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The Paradox of the End*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Iddo Landau
Iddo Landau
Affiliation:
University of Haifa
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Extract

We set ourselves ends and strive to achieve them. We hope that their attainment will improve our condition. The closer we get to our goals, the happier we feel. Paradoxically, however, when we finally do achieve them our joy is sometimes diminished. We have a sense of insignificance and emptiness, and we feel that in attaining our goal we have lost the meaningfulness and balance we experienced while we were striving towards it. In some ways, it seems to us, the struggle is more gratifying than the achievement of the end.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 70 , Issue 274 , October 1995 , pp. 555 - 565
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1995

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References

1 Blaise Pascal, Pensees, II, 139

2 Jean-Jacques, Rousseau, Julie ou la nouvelle heloise, VI, viii (Paris: Gamier Freres, 1960, 681).Google Scholar

3 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, ‘Eine Duplik’, Lessings Samtliche Schriften, Karl, Lachmann and Franz, Muncker (eds), 23 vols. (Leipzig: G. J. Goschen, 1897), vol. 13, 24.Google ScholarSoren, Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. D. F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton University Press, 1944), 97.Google Scholar

4 Troilus and Cressida, act 1 sc. 2.

5 Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘El Dorado’, Virginibus Puerisque (London: Thomas Nelson, 1932), 184.Google Scholar

6 Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere′s Fan, act 3; see also nearly the same phrase in George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, act 4.

7 When you start on your journey to Ithaca then pray that the road is long

8 Cicero, Tusculan Disputations i, 5. Ovid, Metamorphoses iv, 459

9 It is interesting to note that Odysseus—Sisyphus′ son, according to Ovid (Metamorphoses, xiii, 31)—also began his labours all over again, immediately after having achieved his goal. Following a long and hard journey home, full of temptations and perils, and after defeating Penelope′s suitors and reclaiming his kingdom, Odysseus for no apparent reason sets out on his travels again.

10 See note 1 above

11 See note 2 above.

12 Arthur Schopenhauer, Die welt ah Wille und Vorstellung, bk. 4, sect. 56–59; supp. to bk. 4, chap. 46. James, Martineau, Modern Materialism and its Relation to Religion and Theology (New York: Putnam, 1877).Google ScholarLeo, Tolstoy, A Confession, trans. Alymer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1940).Google ScholarBertrand, Russell, ‘A Free Man′s Worship’, in Mysticism and Logic (New York: Unwin, 1951).Google ScholarAlbert, Camus, Le mythe de Sisyphe (Paris: Gallimard, 1942).Google Scholar

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14 Thus, I disagree here with Camus, who maintains that the great philosophical systems do not incorporate efforts to cope with the meaninglessness of life. He respects the great philosophical figures for trying to achieve a complete understanding of reality. However, he thinks that all in all they have occupied themselves with unimportant, theoretical questions, instead of dealing with the question of meaninglessness or, as he calls it, the problem of suicide (Le my the de Sisyphe, p. 15).

15 See Amihud Gilead, ‘Plato′s Eros, Camus’ Sisyphus, and the Impossibility of Philosophical Satisfaction’, CLIO 17, (1988): 323–344.

16 See Symposium, 210E, 212A; Seventh Letter 341C-D, saying that it is possible to grasp Beauty by uniting with it suddenly, as with a blaze or a spark.

17 Parmenides, 135A

18 Phaedrus, 278D.

19 Apology, 21D.

20 Hegel, G. W. F., Phanomenologie des Geistes, in Gesammelte Werke, Wolfgang, Bonsiepen and Reinhard, Heede (eds), 14 vols., (Hamburg: Meiner, 1980), vol. 9, p. 11.Google Scholar

21 Critique of Pure Reason, B 21, 352–53, 670.

22 Ibid. ‘The Dialectical Inferences of Pure Reason’.

23 Ibid. 294–309.

24 Ibid. 670–696.

25 Ibid. 691.

26 Fichte, Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre), Second Introduction, section 11, trans. Peter Heath and John Lachs (New York: Meredith, 1970) 84. Lessing: See note 3 above.Google ScholarSoren, Kirekegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. D. F. Swenson and Walter, Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944), 84, 85, 350.Google Scholar

27 Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, chap. 1

28 Ibid.

29 Meister, Eckhart, The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatise and Defence, trans. E., Colledge and B., McGinn (New York: Paulist Press, 1981) 168–9, 172–3, 178, 183–4, 264–265.Google ScholarMeister, Eckhart: A Modern Translation, trans. R. B. Blakney (New York: Harper and Row, 1941) 136–7.Google Scholar

30 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, VII, 89

31 Note, however, that seeing all our activities as predestined poses difficulties of its own. The paradox is solved at the price of making our activities analogous to those of an automaton. Thus, although deterministic theories can eliminate the frustration involved in the paradox of the end, they may arouse the feeling of meaninglessness in other ways.

32 Ethics, part I, props. 26–29.

33 Ibid. prop. 17, proof, cor. 1, 2, and note

34 Letter 58 in the Gebhardt Edition.

35 A. C. Pearson, The Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes (London: Clay 1891), Frag. 91.Google Scholar