Perennial Philosophies

There are only a few basic philosophies of life, and they are perennial.

The Cynics of ancient Greece basically took the same approach as the Buddhists of India and the Far East, and Christian monastics: to achieve happiness, limit your desires.

The Stoics, the Confucians, the Secular Humanists, and the Marxists took and take another approach: life is harsh, but one must bear it bravely and do what one can to build a better society. Happiness comes only from such striving.

The hippies of the Sixties merely revived the simple notions of the Epicureans: if it feels good, do it.

The Hindu Vedanta and Greek Neoplatonism seem also of one school: all is secretly one, and one seeks bliss in unity with all.

Ethical monotheism forms another strand, running through Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Amidist Buddhism: the point of life is to submit to a higher will and do good. Happiness comes from this, if not in this life, then in the hereafter.

Romanticism is also everywhere: in the English Romantics, the Medieval Romances, the Tantric forms of Hinduism, Taoism in China, Shinto in Japan, and Gnosticism throughout Europe and the Middle East. This tradition believes in shock therapy, arriving at truth through an inversion of prevailing ideas. Happiness is achieved through the intellectual liberation this produces, and is conceived as a return to an original purity.

I suspect that all the world’s systems and paths of life can be fitted somewhere in this schema.

I have found myself at various times attracted to all of these philosophies. However, in the end, I am an ethical monotheist.