Sublime

But it would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.

Love and generous perception are mutually reinforcing. Adopting a posture of love toward others leads us to see them positively;

Gabriel Marcel, a Christian among the existentialists, appreciated our road-hunger. Marcel described humanity as homo viator, “itinerate man.” But he was staunchly critical of Sartre’s view of freedom. Freedom isn’t digging a tunnel to escape, he counseled; it’s digging down into yourself.

Answer to Atheistic Moral Platonism

A popular book that makes similar points is the best-selling When Breath Becomes Air, the reflections of a young neurosurgeon, now deceased, who wrote about a journey back toward faith when he was dying of cancer.20 Paul Kalanithi had been an “ironclad atheist.” His primary charge against Christianity was “its failure on empirical grounds. Surely

Not being philosophers, we too might turn to philosophy as a source of perspective, reflection, and guidance; his book is a kind of philosophical diary, intensely personal and idiosyncratic. For Marcus, Stoic philosophy is often held at arm’s length, as it is by many of us.

NINE Duty On Loving Mankind