TheAdlerian's Exploration of Balthasar Gracian.

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
21

TheAdlerian:Let’s not get ahead too far now Dan.
Instead let’s move on to the second maxim.
2. Character and intellect.
These are the two poles of our capacity; one without the other is but halfway to happiness. Intellect is not enough, character is also needed. On the other hand, it is the fool’s misfortune to fail in obtaining the position, employment, neighborhood, and circle of friends of his choice.
This is a short one but perhaps a challenging idea for people living in our times. I bet that we can all define what intellect is, but how many understand the concept of character. What is it and how does it create meaning out of the above aphorism?"

K: few concepts have been more torture these last few years
then character. The GOP runs campaigns on their candidates
have more character then the demo’s. Facts have proven otherwise.
Business ads claim this company or that company has more
character but facts prove otherwise. People talk about how
important character is, but can you name me one person
in the public who is the poster child of “Character”.

I can only think of one. Walter Cronkite and he is 89 years old.
Sad, a trait once given great credence in the early years of the
republic, is now a endangered species.

Kropotkin

22

The thing that I like about Gacian is that he’s a bit sinister. Yes, he was a priest and all of that, but if you read about him you will find that he got into more than a little trouble for his ideas at times. So, he was a bit out of the box, so to speak.

Let me break this down:

  1. Character and intellect.
    These are the two poles of our capacity; one without the other is but halfway to happiness. Intellect is not enough, character is also needed. On the other hand, it is the fool’s misfortune to fail in obtaining the position, employment, neighborhood, and circle of friends of his choice.

1.These are the two poles of our capacity; one without the other is but halfway to happiness.

In this line he tells us that we need to work on being a well rounded person. That’s not always obvious even if it is to you.

  1. Intellect is not enough, character is also needed.

Currently, we all know what a geek or a nerd is and how it affects overall success. The words describe a person that has great intellectual power, but has invalidated themselves through their lack of social fluidity.

Character refers to one’s courage, thoughtfulness, shrewdness, morality, personal code of ethics, manners, and so forth. I believe that it takes a certain level of intellect to have “character” but all the same many of the qualities mentioned require a certain “illogic” (that really is a kind of metalogic in my opinion) to carry out.

  1. On the other hand, it is the fool’s misfortune to fail in obtaining the position, employment, neighborhood, and circle of friends of his choice.

This is the crucial sentence!

Gacian with his “on the other hand” is telling you to throw out the balancing act if it’s going to stop you from getting what you want out of life. Thus, the implication is that one must use whatever means are necessary to obtains one’s goals and that implies the use of cunning over all else, as intellect alone is unlikely to help in the politically heavy (even interpersonal) world, and certainly nice manners are for dreamers.

23

i would say these things are caused purely by experience. if you experienced, in the past, that these things gave you happiness, you value them. if not, you dont.

you only think you know what you want based on past experience. you only think that the situation in question is the one that satisfies what you think you want based on past experience.

what other option is there besides relying purely on your past experience? obtaining more experience to more completely see all of your options and discover which is the best foundation for your opinions. what if your past experience teaches you that trying too hard to find out new information doesnt result in more happiness? stagnation forever?

am i even close to what anyone else thinks or am i in my own world?

24

FM

I see what you’re saying , however, you can’t forget that humans are teleological to a large degree. We take our past experience and sometimes imagine how it will again play out in the future given the various factors that we see. So, if there is someone that you want to impress you might then run through a variety of ways that you plan on approaching that person. Will you try casual, formal, polite, indifferent, or what.

Some people might plan to act as they believe correct for all situations, and never vary, but still that’s a plan. Gracian is saying not to be like this person , because one must vary appropriately to achieve one’s goals.

25

but the variations are also determined by past experience.

you have one experience with a hot cheerleader and one with a smart goth girl. cheerleader likes being treated like you dont care about her and have better things to do, smart girl likes when you listen and talk to her. you find a smart, pretty girl, you make the decision to make sure you dont smother her while also listening to all the smart things she says. you would not know that that is the right way to go about it unless you have previous experience suggesting it. if it turns out she is more cheerleader than smart than you thought, then you will have made the wrong decision based purely on the fact that you dont have enough experience with girls who are exactly 76% cheerleader and 24% smart. next time, youll know.

there is nothing else that could possibly suggest the correct course of action. but only following previous experience doesnt mean acting exactly the same all the time, it means responding to the same situation in exactly the same way. but life is a huge combination of situations interacting with eachother. all separate decisions can be correctly made based on sufficient previous experience, but the identification of which previous experience is more relevant, and which external thing needs to be responded to with more emphasis, those are decisions that, since they are so specific, have few previous experiences to help you decide what to do with.

these are the situations where a superior intellect, and its ability to remember more previous experience, identify more patterns and conclusions from that experience, and recall them quickly, becomes most important. only because there is such a small amount of experience that is going to be directly applicable.

you experience plenty of pure cheerleaders and plenty of pure goths, and know exactly how to respond to them. but you experience few who are exactly 76%cheer and 24%smart. a fool wouldnt be able to identify these percentages, he would forget the memory eventually, and when he found another one, it would probably take him too long to notice that it was applicable anyway.

