Sublime

We have been on a strange journey. I have founded this book on an unusual claim: that thinkers as different as Zhuangzi, Spinoza and Girard share a common core idea.

Today, scientists are more and more aware that what things are, and what they are doing, depends on where and when they are doing it.

I felt in that moment that we all have a choice now between two profound forces—fragmentation, or flow. Fragmentation makes you smaller, shallower, angrier. Flow makes you bigger, deeper, calmer. Fragmentation shrinks us. Flow expands us.

Within the humanities, some of the key theorists drew inspiration from the writings published at midcentury by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who had analyzed, with stunning lucidity, the body’s influence upon even our most rarefied cogitiations.

After all our futile efforts to transform our ordinary minds into idealized, spiritual minds, we discover the fundamental paradox of practice is that leaving everything alone is itself what is ultimately transformative.

Quand ils essayaient de s’observer, les gens découvraient habituellement des histoires toutes faites. Une exploration ouverte était trop dangereuse. Elle menaçait de saper l’ordre social. La technologie s’améliorant, deux choses se produisirent. Premièrement, avec la lente évolution des couteaux en silex aux missiles nucléaires, il est devenu plus