again without first name, without name, without answer and without parents, idle, without clothes, alone, naked, the eyes opened to look at the darkness" (p. 59).

(1/2)

>>17905271
In other words, voluntarily sinking into the depth that only matters, man renounces docility, goodness, "or even superiority or knowledge of the world", so many synonymous terms designating "the superficiality of one who did not have in himself the reason for what he did, but found himself doing it, not knowing why he wanted the very things he wanted", not having therefore "in himself the power of these things nor sufficient strength to oppose what could take them away from him", but finding himself nevertheless "drawing his little life from them" (p. 66).
The "way to persuasion" (the title of the third part of our book) is not only arduous but also perilous, because no one returns from this way once he is engaged on it, which will lead the persuaded man to find, in himself, the lost center that Zissimos Lorentzatos will evoke later on. Like all the great masters (we will see later that we have to be careful with this term), and no matter how old this young man was when he wrote his most famous book, Michelstaedter teaches us to see what it is really about, leads us to the top of the mountain, asks us to contemplate the void, then to throw ourselves into it. There is no question of asserting that this influence is perverse or even diabolical: Carlo Michelstaedter does not tempt us, nor does he test us. He urges us to plunge into ourselves, in order to get rid of the last expedients thanks to which we delude ourselves and, literally, veil our face and, above all, he does not cease to repeat to us that, on the way of the persuasion, no stop is allowed nor even possible (cf. p. 82): "Are you or are you not persuaded of what you do? You need something to happen or not to happen in order to do what you are doing, for the correlations to coincide unceasingly, because the end, however vast and distant, is never in what you are doing, but is always your continuation. You say that you are convinced of what you are doing, and come what may? - Do you? - So I say to you: tomorrow you will certainly be dead: what does it matter? you think of your reputation? you think of your family? but your memory is dead with you, with you your family is dead; - you think of your ideals? you want to make your will? you want a tombstone? but tomorrow they will be dead, dead too; men all die with you - your death is an infallible comet; you address God? - there is no God, God dies with you; the kingdom of heaven collapses with you, tomorrow you will be dead, dead; tomorrow everything is over; your body, your family, your friends, your country, what you do, what you can still do, good, evil, true, false, your ideas, your role, God and his kingdom, heaven, hell, everything, tomorrow, everything is over - in 24 hours it is death" (pp. 67-8).

(2/3)

>>17905279
The persuaded man, thus, does not fear to die, because "Who fears the death is already dead" (p. 69, the author underlines), while the one who on the contrary "wants strongly his life, is not satisfied, for fear of suffering, of this vain pleasure that makes screen to his pain, so that this one continues in the depths, blind, mute, elusive; but he assumes on the contrary the person of this pain", what allows him to "create himself in order to acquire the individual value, that does not move contrary to the things that come and go, but is in itself persuaded" (p. 71, the author underlines).
It is striking to note that Carlo Michelstaedter does not fear to adopt, much more than a position of master, even if he is eminent like Aristotle whom he hates above all, a true christian attitude, as several passages prove it: "It is not a question of giving support to men subjected to the fear of death, but of taking away this fear; it is not a question of giving them illusory life and the means so that they ceaselessly ask for it again, but of giving them life now, here, in its totality, so that they do not need to ask: such is the activity that cuts off violence at its root" (p. 80, author's emphasis).

(3/3)

>>17905291
>It is striking to note that Carlo Michelstaedter does not fear to adopt, much more than a position of master, even if he is eminent like Aristotle whom he hates above all, a true christian attitude, as several passages prove it: "It is not a question of giving support to men subjected to the fear of death, but of taking away this fear; it is not a question of giving them illusory life and the means so that they ceaselessly ask for it again, but of giving them life now, here, in its totality, so that they do not need to ask: such is the activity that cuts off violence at its root" (p. 80, author's emphasis).
I love this. Who wrote it?

Personally, Michalestaedter is one of those few authors who had a really huge impact on me. My single biggest regret is it that it didn’t come sooner, as yeah, like a student or something. Life has a way making its event horizon harder to escape the longer it goes on...