26

Yes, but FM, what about those people that live in a world of idealist fantasy expectations?

Some of that stuff has been learned from past experience, but maybe it was really vicarious experinece gained from a book, a soap opera, or mythology like the bible.

That would place the person on a path of maybe having great character that does not fit well into the world. I would imagine that Gracian knew of many people that lost out on life by trying to live more like Jesus than a pirate.

27

well the fantasy experience counts as regular knowledge unless the person tries to put it into practice and realizes that doing what is suggested causes pain. its ‘super’ knowledge if the knowledge itself is also accompanied by another piece knowledge which says that following that first bit will give you some glory that you wont know about while here on earth.

they are both pieces of knowledge. if the guy believes priests for some stupid reason, like they do miracles or torture people who dont believe, then he is going to believe that he should be like the bible says even if it causes him pain on earth now. he has ‘learned’ that doing what jesus said will cause him more happiness when he gets to heaven.

or maybe he just likes the empathy he feels when he helps others. but if he doesnt feel empathy from helping people, and he doesnt believe in heaven or god, i dont think he could possibly pursue the actions of a good christian.

they believe the fantasy expectations will cause them good somehow. they either love empathy and experience it more than gracian thinks they are, or they fully believe their priests more than we or gracian thinks they should.

the interesting question is what causes them to think the vicarious experience they gain from books or soap operas is valid and applicable to real life. and should we kill the people who give them wrong ideas like mtv has been paid by our corporate overlords to do. whats the reality tv show where they get upset about stupid things and heal their pain by shopping and strutting around in their shiny objects? oh right, all of them. coincidence?

28

Yes.

Meanwhile, I think that you have gotten to whay Gracian was talking about with that last bit about the media.

Buying into concepts that have nothing to do with the “art of the world” may be noble, smart, or fun but they will not get you much.

29

maybe people are willing to believe that those sources have the answers to the questions like “what will most easily quench my short term emotional thirst” and “why does the universe exist” because they are so desperately looking for the answer to those questions and cant find it anywhere else.

their brains need the answers to those questions in order to be satisfied, and if an answers appears to have appeared, they will quickly jump on the opportunity and wont even know that theyve made the wrong decision until the correct alternative is similarly presented to them. there are no tv shows about building irrigation for africans or books claiming to be infallible about (or the subsequent overwhelming societal faith in) buddhism.

if either of those things were available, and they were as compelling as their shitty, money making counterparts, we would have about 90% fewer problems on earth.

next.

30

Right, so one needs to take a look at one’s knowledge base and then make the best choice about direction. That could it be said, is a sign of character.

Media:

I think that if we take a good look at the group(s) that run the media, then all the answers are clear. For one, they are hate filled elitists.

31

Hello Adlerian:

  1. Character and intellect.
    These are the two poles of our capacity; one without the other is but halfway to happiness. Intellect is not enough, character is also needed. On the other hand, it is the fool’s misfortune to fail in obtaining the position, employment, neighborhood, and circle of friends of his choice.

  2. On the other hand, it is the fool’s misfortune to fail in obtaining the position, employment, neighborhood, and circle of friends of his choice.

— This is the crucial sentence!

