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Indlæser... The Inner Life (Great Ideas) (udgave 2005)af Thomas A. Kempis, Thomas
Work InformationThe Inner Life af Thomas a Kempis
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Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. Penguin's Great Ideas series showcases important works in an abbreviated format (not my favourite way to read), and this work by Thomas à Kempis is drawn from the larger work [b:The Imitation of Christ|34978530|The Imitation of Christ|Kempis Thomas|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|56254411]. After reading [a:Benjamin Franklin|289513|Benjamin Franklin|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1215314094p2/289513.jpg] (see his 13-week virtues program in [b:The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin|741612|The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin|Benjamin Franklin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1299345302s/741612.jpg|56401418]), [a:Albert Camus|957894|Albert Camus|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1489939626p2/957894.jpg], and [a:James Allen|8446|James Allen|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1226296187p2/8446.jpg], I can see the connections to this work dating from the early fifteenth century. There are also elements of Stoicism, recalling [a:Marcus Aurelius|17212|Marcus Aurelius|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1430676293p2/17212.jpg]. For example, on death at p. 20: And of being in the world, especially when one is distracted by others, on p. 28: Here, James Allen's meditations shine through and it is pleasing to read these in the original. Having said that, there are times when the dialogue between Christ and the disciple, I suppose borrowing from [a:Plato|879|Plato|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1393978633p2/879.jpg], irked me a little. Nevertheless, there is one part where, and I say this without having researched others' views on the matter, but in Chapter 2 of Book 3 (pp. 40-41), entitled How Truth Instructs us in Silence, the disciple raves on and on and never lets God put a word in edge-wise. This reminded me of Franklin's second virtue, silence, and how we tend to talk too much. I wonder if this was a precursor to the style of [a:La Rochefoucauld|14496459|La Rochefoucauld|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]? It certainly had me yelling at the disciple to just shut up and listen! Finally, Franklin's thirteenth virtue, to be like Jesus or Socrates, might make the reading of the complete book worthwhile. This is the most difficult of the virtues to comprehend. My reading of Kempis suggests that to think ourselves capable of imitating Christ is folly, and as a non-Christian, even emulating Socrates is egotistical, especially if one were to self-assess as anything other than a black mark for each day for not having been able to be so. Again, without looking to others, what I have gained from Kempis is not that we can imitate Christ (or Socrates, for that matter), but that we can only strive for the ideal. In self-assessing against Franklin's thirteenth virtue, I can only ever give myself a perforated black mark, as I could never say I had reached such levels of perfection (some suggest that Socrates belongs to the list of Abrahamic prophets, so he may well be out of reach, too). And yet the struggle over this one problem is exactly what Kempis suggests we do. Herein lies the genius of Franklin. In assessing himself every day for thirteen weeks, I doubt he could ever not give himself a black mark; yet every day he was reminded to strive for the ideal, no matter how imperfect a man may be in (as opposed to "of"), the world. ( ) The Inner Life (a name the people at Penguin invented for their excerpts from Thomas à Kempis's famous The Imitation of Christ) rounds out my first set of four Great Ideas volumes. I have to admit that, outside of the context of the series, this fourteenth-century Catholic devotional tract is not something I would normally pick up, find interesting, or recommend to anyone except those with a strong interest in the history of Christian theology. As an agnostic person in particular, trying to find anything in its pages to which I could personally relate was...well, let's just say that wasn't the approach that worked best for me. Within the curated Great Ideas experience, though, it takes part in a number of dialogues I find fascinating. And when I stop to situate Kempis in the context of the other three philosophers I've read in the series thus far, there are even a few points on which I would align myself more with him than with anyone else. More importantly, and beyond my personal reactions, Kempis represents an important phase of Western Christian thought, which I'm sure will prove a key touchstone as I move into the Renaissance writings of Machiavelli and Montaigne. First, the basics: Thomas à Kempis espouses a characteristically hardcore medieval attitude toward God and faith. He's an absolutist, arguing that one should give up all emotional connection to the people and physical world around one, and put one's entire trust in God. You shouldn't trust other people, your own sensations, or yourself, Kempis writes: humans are changeable and easily tricked by the Devil, and are therefore much too weak and unworthy to make their own life decisions or attain any meaningful knowledge except through complete and utter submission to the will of God. Even the kind of ecstatic devotion espoused by Augustine should, says Kempis, be mistrusted:
In other words, says Kempis, a truly devoted follower of Christ will completely subjugate his own desire, and be equally happy with whatever fate God decides is best for him, however uncomfortable or seemingly tragic it may be, because Christ is all-knowing, and is orchestrating the events of each person's life to best suit that person's spiritual growth. Like Seneca, Kempis counsels his readers to find "a place apart," to spend time alone for the greater health of their souls. But whereas Seneca recommends spending that time reading philosophy, honing our logical minds and reducing mental busy-ness, Kempis's main object for alone time is coming to a deeper appreciation of just how base and unworthy we are to receive the grace of God. He urges us to "enter deeply into inner things," yet also tells us never to trust ourselves or our own impressions. To Kempis this isn't a contradiction: to him, "entering deeply into inner things" means finding lower and ever lower levels of degradation within, which will in turn motivate us to submit more readily to God's will:
This emphasis on discounting the experience of the senses, of eschewing rationality, is one of Kempis's most interesting positions in terms of the Great Ideas dialogue. Let me briefly and perhaps cheekily paraphrase the conversation thus far as it relates to logic and the rational person:
A thousand years later, Thomas à Kempis (and, I think, medieval Christianity in general) have taken Augustine's break with rationality to the proverbial next level, and then several levels beyond that. The temptation to acquire knowledge through the senses or reasoned logic, he argues, is a crafty ploy of the Devil, who is trying to distract us from the fact that praying and submitting our wills to God are the only ways to attain true enlightenment. The entire physical world, therefore, becomes a minefield of temptations for anyone who has incompletely quashed his curiosity or his impulse towards reason. The best plan for anyone wishing to get close to God, in Kempis's view, is to live the life of a hermit:
Kempis's attitude is that a holy person should withdraw from nearly every aspect of life on earth, and focus his entire energy on anticipating the next life - the one in which he will be released from this prison of a body and be united with God in peace. "Be assured of this," he writes famously, "that you must live a dying life." If you are gaining pleasure or satisfaction from anything in life other than submitting yourself to God, Kempis argues, you're on the wrong track. And if you're attempting to reason something out logically, you're falling prey to the Devil. Aside from a few token comments about "helping one another," there's even surprisingly few mentions of charity, which I tend to consider a staple of Christian theology. Basically, Kempis's holy man withdraws farther and farther from all other people and objects, and spends his time meditating on what a despicable sinner he is. It's hard for me to imagine a God who would encourage such conduct, but there you go. (And Kristin Lavransdatter people: does this behavior pattern sound familiar?) I mean, this is certainly not how Jesus lived, which makes the title Imitation of Christ an interesting one. I think what stood out most to me about Thomas à Kempis is the feeling that something had to give. His theology is just so extreme and so bleak. If it's at all representative of the life of the educated "establishment" in late medieval Europe, it impresses the reader with the inevitability of some kind of pressure release, some swing of the pendulum in the other direction - which did in fact take place with the advent of Renaissance Humanism and the return to a desire for proto-scientific inquiry. On the other hand, I have to admit that I do appreciate Kempis's acknowledgment of the failures of rationality. Reading Marcus Aurelius, I often wanted to shake the man for his blind insistence that Human Beings Are Naturally Rational, even as he was cataloging all the myriad irrational behaviors around him. Falling, myself, somewhere in the middle of the two extremes (I think most people tend to act irrationally and construct rational explanations for our behavior after the fact), it's fascinating to watch the two philosophical strands develop over the centuries. And having already spent some quality time with Machiavelli and Montaigne, the next two stops on the Great Ideas train, I'm pretty confident that they will add some interesting perspectives to the rationality debate. On to Florence, and the demise of the Republic! PS - Between Augustine, Kempis, and Undset, it's been VERY RELIGIOUS around here lately! I need to read some Emma Goldman or something, just to shake things up a bit. Seriously. ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
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