I regret helping make Michelstaedter a meme now, the pseud american undergrads smell blood in the water and still stop at nothing until they've bastardized and flattened everything they don't understand. you are all the insurance salesman michelstaedter mocks in the second half of the book

>>17904561
you're trained in philosophy but have no frame of reference for what michelstaedter or the anon here is talking about. you're not a philosopher, you got trained in getting really good at playing academic sudoku.

>>17904462
a tweeny soul filtered by an old soul like michelstaedter's. many such cases

>>17904987
suicide is not the unavoidable conclusion of his philosophy. michelstaedter is right and pierced to the heart of the matter in less than 200 pages while heidegger took an entire career of etymological expositions to say in 20 books what michelstaedter says in 20 lines. please leave american undergrad, you make me sick

>>17905466
Let them read. I was as dumb and ironic as they are at least but Michaelstaedter was a very important author for me and I wish I had that moment where I read his book and it clicked with me much sooner.

>>17905521
i don't like seeing tweeny boppers trivializing a thinker who changed my life. but yeah you're right. let them read.

>>17905038
>"I have never met the Absolute, but I know him as he who suffers from insomnia knows sleep, as he who looks at the darkness knows the light" (p. 93).
That's one of the few good moments of the book. Unfortunately it is trashed and killed by dozens and dozens of pages of stating the obvious (you eat, you shit, you die) and hopeless nihilism. A mature mind would further elaborate that single point – exactly what Heidegger did – instead of spending so much time and effort in a self-indulgent pars destruens. He killed himself because in 23 years (probably 10 of conscious adult life) he couldn't reach transcendence or the Absolute? Fucking ridiculous. The strive towards that is exactly what keeps us alive and joyous. He basically contributed nothing to the history of thought.

>>17905125
>>17905060
>I have read the book
>"Why don’t you just read the book"
Based retards. It is so funny that everytime a philosofag is put in front of the request of speaking in concrete terms, or examples, they always run away like mice.

>The I is thirsty so it drinks and in so far as it drinks, it continues to thirst
Yeah, except you failed to understand that Michestaedter says exactly the opposite, i.e. that the I finds satisfaction in drinking, thus it ceases to drink before resuming the act. And in this satisfaction (and resuming) the autist Michelstaedter sees a bad thing. This is why there is no solution in the book, contrary to what you and the other fag are claiming. Using the rhetoric to be persuaded and perfect in action is explicitly defined as impossible.

I would quote some excerpts from the book to show you how contradictory it is, but unfortunately I don't have the English text because I've read in the original.

>>17905560
>He basically contributed nothing to the history of thought.
imagine reading michelstaedter and having this be your takeaway.

>>17905539
>>17905521
>>17905466
I read more than you, friends. This is the exact reason why I know this book is a bunch of bullshit, while you can't even defend yourselves from the question "Why are you alive?".

>>17905577
Imagine reading Michelstaedter and thinking it is useful for anything.

>>17905601
you're not a philosopher, you're a recreational thinker. michelstaedter was a true philosopher

>>17903092
>killed himself 4 years before ww1
>As his family was Jewish, they were sent to Auschwitz, only one sister escaped to Switzerland.
Honestly sounds like he made the correct decision

>>17905611
Great argument you got there.

>>17905474
Ah, the pessimism canon wins again

>>17905560
I don’t know what else to tell you other than that you should read again specifically the part about the I which drinks. Michaelstaedter has been wel studied in certain philosophy departments by the way and even they disagree with you so you can take your issue with them also.

>>17905601
I wasn’t even replying to you. Leave me alone.

>>17905643
Answer this question: Why haven't you killed yourself yet?

>>17905657
I am a fucking pussy.

>>17905635
*bars your descent into nothingness*

>>17903099
>His philosophy was the endpoint of his philosophical project.

this. same goes for mark fisher. very few understand this!

>>17905674
Then you are the kind of person that Michelstaedter despises.

>>17905683
no he despises the rhetoricians, not those like him who can see the writing on the wall. christ im so fucking sick of you "huh? huh? so why havent you killed yourself yet? huh? huh?" mincing fucking faggots in these threads

>>17905677
I don't care about stupid naziman. But during my last euphoric episode I felt the whole philosophy of Nietzsche in few seconds and it made me want to embrace death in all of its glory at that exact moment of contradiction between infinity and nothingness.

>>17905697
What is the writing on the wall?

