A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

by Luc Ferry

Death is, in the midst of life, that which will not return; that which belongs irreversibly to time past, which we have no hope of ever recovering.

everything that comes under the heading of ‘Nevermore’ belongs in death’s ledger.

To live well, therefore, to live freely, capable of joy, generosity and love, we must first and foremost conquer our fear – or, more accurately, our fears of the irreversible.

Unable to bring himself to believe in a God who offers salvation, the philosopher is above all one who believes that by understanding the world, by understanding ourselves and others as far our intelligence permits, we shall succeed in overcoming fear, through clear-sightedness rather than blind faith.

‘The gods are not to be feared; death cannot be felt; the good can be won; what we dread can be conquered.’

But at a deeper level the irreversibility of things is a kind of death at the heart of life and threatens constantly to steer us into time past – the home of nostalgia, guilt, regret and remorse, those great spoilers of happiness.

Greek philosophers looked upon the past and the future as the primary evils weighing upon human life, and as the source of all the anxieties which blight the present. The present moment is the only dimension of existence worth inhabiting, because it is the only one available to us. The past is no longer and the future has yet to come, they liked to remind us; yet we live virtually all of our lives somewhere between memories and aspirations, nostalgia and expectation.

These two questions – the nature of the world, and the instruments for understanding it at our disposal as humans – constitute the essentials of the theoretical aspect of philosophy.

second part of philosophy; the part which is not theoretical but practical, and which broadly concerns ethics.

third dimension of philosophy, which touches upon the ultimate question of salvation or wisdom. If philosophy is the ‘love’ (philo) of ‘wisdom’ (sophia), it is at this point that it must make way for wisdom, which surpasses all philosophical understanding. To be a sage, by definition, is neither to aspire to wisdom or seek the condition of being a sage, but simply to live wisely, contentedly and as freely as possible, having finally overcome the fears sparked in us by our own finiteness.

philosophy is an art not of questions but rather of answers.

What Marcus Aurelius suggests amounts to the idea that nature – when it functions normally and aside from the occasional accidents and catastrophes that occur – renders justice finally to each of us. It supplies to each of us our essential needs as individuals: a body which enables us to move about the world, an intelligence which permits us to adapt to the world, and natural resources which enable us to survive in the world. So that, in this great cosmic sharing out of goods, each receives his due.

What it searches for is a meaning in this world and a means of relating our existence to what surrounds us, rather than a solely objective (scientific) understanding.

essentials: in the eyes of the Stoics, the two great ills which prevent us from achieving fulfilment are nostalgia and hope, specifically attachment to the past and anxiety about the future.