“De tout mon coeur t’exalterai…”
(This epigraph is taken from a Bible-based [Psalm 9] French Huguenot hymn, sung by the condemned to be burned at the stake, as their ultimate profession of faith…)
“No one can be happy on the rack,” says Aristotle, and when I read it first, a very long time ago, I rushed to agree with him, obviously taking this as a truism. For, indeed, physical torture hardly seems to be conducive to the happiness of the tortured. Ugh!!!
In those childhood years, although I had already proved myself of possessing the contrarian spirit, there had been many things I would be taking at their face value, just because my comprehension had not been up to par, then. But, looking at it today, maybe this is not such a truistic statement, after all? What about the early Christians, and all those persecuted “heretics” of the later times? (I mean the Protestants in the eyes of the Catholics, the Catholics in the eyes of the Protestants, the small denominationalists in the eyes of the larger denominationalists, etc.) How did they all face excruciating death, I wonder? Did they see it as the ultimate horror, or as a glorious road to the Kingdom of Heaven? Weren’t they supersensually ecstatic, to be tortured to death for their faith? Weren’t they all unimaginably, superiorly happy under torture, knowing, rather than believing, that, in emulation of Jesus Christ, torture was their gateway to Heaven, and to eternal life? In fact, I believe that the horrific pain of the rack and the scaffold had been, in a sort of masochistic way, increasing the intensity of their happiness to heights unknown to normal men under normal circumstances, bringing them to the point where extreme pain and extreme pleasure meet, mate, and become one…
Mind you, I am not talking about crazy people. Those “flagellants” and other self-torturers, hiding a clinical case of deviant psychopathology behind their penitent zeal. I am talking about sincere believers, who just wanted to be left alone to practice their faith, yet were forced by the circumstances to take a stand for their religious convictions. Or patriots captured on the battlefield by the enemy and tortured for information.
How can one endure torture and die a glorious martyr in the process? I realize that such exalted experiences are not something a normal man can identify with, although, one can certainly understand it. Our attitude to pain is entirely Schopenhauerian, in the sense that we consider it a nuisance at best, or a horror at worst, to be left out of serious contemplation for the sheer dread it infuses into the mind. Indeed, very few of us would have made a “good” early Christian, and it is definitely hard to imagine one going to the stake over the trifle matter of consubstantiation.
Yet, describing a “normal man,” we are erroneously assuming a normal man under normal circumstances, whereas the circumstances of the rack or an imminent brutal death are by no means “normal circumstances” by any stretch of imagination. This is where a normal man may become indistinguishable from a lunatic and become a genuine hero for the posterity…
So, dear Aristotle, it is quite possible for a normal man to be happy on the rack, just because the experience of the rack is not a rational experience, and it cannot be described in detached rational terms…
...But enough of the physical rack. Now, aside from the physical rack, there is also the mental rack, and this one gives no excuse for happiness whatsoever… Except for the Stoic attitude, of course, which is not exactly a happiness on the rack, but a happiness in spite of the rack. I am extremely doubtful though that Stoicism can perform the kind of miracle on the rack that religious or patriotic zeal (I guess, these two probably amount to the same thing) can. However, with regard to the mental rack, it can do wonders.
The Stoic attitude to mental anguish is well-known. One can inure oneself to it. What this means has already been discussed elsewhere. The Stoic attitude in this case can be best described by the modern term positive thinking, meaning that we are actually capable of molding our own attitude, liberating ourselves from such negative emotions, as pity for ourselves, compassion for our family and neighbors, and for the whole human race as such, as we become immoral and insensitive, to the point of monstrous metaphysical selfishness.
What happens in the end of this Stoic exercise is that our positive attitude turns into a deplorable, immoral condition, where it can be fairly observed that our “positive attitude” has killed our positive attitude, that is, that our morality has committed suicide.
(This epigraph is taken from a Bible-based [Psalm 9] French Huguenot hymn, sung by the condemned to be burned at the stake, as their ultimate profession of faith…)
“No one can be happy on the rack,” says Aristotle, and when I read it first, a very long time ago, I rushed to agree with him, obviously taking this as a truism. For, indeed, physical torture hardly seems to be conducive to the happiness of the tortured. Ugh!!!
In those childhood years, although I had already proved myself of possessing the contrarian spirit, there had been many things I would be taking at their face value, just because my comprehension had not been up to par, then. But, looking at it today, maybe this is not such a truistic statement, after all? What about the early Christians, and all those persecuted “heretics” of the later times? (I mean the Protestants in the eyes of the Catholics, the Catholics in the eyes of the Protestants, the small denominationalists in the eyes of the larger denominationalists, etc.) How did they all face excruciating death, I wonder? Did they see it as the ultimate horror, or as a glorious road to the Kingdom of Heaven? Weren’t they supersensually ecstatic, to be tortured to death for their faith? Weren’t they all unimaginably, superiorly happy under torture, knowing, rather than believing, that, in emulation of Jesus Christ, torture was their gateway to Heaven, and to eternal life? In fact, I believe that the horrific pain of the rack and the scaffold had been, in a sort of masochistic way, increasing the intensity of their happiness to heights unknown to normal men under normal circumstances, bringing them to the point where extreme pain and extreme pleasure meet, mate, and become one…
Mind you, I am not talking about crazy people. Those “flagellants” and other self-torturers, hiding a clinical case of deviant psychopathology behind their penitent zeal. I am talking about sincere believers, who just wanted to be left alone to practice their faith, yet were forced by the circumstances to take a stand for their religious convictions. Or patriots captured on the battlefield by the enemy and tortured for information.
How can one endure torture and die a glorious martyr in the process? I realize that such exalted experiences are not something a normal man can identify with, although, one can certainly understand it. Our attitude to pain is entirely Schopenhauerian, in the sense that we consider it a nuisance at best, or a horror at worst, to be left out of serious contemplation for the sheer dread it infuses into the mind. Indeed, very few of us would have made a “good” early Christian, and it is definitely hard to imagine one going to the stake over the trifle matter of consubstantiation.
Yet, describing a “normal man,” we are erroneously assuming a normal man under normal circumstances, whereas the circumstances of the rack or an imminent brutal death are by no means “normal circumstances” by any stretch of imagination. This is where a normal man may become indistinguishable from a lunatic and become a genuine hero for the posterity…
So, dear Aristotle, it is quite possible for a normal man to be happy on the rack, just because the experience of the rack is not a rational experience, and it cannot be described in detached rational terms…
...But enough of the physical rack. Now, aside from the physical rack, there is also the mental rack, and this one gives no excuse for happiness whatsoever… Except for the Stoic attitude, of course, which is not exactly a happiness on the rack, but a happiness in spite of the rack. I am extremely doubtful though that Stoicism can perform the kind of miracle on the rack that religious or patriotic zeal (I guess, these two probably amount to the same thing) can. However, with regard to the mental rack, it can do wonders.
The Stoic attitude to mental anguish is well-known. One can inure oneself to it. What this means has already been discussed elsewhere. The Stoic attitude in this case can be best described by the modern term positive thinking, meaning that we are actually capable of molding our own attitude, liberating ourselves from such negative emotions, as pity for ourselves, compassion for our family and neighbors, and for the whole human race as such, as we become immoral and insensitive, to the point of monstrous metaphysical selfishness.
What happens in the end of this Stoic exercise is that our positive attitude turns into a deplorable, immoral condition, where it can be fairly observed that our “positive attitude” has killed our positive attitude, that is, that our morality has committed suicide.
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