(November 6, 2018 at 6:07 am)Belaqua Wrote:(November 6, 2018 at 5:24 am)IWNKYAAIMI Wrote: someone might say "My purpose is to live a long and happy life" but that doesn't mean that they have a purpose, that is just their own idea of a purpose.
I guess that just seems strange to me.
I mean, if I say I have a headache, or a cheeseburger, or a desire to buy that nice piece of Edo period porcelain that's up on the auction site right now, all those things are temporal. But they are still real. I have them.
It occurs to me that I've never heard a Japanese person say that a purpose must be eternal and universal to be real. One of the constant tropes in literature here is the passing nature of things, and of course there's very little influence from monotheism. So it may be a cultural difference.
Simone Weil says an interesting thing about purpose in her book Gravity and Grace.
She says that real purpose comes when we do what comes unchosen. She gives the example of a soldier who is praised for an act of bravery. The soldier replies, "that was the only thing to do at the time." To him it didn't seem brave, or even something he chose to do; it just seemed inevitable.
Weil takes this to be the ideal in moral situations. If someone is suffering in front of you, you don't help that person because you desire some reward. You do it because it seems like the thing that must be done.
Weil, being a Christian mystic, uses language that people here won't like. She calls this state of inevitability obedience to the Good, or even slavery to God. But it may be that this is what people feel is lacking when they say that a chosen, contingent, or temporal purpose isn't a real purpose. A real purpose will present itself unchosen and unavoidable.
Funny how you have to die before you truly 'know' anything.
