Humans are the only animals who crave oblivion through suicide
https://aeon.co/ideas/humans-are-the-onl...gh-suicide
EXCERPT: At some stage in evolution, it must have dawned on human beings that the death of the body brings with it the death of the mind. The idea that death means mental oblivion is a sophisticated one that can be reached only by deduction, not observation; we assume no non-human animal could grasp it. [...] Suicide among humans is, in fact, dreadfully common. In the United States, someone kills him or herself every 12 minutes. Across the world, more people die from suicide than in all wars and homicides combined. [...] From the viewpoint of evolutionary biology, altruistic suicide on behalf of others might possibly be genetically advantageous. But egoistic suicide, simply to stop the self from hurting, could only be severely disadvantageous. Many of those who do it are young. It’s now the second most common cause of death in teenagers. If these young people had not died by their own hand, they would likely have got over the hurt and gone on to make a success of their lives. At a stroke, they have ruined their own biological fitness and that of related individuals too. At the level of biology, egoistic suicide is clearly a mistake, a sure path to genetic extinction. But it is precisely because humans, alone among animals, rise above biology that they can make this mistake. Humans have reason to believe that by killing themselves they can escape from pain. Thus, suicide might seem a rational solution to an immediate problem. Self-killing may be undertaken as self-euthanasia.
[...] The trouble is, all human beings have moments of despair. [...] In light of contemporary evidence, I think we’re obliged to ask how far suicide would have impacted pre-historic human life. Today, there exist cultural deterrents – religious, legal, civic – which, though obviously not wholly effective, help to keep suicide under control. But they have not always been there....
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/humans-are-the-onl...gh-suicide
Beauty & aesthetics: Revolutionary figure of the beautiful, self-improved soul
https://aeon.co/ideas/the-revolutionary-...roved-soul
EXCERPT: In a global culture that appears increasingly obsessed with radical individualism, narcissistic presentations of self, and incendiary political rhetoric, it is hard to imagine that society once cared about the beauty of the soul. But, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Germany and across Europe, the pursuit of a ‘beautiful soul’ became a cornerstone of philosophical thought and popular discourse, advanced by some of the most important intellectuals of the time, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller and Wilhelm von Humboldt. To these thinkers, the pursuit of inner perfectibility responded to the horrors of the French Revolution’s irrational mass action culminating in The Terror of the 1790s. Nascent notions of democracy, they believed, could be developed only if each individual achieved liberation from what Immanuel Kant described as the ‘self-incurred tutelage’ of intellectual immaturity by developing cognitive and emotional faculties through aesthetic experiences.
At the core of the beautiful soul is the idea that the individual possesses an innate cognitive potential. Subject to the right environmental and educational conditions, this latent potential can be developed to reach a more perfect state of intellect, morality, character and conduct. The beautiful soul is an aesthetic concept focused on developing human capacities and advancing knowledge and culture. It entails the pursuit of personal cultivation to create a convergence of the individual aesthetic impulse with a collective ethical ideal. The beautiful soul is a virtuous soul, one that possesses a sense of justice, pursues wisdom, and practises benevolence through an aestheticised proclivity for the ‘good’.
Inspired by ancient Greek philosophy, the beautiful soul reflects Plotinus’ imperative to cultivate the self in the same way that the sculptor works...
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/the-revolutionary-...roved-soul
https://aeon.co/ideas/humans-are-the-onl...gh-suicide
EXCERPT: At some stage in evolution, it must have dawned on human beings that the death of the body brings with it the death of the mind. The idea that death means mental oblivion is a sophisticated one that can be reached only by deduction, not observation; we assume no non-human animal could grasp it. [...] Suicide among humans is, in fact, dreadfully common. In the United States, someone kills him or herself every 12 minutes. Across the world, more people die from suicide than in all wars and homicides combined. [...] From the viewpoint of evolutionary biology, altruistic suicide on behalf of others might possibly be genetically advantageous. But egoistic suicide, simply to stop the self from hurting, could only be severely disadvantageous. Many of those who do it are young. It’s now the second most common cause of death in teenagers. If these young people had not died by their own hand, they would likely have got over the hurt and gone on to make a success of their lives. At a stroke, they have ruined their own biological fitness and that of related individuals too. At the level of biology, egoistic suicide is clearly a mistake, a sure path to genetic extinction. But it is precisely because humans, alone among animals, rise above biology that they can make this mistake. Humans have reason to believe that by killing themselves they can escape from pain. Thus, suicide might seem a rational solution to an immediate problem. Self-killing may be undertaken as self-euthanasia.
[...] The trouble is, all human beings have moments of despair. [...] In light of contemporary evidence, I think we’re obliged to ask how far suicide would have impacted pre-historic human life. Today, there exist cultural deterrents – religious, legal, civic – which, though obviously not wholly effective, help to keep suicide under control. But they have not always been there....
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/humans-are-the-onl...gh-suicide
Beauty & aesthetics: Revolutionary figure of the beautiful, self-improved soul
https://aeon.co/ideas/the-revolutionary-...roved-soul
EXCERPT: In a global culture that appears increasingly obsessed with radical individualism, narcissistic presentations of self, and incendiary political rhetoric, it is hard to imagine that society once cared about the beauty of the soul. But, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Germany and across Europe, the pursuit of a ‘beautiful soul’ became a cornerstone of philosophical thought and popular discourse, advanced by some of the most important intellectuals of the time, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller and Wilhelm von Humboldt. To these thinkers, the pursuit of inner perfectibility responded to the horrors of the French Revolution’s irrational mass action culminating in The Terror of the 1790s. Nascent notions of democracy, they believed, could be developed only if each individual achieved liberation from what Immanuel Kant described as the ‘self-incurred tutelage’ of intellectual immaturity by developing cognitive and emotional faculties through aesthetic experiences.
At the core of the beautiful soul is the idea that the individual possesses an innate cognitive potential. Subject to the right environmental and educational conditions, this latent potential can be developed to reach a more perfect state of intellect, morality, character and conduct. The beautiful soul is an aesthetic concept focused on developing human capacities and advancing knowledge and culture. It entails the pursuit of personal cultivation to create a convergence of the individual aesthetic impulse with a collective ethical ideal. The beautiful soul is a virtuous soul, one that possesses a sense of justice, pursues wisdom, and practises benevolence through an aestheticised proclivity for the ‘good’.
Inspired by ancient Greek philosophy, the beautiful soul reflects Plotinus’ imperative to cultivate the self in the same way that the sculptor works...
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/the-revolutionary-...roved-soul