>>17905718
understanding the distinction between rhetoric and persuasion, the infinite futility of desire

>>17905657
You answer this question: why do you ask as if it’s only natural that I should?

>>17905744
start desiring you melancholic

>>17905760
Y tho?

>>17905760
>lacan
the jewish miserabilists like shestov, michelstaedter, and weil have always been wiser than cuckan. i like Lacan but don't pretend his system has anything to say about anything outside the city limits of Paris

>>17905767
Redpill me on jewish miserabilism

>>17905796
fuck the demiurge, fuck the archons, fuck this entire vampiric world order enshrined as "Necessity", "progress", or "natural law", the only truth is suffering and the truth you find in suffering. everything else is recreational language games played by urbanites

>>17905823
Sounds like ancient Greek Miserablilism

>"You, most blessed and happiest among humans, may well consider those blessed and happiest who have departed this life before you, and thus you may consider it unlawful, indeed blasphemous, to speak anything ill or false of them, since they now have been transformed into a better and more refined nature. This thought is indeed so old that the one who first uttered it is no longer known; it has been passed down to us from eternity, and hence doubtless it is true. Moreover, you know what is so often said and passes for a trite expression. What is that, he asked? He answered: It is best not to be born at all; and next to that, it is better to die than to live; and this is confirmed even by divine testimony. Pertinently to this they say that Midas, after hunting, asked his captive Silenus somewhat urgently, what was the most desirable thing among humankind. At first he could offer no response, and was obstinately silent. At length, when Midas would not stop plaguing him, he erupted with these words, though very unwillingly: 'you, seed of an evil genius and precarious offspring of hard fortune, whose life is but for a day, why do you compel me to tell you those things of which it is better you should remain ignorant? For he lives with the least worry who knows not his misfortune; but for humans, the best for them is not to be born at all, not to partake of nature's excellence; not to be is best, for both sexes. This should be our choice, if choice we have; and the next to this is, when we are born, to die as soon as we can.' It is plain therefore, that he declared the condition of the dead to be better than that of the living."

– Aristotle, Eudemus (354 BCE)

>>17905474
I'm Italian, you fucking dipshit. If suicide is not the unavoidable solution, then why does the book literally say that living with persuasion is impossible? This is the whole point of the book. And even assuming that Michelstaedter thinks living with persuasion is possible, then what is the merit of the book? What did it contribute to an already-existent thread of thinkers who preached exactly the same thing for ages?

>>17905744
Michelstaedter doesn't offer any hope, any possibility of salvation even to them. This is what you all fail to understand. He sees everyone, literally everyone in existence as a slave of rhetoric. Maybe not Jesus or Buddha, but they were gods, so his entire philosophy falls back into the Nietzschean research of superhumanism?

>>17905756
I ask because suicide appears to be the only solution Michelstaedter implicitly provides. What some anons said – that he considers persuasion as the way out – is blatantly false, because in many passages of the book he claims that persuasion is unachievable by definition.

>>17905844
it should. the idea is: Being is a Limit, a diminution, of the infinite "light" of Non-Being.

>>17905845
striving towards the impossible ideal of persuasion IS to be persuaded you ninny.

>>17905860
>striving towards the impossible ideal of persuasion IS to be persuaded you ninny
That is exactly what makes life joyful, and yet Michelstaedter killed himself. Things don't add up.

>>17905860
>>17905913
>>17905913
>striving towards the impossible ideal of persuasion IS to be persuaded you ninny.
Plato and Schopenhauer have already said this.

>>17905931
nah plato was a full transcendentalist, there's no transcendence-in-immanence cuck shit with him, Realm of Forms or bust.

