Self and Soul Quotes

“When the goals of the Self are the only goals a culture makes available, spirited men and women will address them with the energy that they would have applied to the aspirations of the Soul. The result is lives that are massively frustrating and not a little ridiculous. People become heroically dedicated to middle-class ends—getting a promotion, getting a raise, taking immeasurably interesting vacations, getting their children into the right colleges, finding the best retirement spot, fattening their portfolios. Lives without courage, contemplation, compassion, and imagination are lives sapped of significant meaning. In such lives, the Self cannot transcend itself.”
― Mark Edmundson, Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals

“There are seasons too for the individual. She may find herself at one time an aspiring thinker, at another a fighter, at a third a creator. And she will judge herself not only on the feeling of fullness that these ideals create within but also on what she contributes to other people by virtue of engaging her ideals. Hope will replace desire and for a while she will feel free. She may at times feel consumed by self. There will be a family to feed and protect, aging parents to tend; there will be the push and toss of daily life— the "pulling and hauling" as Whitman calls it. But in every act of courage or compassion or true thought, she'll feel something within her begin to swell, and she'll feel a joy that passes beyond mere happiness. She'll feel intimations of a finer and higher life and she'll begin, as well as she can, to move toward it. What she'll feel then will be the resurrection of her soul.”
― Mark Edmundson, Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals

“The thinker has much to contend with—the home, marriage, his own body, convention, books, the weight of past reflection, and loneliness. But sometimes he is compelled to contend with something more: not just the indifference or even the mild disdain of the crowd, but its actual hostility. In Western religion the death of Jesus is central; in the heroic tradition, the death of Achilles; in philosophy, much revolves around the judicial murder of Socrates.”
― Mark Edmundson, Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals