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January 11, 2006

My Old Philosophy Professor Would Enjoy This

And what good's a life that leaves nothing behind
Not a thought or a dream that might echo in time?
The years and the hours, the seconds and minutes
And everything my life has placed in it betrayed.

The above is sung by Beethoven in a piece called What is Eternal? in Beethoven's Last Night. It reminds me of a professor of philosophy whom I had in a class entitled The Meaning of Life. The professor's quintessential example of a life with maximal meaning was Beethoven, primarily because his definition was maximization of potential. In this particular song, Beethoven has been visited by the devil and told he can only save his soul if he gives up his life's work - hence the question above.

The scary thing is that the professor (an atheist) and I agreed more often than we didn't, particularly since the extrapolation of his thesis is that actions matter and idle time doesn't contribute much to one's life. Some time, I should scan over the old class recordings and notes, although it was pretty depressing that at least half my peers were willing to buy into the idea that fantasy, if pleasurable, is preferable to reality.

Sidenote - the professor's likely answers to some questions posed by Beethoven elsewhere in that song (it is sort of schizophrenic in its themes):

I stare in the dark, thinking what is eternal?
The man or the moment? The act or the reason?

I can't see him answering anything but the man and the act.

- Posted by in Literature and the Arts at 2:11 AM