Gacian with his “on the other hand” is telling you to throw out the balancing act if it’s going to stop you from getting what you want out of life. Thus, the implication is that one must use whatever means are necessary to obtains one’s goals and that implies the use of cunning over all else, as intellect alone is unlikely to help in the politically heavy (even interpersonal) world, and certainly nice manners are for dreamers.
O- I agree with your first and second assertion but on this I see instead that, while being intelligent is good and leads towards our happiness, giving us wisdom; and while character, a strong taste for life, also is important in our quest for happiness and the good life, it is all for nothing if along the way one is not helped by a little luck, a little bit by the things that stand outside of our control and in fact, so it comes, that intellect and character too, have a bit to do with just luck.
How did the fool become a fool?
This is the question really and it runs along in between the conservative view that we are born in a certain way and that is that (determinism) and the other more liberal view that we choose who we become (freewill); that we can achieve happiness when a balance is struck between our intelligence and our character. This is the philosopher’s dream.
What runs counter to this view is the view that the last sentence hints at:
“3. On the other hand, it is the fool’s misfortune to fail in obtaining the position, employment, neighborhood, and circle of friends of his choice.”
The fool is a fool due to some misfortunes; a little bit of luck, which is out of his control, that went against him. The fool cannot choose the position he is born at (and isn’t also said that “we don’t choose our parents” much in the same vein, for position, employment, neighborhood and friends serve to us also like parents to our happiness), and back in the 17th century, this was certainly true.
The fool cannot employ himself in exactly what he may want. A lot of times we find ourselves in jobs we’re overqualified (even if just in our minds) for. This is what Marx also alluded to, and it is a cause of unhappiness. The same repeats itself in the last two.
It might seem far fetched, but if it was not so then he could very well have written: “it is the fool’s fault if he fails in obtaining the position, employment, neighborhood or friends of his choice.”
Like Nietzsche, perhaps Gracian saves even the fool, like a Christ crying:“forgive them for they know not what they do”. Forgive our fool, it would seem for he cannot help but being one and that is his fortune.

One last thought. Ortega y Gasset once said:“Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia.” Or " I am myself and my circumstances. Gracian might agree. The wise man is wise and happy by virtue of those two poles that make him (Yo) who he is (2nd Yo), but then we are also our circumstances, our “fortune” as well as “misfortune”; happiness is not just dependent on our intellects and our characters, but also on our circumsatances as well.

32

hm. i wonder if we can judge a character based on its uncontrollable urge to search its previous experience or obtain more of it rather than be content with what it already knows. what kind of specific previous experience would cause a person to value, or not value these obviously valuable traits?

it was not my intention to bring this up. i was merely searching my brain for answers to the question i just asked.

hate filled? i would say they are doing their job very well, which is to please the corporate stockholders and advertisers at all costs. your competition will employ the shadiest, most destructive means he possibly can (apparently, i dont see why they have to). so if you dont, and profits are down, you are definetely fired.

the problem is that there is no anti-materialism legislation. how do asians brainwash their people to be so nice and hive minded?

omar,
its not just luck, its also the intervention of other people who know that those people are in trouble and could use some character adjustment, which just so happens to be included with virtually any kind of helpful gesture.

33

Hello Future Man:
I am wondering when you will comment on the Social Sciences post.
But to our subject:“omar,
its not just luck, its also the intervention of other people who know that those people are in trouble and could use some character adjustment, which just so happens to be included with virtually any kind of helpful gesture.”
O- It is luck nonetheless. The vanity of men gives one no guarantee that one is in God’s hands, so to speak. Opinions are like buttholes and every one has one. Many will approach you or another with the best intentions to adjust your characters; but while these persons feel they are being helpful, it does not follow that they truly are.
May you have the good fortune to receive instruction not just from someone who says he is wise, but from one who simply is.
…But you’ll never be able to know the difference.

34

If you look at the ethic groups that make up the US a certain trend can be noted in ownership and media power. Both of these groups are elitist in nature and have contempt for the “peasants and cattle” that populate the landscape.

35

Character is the ability to take the info that you have, play it out different ways in your mind, and choose the path that follows a cultural ideal most closely.

Clearly character is a thing that has meaning because we have a name for it and people can explain what it means in a fairly uniform manner.

36

New Maxim!

  1. Keep matters for a time in suspense.

Admiration at their novelty heightens the value of your achievements. It is both useless and insipid to play with your cards on the table. If you do not declare yourself immediately, you arouse expectation, especially when the importance of your position makes you the object of general attention. Mix a little with everything, and the very mystery arouses veneration. And when you explain, do not be too explicit, just as you do not expose your inmost thoughts in ordinary conversation. Cautious silence is the sacred sanctuary of worldly wisdom. A resolution declared is never highly thought of - it only leaves room for criticism. And if it happens to fail, you are doubly unfortunate. Besides, you imitate the divine way when you inspire people to wonder and watch.

37

if i learned that somebody was specifically doing this, i would have very little respect for his pretentious, fake, inefficient display. i would have little respect for myself if i ever did this in a situation where i was supposed to be exchanging information instead of looking cool.

if i want to make a movie or something where im displaying my verbal aptitude and not neccesarily conveying ideas and information, then this makes sense. it seems to play on the often overlooked subconscious social attitude of respecting people who appear to not care about the current situation when you do. if you care, and they dont, that must mean that it bores them because they know so much about it or they know so much about something more interesting. its the same subconscious reason why girls are turned on by being ignored.

this sounds like a machiavellian prideful social image enhancer. i hate that fake crap and the world would be ten times better if everyone was pure honest all the time. this guy is talking about how impressed he is with the shady and sanctimonious george bush type bishops while he is not so impressed when a normal guy in bishop clothes tries to talk like a regular person. thats because gracian has been brainwashed.

what the heck! why wouldnt i? am i supposed to be afraid of revealing something embarassing? if so, then i should get it out in the open and get it corrected before i take action and cause more trouble with it.

