From Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's engaging philosophical apologia, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away, riffing on the two primary ways in the West of achieving immortality:
So there were the (pre-philosophical) Greeks, pondering ways of endowing their limp slivers of mortality with a stiffening coating of mattering, and there were the Hebrews, considering a similar project, though they ended up with quite a different approach. The Hebrews offered a transcendent answer in terms of a god: the Greeks offered a secular answer in terms of the possibilities for enlarging a life in strictly human terms; this Greek pre-philosophical answer was incorporated into, and refined by, secular philosophy; and Western culture has been wildly oscillating between these approaches--the Hebrew and the Greek--ever since.
I like this way of framing things. I do think Goldstein is right to see this tension still active in our world. I feel this tension in myself. I want to be great, to achieve the kleos (glory) that the Greeks pursued. But I also want to love the mundane, appreciate the small, significant moments that will not thunder down through eternity. We are, all of us, caught between these two worlds.
But the Hebrew perspective is better. The Greek perspective leads to the glory of Athens at its height, but it kills Socrates for challenging the system. It leads to the fierce and noble honor culture of the Middle Ages, but it also leads to the Crusades and feuds and oceans of blood. It leads to Southern gentility, and to the Civil War.
The Hebrew perspective--that our lives are made meaningful by a teleology-giving God--imbues us with the requisite humility necessary to not fall into the trap of self-seeking glory.
I am currently reading through Mark Helprin's novel A Soldier of the Great War, an epic take on the life of Alessandro Giuliani, the son of a wealthy Roman lawyer who becomes a soldier and then a professor of aesthetics. Beyond that, I am not too sure what happens. I am on page 300 of over 800 so there is still some work to do.
The book is my sanity read. Teaching can be so all-encompassing that I have to work hard to maintain time for other reading projects. Generally speaking, my brain is also taxed at the end of the day to the point that a theological tome sounds daunting. Therefore, the novel. I also love being swept up in a story, not reading for scholarly ends or to determine What This Means About the World, but simply to lose myself in the story and let the prose wash over me.
Here is an excerpt from the book, a conversation Alessandro has with an unnamed fellow soldier Helprin calls the Guitarist while awaiting an attack from the Austrians in a trench. They are talking about the prospect of the afterlife, a matter on which Alessandro is dubious:
The Guitarist thought. "You mean, if there's something on the other side of the fence?"
"Yes."
"I don't know. All logic says no, but my wife just had a baby boy--I've never seen him. Where did he come from? Space? It isn't logical at all, so who cares about logic."
"It takes a lot of balls to risk the hope, doesn't it."
"It does. I have the feeling that I am sure to be punished for the presumption, but I've already had the bad luck to have been a musician and a soldier, so maybe I'll get a break. Music," the Guitarist continued, with affection, "is the one thing that tells me time and time again that God exists and that He'll take care. Why do you think they have it in churches?"
"I know why they have it in churches," Alessandro replied.
"Music isn't rational," the Guitarist said. "It isn't true. What is it? Why do mechanical variations in rhythm and tone speak the language of the heart? How can a simple song be so beautiful? Why does it steel my resolution to believe--even if I can hardly make a living."
"And being a soldier?"
"The only halfway decent thing about this war, Alessandro, is that it teaches you the relation between risk and hope."
"You've learned to dare, and you dare to believe that someday you're going to float like a cloud."
"If it weren't for music," the Guitarist answered, "I would think that love is mortal. If I weren't a soldier, I might not have learned to stand against all odds." He took a deep breath. "Well, that's all very fine, but the truth is I just don't want to be killed before I see my son" (283).
The Guitarist died when Alessandro's position was overrun by the Austrians at the end of the summer.
