ABSENT-MINDEDNESS OF THE PROFESSOR

…Continuing Voltaire’s line of “Happiness is but a dream, and sorrow is real,” the following should explain the proverbial absent-mindedness of the professor:

(From Schopenhauer’s Counsels And Maxims, Section 7) “Whether we are in a pleasant or a painful state depends ultimately upon the kind of matter that pervades and engrosses our consciousness. In this respect, purely intellectual occupation for the mind that is capable of it, will as a rule do much more in the way of happiness than any form of practical life, with its constant alternations of success and failure, and all the shocks and torments it produces. But we must confess that, for such an occupation, a pre-eminent amount of intellectual capacity is necessary. And in this connection it may be noted that, just as a life devoted to outward activity will distract and divert a man from study and also deprive him of the quiet concentration of mind, which is necessary for such work; so, on the other hand, a long course of thought will make him more or less unfit for the noisy pursuits of real life. It is advisable, therefore, to suspend all mental work for a while, if circumstances happen to demand any degree of energy in affairs of a practical nature.” Indeed, it is the intellectual activity that gives some of us the most satisfaction (I would even dare to call it pleasure of that particular kind which Schopenhauer will be unlikely to condemn), whereas our affairs of a practical nature may cause us mostly grief and therefore absent-mindedness can be seen not so much as some debilitating quality of the mind, as, rather, the occasional luxury of deliberate escapism (definitely in the positive sense of the word) from an unhappy world of reality into the happy world of thinking, unmarred by fate or by our own folly. (I am referring to Schopenhauer’s two factors leading us to unhappiness, from Section I, ibid.)

…Absent-mindedness as subconscious self-defense or a deliberate affectation? Not always, but frequently enough...

“Where the devil are my slippers?!”