Leopardi – Reason vs. Nature

September 8, 2024

Life, projects, and ennui have limited my reading of Leopardi’s “Zibaldone” but I am convinced that it stands with Montaigne’s “Essays” in the annals of classic literature.

Leopardi believed that our reliance on reason was sucking our humanity from us – forcing from our psyche the very qualities that make us what we are:

“…. man can only live by religion or by illusions” and if science and reason “force us to give up all our illusions, and have constantly before our eyes, with no escape, the pure naked truth, there will be nothing left of the human race but bones.”

Leopardi believed that our “will-to-truth,” nevertheless is our destiny and that all other “religions” will fail. In this climate, with no Gods and no other purpose, the universe leaves us in despair, and he applies this to “not only individuals, but species, genera, realms, spheres, systems, worlds.”

This is very similar to my entry of January 2024….

“While I identify with the suffering, I am now beyond the idea that there is any punishment involved. There is no atonement required and no culpability. No one suffers for any REASON at all…..the nature of our existence is not connected to any metaphysical consequences of being born…of being human. Matter is changed all the time, often in a destructive manner. Our only fault is that we are aware of time and change, it is our consciousness that persecutes us. Without that tyrant whispering in our ear about the “unfairness” of it all, we would go quietly into the night. There is no fair or unfair, just a physical system – the entire universe – doing what it does….building things up and tearing them down.

It doesn’t matter if you are a virus, protozoa, amphibian, human, planet, sun, galaxy, or super cluster, the same fate awaits all. And not one particle of matter can do anything about it. Amore fati.”