>>17905845
>I ask because suicide appears to be the only solution Michelstaedter implicitly provides. What some anons said – that he considers persuasion as the way out – is blatantly false, because in many passages of the book he claims that persuasion is unachievable by definition.
He says so only because persuasion, or self possession, is prevented by the I in so far as the I flees from itself. I think the problem people have in understanding this book is the inability, or unwillingness, to differentiate universals from particulars. Michaelstaedter’s project is not to have you recognize the terrible tragedy inherent to modern life. He supposes that his readers will be, if only in an inarticulated way, aware of this already. What he does instead is walk through this terrible tragedy in order to elaborate on the mode of life which stands in negation of it. That’s persuasion. Moreover, Michalestaedter doesn’t tell us that persuasion is impossible. He tells us that it is impossible in so far one flees from themselves. What Michaelstaedter wants you to do instead is to carry the awareness of life’s tragedy at all times and rather than deprive in his asceticism or suicide, live in a mode which makes having ever lived in the first place worth it. His book and his life is a living testament to his philosophy. Overcome with the exigency of emotion and living, he chose to end his life and in doing so injected into the most radical existential philosophy the world has ever known written by an otherwise forever unknown student into the canon of history forever. Michaelstaedter is read because he chose not to fear death. His philosophy may or may not imply suicide given specific particular instances, but it’s not at all accurate to say it’s the inevitable consequence of his philosophy. Instead, he would have you stare death boldly in the face and live in a way that makes ever having lived at all worth it such that at the moment of your death, you will have saved yourself. So I suppose that’s my answer to your original question

>>17905990
Which stands presently as a negation*

>>17905990
>Instead, he would have you stare death boldly in the face and live in a way that makes ever having lived at all worth it such that at the moment of your death, you will have saved yourself
precisely, to be purified and resolved in the final present of death

>>17906006
No. Now you’re twisting my words.

>>17906110
i whipped out my copy of R&P just for you you fucking retard. i'm the only nigger who actually reads here

>Each of his instants is a century in the life of others - until he makes of himself a flame and comes to consist in the final present. Then he will be persuaded and in persuasion have peace. Through activity to peace.
p. 57

>>17906133
It says right there in plain greentext “present moment” not “present moment of death” and furthermore, I said “that at the moment of your death, you will have saved yourself”, not that it was the moment of your death that did the saving.

>>17906199
“Final present”*

>>17906199
final persuasion IS death retard

>>17906210
According to who? Not the author.

>>17905990
>Michalestaedter doesn’t tell us that persuasion is impossible. He tells us that it is impossible in so far one flees from themselves
Yes, but he also says that everyone flees from themselves, constantly and with no exception, no one excluded.

This anon >>17906006, >>17906133, >>17906210 gets it.
>until he makes of himself a flame and comes to consist in the final present
Consist (in Italian consistere) is used in the same sense of the Latin word, consisto (cum+sisto), which means "to arrest oneself", "to stop oneself". So it's literally that: death.
And "make of himself a flame" is an obvious allusion to suicide.

This is why I can't take this guy seriously. Any philosophy that encourages suicide, at least for me, is bullshit. No matter how much you prettify your text with poetic metaphors, erudite quotes, Greek letters and other doodles. The doctrine of "stare death boldly in the face" is already very extreme, let alone suggesting people that the only solution, the only logical conclusion is suicide. It's not sentimentalism, I'm very concretely claiming that Michelstaedter's whole philosophy doesn't stand up logically.

And even if I wanted to be emotional, seeing how beautiful life is, how beautiful it is that we have this given limited time, makes all that book miserably fall apart. Any philosophy that tries to teach – no matter how – a way to fulfill, to live to the fullest extent, to the best of your possibilities, this given time, is infinitely better than this pointless and contradictory monstrosity. And when I say "how beautiful life is" I mean that exactly in the sense that Michelstaedter suggests, i.e. how beautiful in sorrow, in tragedy, despite sorrow, despite tragedy – because of sorrow and tragedy. So yes, I am one of those who despise the Hegelian necessity, progress, natural law (>>17905823); I am one of those who understand "the infinite futility of desire" (>>17905744) but I am also aware that throwing everything that was given to you into the toilet is not concordant with the teaching of living in persuasion – or striving towards persuasion, whatever. Denying any possibility of redemption or salvation a priori – what Michelstaedter does, perhaps unconsciously, since he was an edgy young man after all – is just extremely stupid, because it leads you nowhere. Plato, Plotinus, Ficino, Schopenhauer, Eastern philosophy all did what Michelstaedter tried to do not only better, but also through a philosophy that actually makes sense for a living being. The only one who was pretty much as extreme as Michelstaedter was Leopardi I think, but at least he never implicitly suggested to commit suicide and – especially – he never wrote such a pretentious and obnoxious piece of philosophy, but instead devoted himself to writing wonderful poetry, thus redempting himself.