Truls Ljungström’s Reviews > What Is Good?: The Search for the Best Way to Live > Status Update

Existentialism — a more diverse ifnot fragmented movement of thought than the label by itself suggests — enjoyed a blaze of interest in the two decades following the Second World War, and indeed for most of its adherents, if not for all of its major contributors, that event was a major motive for their interest in it.

Whereas sculpture isthe paradigmatic Apollonian art, based essentially on form and structure, music is paradigmatically the Dionysian art, speaking immediately to the deepest instincts. The Dionysian ethical ideal is one of affirmation of life, a great ‘Yes!’, even in the face of difficulties and sorrows.

Nietzsche characterised his view as ‘Dionysian’ in allusion to the two fundamental principles he saw in Greek culture: the analytic, formal, rational ‘Apollonian’ principle, and the ecstatic, enthusiastic, instinctual ‘Dionysian’ principle.

Fortunately for the Protestant world, these hard views were countered by no less a person than Philipp Melancthon (1497-1560). Before turning to theology under Luther’s influence, Melancthon had taught the pagan classics at Tiibingen University.

- uppenbarligen behöver jag läsa igneom Melanchton igen - jag menade alltid att han var så svartsynt. (pun intended)

The Index of Forbidden Books was no light matter.

Francesco Petrarch, himself coined the term ‘Middle Ages’ to denote the long period which separated his own time from the world of classical antiquity

For Paul a cardinal virtue is charity — caritas; in Greek, agape — meaning ‘love for one’s fellow men’. This notion, which is wholly inclusive — “There isneither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female’ — he takes from Jesus’s own summary of the moral law, which is to love god with all your heart, and your neighbour as yourself.

A threat of force is not a logical ground for accept- ing a conclusion, even if self-preservation dictates otherwise; but self-preservation or, more generally, self-interest is a corrupting reason to accept a moral injunction.

the counsel to culti- vate a fortitudinous self-mastery in the face of hunger and illness, poverty and perennial confrontation with pain, was useless.

Yet this very fact explains the weakness of the philosophies. They were too difficult, too dry, too austere, too rational for the vast majority of the populace. Both Epicureanism and Stoicism taught indifference to fortune in order to gain peace of mind; but for ordi- nary people faced by harsh and difficult lives,