The first medieval man and the last classical man


There seethed all around me a cauldron of lawless loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought what I might love, in love with loving, and I hated safety... To love then, and to be beloved, was sweet to me; but more, when I obtained to enjoy the person I loved. I defiled, therefore, the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and I beclouded its brightness with the hell of lustfulness.
Augustine of Hippo— Confessions 3.1.1

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Me myself and eye

Image
Acrylic on wood 30x30 I must have been looking at something, I can't remember what though. It can't have been that interesting, in fact, it was probably nothing at all. Does anything actually exist without me observing it?All these things around me are just momentary snaps of my consciousness. When I am not observing the material world everything is in existence in every and any and all possible forms. By opening my eyes and observing, I am choosing, minute by minute, to bring my actual life experience into manifestation. Does the world really exist without my direct imput or is the world, reality, just a soup made from possibilities of my consciousness? I am the creator. AM EYE GOD?
Read more

'The Lord Answering Job Out of the Whirlwind' (If I have a face transplant, am I still me?)

All we can ever know for certain about death is that a living person grows strangely still. We each have a fantasy about what happens after death and this fantasy determines how we see the purpose of life. If we see death as the end of our identity, the purpose of our life becomes making this life satisfactory. There is an infinite number of ways in which we might choose to define "satisfactory", but whichever we choose becomes our purpose. If we see death as the doorway to another life, we have to decide whether this next life will be better than this one. To give us hope, we decide that the next life will be better. This raises the question of justice. Do all people go on to this better life, or are there standards that have to be met? A sense of justice leads us to choose standards, and in doing so we condemn ourselves to living this life in terms of the next. If you set standards which you can easily reach, you limit the amount of self-inflicted pain you will suffer, but ...
Read more