Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Philosophy of Despair: Large Print Edition

The Philosophy of Despair: Large Print Edition

Jordan, David Starr

Paperback

PhilosophyGeneral World History

ISBN10: 1727612353
ISBN13: 9781727612356
Publisher: Createspace
Published: Sep 26 2018
Pages: 38
Weight: 0.15
Height: 0.09 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Excerpt: This poem of Omar and of Fitzgerald is perhaps our best expression of the sadness and the grandeur of insoluble problems. It is the sweetness of philosophical sorrow which has no kinship with misery or distress. In the strains of the saddest music the soul finds the keenest delight. The same sweet, sorrowful pleasure is felt in the play of the mind about the riddles which it cannot solve. In the presence of the infinite problem of life, the voice of Science is dumb, for Science is the coördinate and corrected expression of human experience, and human experience must stop with the limitations of human life. Man was not present When the foundations of the Earth were laid, and beyond the certainty that they were laid in wisdom and power, man can say little about them. Man finds in the economy of nature no trace of a beginning; no prospect of an end! He may feel sure, with Hutton, that time is as long as space is wide. But he cannot conceive of space as actually without limit, nor can he imagine any limiting conditions. He cannot think of a period before time began, nor of a state in which time shall be no more. The mind fails before the idea of time's eternal continuity. So time becomes to man merely the sequence of the earthly events in which he and his ancestors have taken part. Even thus limited it is sadly immortal, while man's stay on the earth is but of few days and full of trouble. Oh, but the long, long while this world shall last! or as the grim humorist puts it, we shall be a long time dead. Though the meaning of time, space, existence lies beyond our reach, yet some sort of solution of the infinite problem the human heart demands. We find in life a power for action, limited though this power may be. Life is action, and action is impossible if devoid of motive or hope.

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