A Confession

: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.

the reply is merely in­def­in­ite, or an iden­tity: o equals o, life is noth­ing. So that philo­sophic know­ledge denies noth­ing, but only replies that the ques­tion can­not be solved by it—that for it the solu­tion re­mains in­def­in­ite.

But on ex­amin­ing the mat­ter I un­der­stood that the reply is not pos­it­ive, it was only my feel­ing that so ex­pressed it.

When it does not know some­thing, it says that what it does not know is stu­pid.

third way, hav­ing un­der­stood that life is evil and stu­pid, was to end it by killing one­self. I un­der­stood that, but some­how still did not kill my­self. The fourth way was to live like So­lomon and Schopen­hauer—know­ing that life is a stu­pid joke played upon us, and still to go on liv­ing, wash­ing one­self, dress­ing, din­ing, talk­ing, and even writ­ing books. This was to me re­puls­ive and tor­ment­ing, but I re­mained in that po­s­i­tion.

third way, hav­ing un­der­stood that life is evil and stu­pid, was to end it by killing one­self. I un­der­stood that, but some­how still did not kill my­self. The fourth way was to live like So­lomon and Schopen­hauer—know­ing that life is a stu­pid joke played upon us, and still to go on liv­ing, wash­ing one­self, dress­ing, din­ing, talk­ing, and even writ­ing books. This was to me re­puls­ive and tor­ment­ing, but I re­mained in that po­s­i­tion.

“The wise man seeks death all his life and there­fore death is not ter­rible to him.”

“The wise man seeks death all his life and there­fore death is not ter­rible to him.”

“I know,” said I to my­self, “what sci­ence so per­sist­ently tries to dis­cover, and along that road there is no reply to the ques­tion as to the mean­ing of my life.” In the ab­stract sphere I un­der­stood that not­with­stand­ing the fact, or just be­cause of the fact, that the dir­ect aim of sci­ence is to reply to my ques­tion, there is no reply but that which I have my­self already given: “What is the mean­ing of my life?” “There is none.” Or: “What will come of my life?” “Noth­ing.” Or: “Why does everything ex­ist that ex­ists, and why do I ex­ist?” “Be­cause it ex­ists.”

… And philo­sophy not merely does not reply, but is it­self only ask­ing that ques­tion.