38

Gracian refers to a couple of things that are easy to understand.

About a year ago I was sitting in this orientation for a technology program that I was interested in and it turned out that several of the guys were programmers that had lost their jobs and were now looking for alternatives with hardware. One man explained that he just got done creating some giant business application for a local company and was then instantly fired. Another fella said to him that he should have pulled a “Scotty” to avoid getting fired.

Any Star Trek fan will understand that, but for those of you that aren’t I’ll explain. Scotty was the worrisome and yet super competent engineer on board the spaceship in the TV show. During an episode of one of the sequels he told a crewman that you should always overestimate the amount of time that something will take to fix, when reporting to the seniority, because when you appear to fix it ahead of schedule everyone will think that you’re a genius. Thus, you will be seen as invaluable.

Honest, no, but that’s not the point.

Next, I have a personal example. While working at the prison I would frequently have negative encounters with a fellow coworker. Frankly, it takes a lot to get me angry, but there’s one sure way, and that’s through treachery. That means to me that I think that we’re friends, but then you proceed to, on multiple occasions, do something to seriously undermine my interests.

Anyway, in regard to matters of my profession, I’m extremely creative and can come up with complex ideas about programs and twists on existing programs sometimes in a manner of minutes. Frequently, supervisors love this kind of thing and coworkers don’t.

The coworker in question would hear me talking about some idea and then literally, I’m not kidding, get up and run down that hallway to our boss’s office and report my idea as if it were her own. I figured this out after my boss approached me to bounce them off and see what I thought.

Finally, I explained to him that those were my ideas and could provide the entire theoretical background behind the plan, and I dared him to ask her if she could provide that. I knew that she couldn’t because she was not a person that studied much in school. At that point she had completely defeated herself because I was compelled to discredit her.

Afterwards, I learned that although it’s very egalitarian to share one’s ideas it’s not always prudent, because you may be surrounded by selfish enemies. So, now I either present concepts directly to those that need to here them, or just provide enough of a hint to wet the appetite.

In the story of Jesus people laughed at him while he was on the cross. The message learned is that people will take what they can from you and when the supply seems to have run out may not be so kind.

39

3. Keep matters for a time in suspense.

“Admiration at their novelty heightens the value of your achievements. It is both useless and insipid to play with your cards on the table. If you do not declare yourself immediately, you arouse expectation, especially when the importance of your position makes you the object of general attention. Mix a little with everything, and the very mystery arouses veneration. And when you explain, do not be too explicit, just as you do not expose your inmost thoughts in ordinary conversation. Cautious silence is the sacred sanctuary of worldly wisdom. A resolution declared is never highly thought of - it only leaves room for criticism. And if it happens to fail, you are doubly unfortunate. Besides, you imitate the divine way when you inspire people to wonder and watch.”

  • If you do not declare yourself immediately, you arouse expectation, especially when the importance of your position makes you the object of general attention.

O- Sometimes, it is true, being mysterious arouses other’s curiosity, and especially when that attention is already given to you. For example, were a homeless man to evaise, or paradoxical in his answers, he might be thought of as simply insane and all of this as part of his insanity. The prince who acts the same way may pass as “deeper” than what he really is.

  • A resolution declared is never highly thought of - it only leaves room for criticism. And if it happens to fail, you are doubly unfortunate. Besides, you imitate the divine way when you inspire people to wonder and watch.

O- The more defined a position the more open to an attack. Often the virtue of a position is it’s very ambiguity, leaving enough room for every camp, at your left or right, to feel as if they shared with you in the truth. To declare your position in black and white, if often to isolate either one or both and to place yourself in their same arena of battle.
If your idea happens to be proven wrong, then you are worse of.
When you remain mysterious, you leave your audience dependent on you; still awating the solution to your riddle. in this dependency, they will continue to watch and be tantalized.
The media plays this perfectly.
The assassing is not revealed at the beginning of the movie but at the end. Why, if you knew, there would be no point to wonder about who did it and to continue to watch any further.

40

omar,

I read that hours ago and then reread it. I thought that you touched on all the good points and it was well written.

In the future why not try to provide some ways that you see the maxim applying to current life, like I did in my example. I hope to show the timeless quality of the ideas.