Two centuries heretofore, one of the founders of the English romantic movement, poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, reportedly said, “To meet, to know, to love–and then to part, is the sad tale of many a human heart.” Whilst the claim about the originality of the line remains disputed to this day, the undisputed fact remains: it has been at least two centuries since a person first made this observation. Yet, we pay no heed to the observations of the antecedents, make the same mistakes, and remain the same fools.
Naturally, there exist married couples and lifelong friends who have withstood the travails of time, having suffered the wrath of days and still relished the experience. A wrinkly antique back-bent vestige of human form still in such a relation might attempt to refute Coleridge’s statement, specifically about the ‘to part’ portion, with the evidence of his own life.
What the old chap might’ve overlooked in the English poet’s statement is the word ‘many’. Coleridge made no claim whatsoever that all of the people that love each other must part, rather that many a human relationship ends in parting. However, there still exists the possibility that the statement’s ‘to part’ portion is justified for every relation humane.
The Religious Shock Doctrine and Cultural Genocide
In the strongest technical sense, unless the two or more persons in the loving relationship succumb to death at the same moment, they must part. Some religious buffoons might weave pretentiously tales of afterlife and rebirth yet the evidence will always remain short of proof. Even if they meet again in the supposed afterlife, they must have parted in order to meet again. If people paid heed to Coleridge (needless to say, having avoided misinterpretation), they would be rather careful before knowing people and even more before loving them.
The mental attitude of faith seems to pertain only in people enticed by moral or romantic idealism. As the headline German existentialist Friedrich Nietzsche notes in Human, All Too Human, faith in others is a form of laziness of judgement or the psychological need to idealize others. Such blind idealism often festers corruption and weakness, impeding human flourishing. Even pessimist metaphysical idealist Arthur Schopenhauer paints a bleak picture of faith in The World as Will and Representation, arguing that the will to faith dwells in such idealism is because it is easier than thought and gives them comfort in face of suffering.
Perhaps the romantic fettering in Coleridge’s alleged quote is well-quelled by Schopenhauer’s claim that a person understands that from experience and reflection that the world and the people are not worth much conviction. In the wider existentialist tradition, nonetheless, faith is a voluntary courageous stance towards uncertainty.
Christian existentialist Soren Kierkegaard, with his inclination to religion, finds faith as a passionate belief in the face of uncertainty, a leap beyond reason. Camus and Sartre would perhaps critique faith in the most religious sense but both concede to an existential faith in human freedom and the commitment to live and affirm life without knowing its transcendental meaning. But, naturally the existential faith differs from the idealism-centric faith.
Faith needs an end for cold clarity wrought by disillusionment endures, not the warmth of fidelity, often mistaken as a virtue by antiquity. A person’s exposition to life over time pulls the drawn veil as a refuge to people. The shadows on the wall of the cave in Plato’s allegory might seem comforting, but to emerge from it and accept the vanity of idealism, the unnecessariness of faith, call it a death, flings open a philosophical quest.
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