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First of all in the East, but also in the West, too, the philosophy of “here and now” was spread in different eras and within different currents. Let us recall the names of some of its most convinced adherents and their arguments in favor of the present.
Epicurus (341-270 BC, Greece)
To live in harmony with your nature
Carpe diem (“seize the day”) is undoubtedly a variation on the theme hic et nunc (“here and now”). We owe the call to seize the present moment to Horace, but we have inherited it from Epicurus; it was often interpreted as an invitation to rampant revelry. However, if an Epicurean “seizes the day”, this does not mean that he indulges in sexual excesses, gluttony and laziness. He practices reasonable hedonism, requiring firmness and diligence. This philosophy claims that our suffering does not come from reality as such, but from the idea that we have about it. The goal, then, is to free oneself from one’s erroneous notions and rely on the very basic thing that will not deceive – nature. Or, if we are talking about an individual person, on the body and its sensations. Living in the present with this understanding comes down to living in accordance with nature, relying on your body, listening to it and following its tendency to “simple and necessary pleasures.”
About it: “Epicure greets Menekey” in On the Nature of Things, World of Books, Literature, 2006.
Seneca (4 BC – 65, Rome)
To take control of myself again
“The most important obstacle to living is the expectation, which depends on tomorrow and therefore misses today,” says the writer of “On the Shortness of Life.” According to this stoic, the source of our troubles is that we are preoccupied with things beyond our control (fate, death) to the detriment of what we can influence. Meanwhile, as he writes in Moral Letters to Lucilius, “only time belongs to us.” Where does the advice come from: “Until now, your time has eluded you. Catch him up and take care of him.” How? Stop procrastinating – “this approach prevents you from joining the day, it replaces today’s reality with promises of future blessings” – and take advantage of every day by learning and acting. So for Nero’s mentor, to fully live the present means to belong to oneself again. It is a cure for feelings of impotence, for passivity and for the passions that torment us, and above all for the fear of death, a fear as universal as it is useless.
About it: Seneca “Moral Letters to Lucilius”, World of Books, Literature, 2006.
“If you hold today in your hands, you will be less dependent on tomorrow. It’s not that as long as you put it off, your whole life will fly by.” Seneca
Montaigne (1533–1592, France)
To live life to the fullest
“When I dance, I am busy dancing; when I sleep, I fall into a dream. When I walk alone in a beautiful garden and my thoughts are occupied for a while with extraneous things, I then return them to a walk, to a garden, to sweet solitude, to myself. Under the guise of stories from his own life, set out moreover “with jumps and somersaults”, Montaigne in his “Experiences” offers us a philosophy of everyday life. Influenced by the Stoics and skeptics, he believes that our thoughts cannot give us any certainty of anything and that the world is just an “eternal swing”. It is therefore useless to engage in seeking happiness in some truth to be attained; all we can do is live what we have, including enjoyment. In other words, this is what he calls “living a propos” (that is, appropriate, by the way), and considers the “great and glorious masterpiece” of man.
About it: Michel Montaigne “Experiences”, Eksmo, 2007.
“We must not compose clever books, but behave reasonably in everyday life, not win battles and conquer lands, but restore order and establish peace in ordinary life circumstances.” Montaigne
Pascal (1623–1662, France)
To act sensibly
“Let each one look closely at his thoughts, and he will be convinced that they are all occupied with the past or the future.” For the author of the Thoughts, this serves as proof that “we never live, but only dispose to live.” According to Pascal, we, “full of imprudence, wander in a time that does not belong to us, neglecting the only one that is given to us, full of vanity, we are completely immersed in what has disappeared, mindlessly slipping away from the only one that is with us.” For a philosopher, such behavior speaks of our weakness. “The thing is, the present usually hurts us. When it hurts us, we try not to see it, and when it is gratifying, we grieve, seeing how quickly it is slipping away. Agreeing to no longer live the present and the past as means serving the future as an end is, according to Pascal, the only position that allows one to live, if not happily, then at least sensibly.
About it: Blaise Pascal “Thoughts”, AST, 2003.
Grigory Tulchinsky (1947, Russia)
To live creatively
“There are no goals in life, there is no “must”. All of it is a continuous means, my “I can’t do otherwise”, my happening is a game, which means an experience of the world and myself, which makes the familiar unusual, strange. Life is a holiday to which we were allowed and in which we participate, both for ourselves and for others. And so in any, even the most desperate circumstances. The man has lost a loved one. I learned about a hopeless diagnosis. Rescues the habit – to do something devoid of meaning at first glance. The man was saved from disaster. Left alone in the forest, on the island, on Earth. To live, he is looking for activities, goals, tasks, sometimes absurd, but they are absolutely necessary for him. The man was in jail. And he composes a novel or plays chess in his mind, travels in his imagination to the pole… All this – loss, loneliness, prison – reveals the main thing in life, leaves a person alone with her, eye to eye. So that we can see: our life is a continuous improvisation, which is possible only in the present.
About it: Grigory Tulchinsky “Imposture. The Phenomenology of Evil and the Metaphysics of Freedom”, RKhGI, 1996.
Grigory Pomerants (1918, Russia)
To be happy
The ability to live in the present is inseparable from the feeling of happiness. “People have forgotten how to be happy. At first, earthly happiness was declared a substitute for eternal life. Then they rushed in the other direction and began to look for a special eternity, outside of time, after time, as if eternity could be BEFORE or AFTER, as if it was not all HERE and NOW.
Happiness for Grigory Pomeranets involves a feeling of eternity “at any moment of time.” Our dispersal, dispersal, and not at all circumstances, as it most often seems to us, prevents us from experiencing this sensation. After all, with any gap of joy, we can share it with other people. “The pace of civilization cannot be changed, but it is in our will – I would even say that it is our duty – to be able to be happy at the slightest opportunity. Happiness is not a substitute for life, but life itself in its depths. With all its troubles, but also with the strength that this depth gives.
About it: Grigory Pomerants “Notes of the ugly duckling”, Moscow worker, 1998.
“The happiness of life is born from composure, concentration on depth. One can only see a tree and be happy.” Grigory Pomerants