{"id":3724,"date":"2023-08-13T20:33:22","date_gmt":"2023-08-14T00:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/schopenhauers-parable-about-negotiating-the-optimal-distance-in-love-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2023-08-13T20:33:22","modified_gmt":"2023-08-14T00:33:22","slug":"schopenhauers-parable-about-negotiating-the-optimal-distance-in-love-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/schopenhauers-parable-about-negotiating-the-optimal-distance-in-love-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Schopenhauer\u2019s Parable about Negotiating the Optimal Distance in Love \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

\n\n

By Maria Popova<\/h3>\n
\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the supreme challenge of intimacy \u2014 how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with the painful pressures of actually being close, how to forge a bond tight enough to feel the warmth of connection but spacious enough to feel free. <\/p>\n

Kahlil Gibran knew this when he contemplated the vital balance of intimacy and independence<\/a>, urging lovers to \u201clove one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.\u201d Rilke knew it when he reckoned with the difficult art of giving space in love<\/a>, observing that \u201ceven between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist.\u201d In consequence, we move through love in a clumsy dance of approach and withdrawal, trying to negotiate the optimal distance for that elusive, ecstatic feeling of spacious togetherness. <\/p>\n

Long before Gibran and Rilke, Arthur Schopenhauer<\/strong> (February 22, 1788\u2013September 21, 1860) explored this calibration in his 1851 collection of short philosophical essays Parerga and Paralipomena<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>), presenting The Porcupine Dilemma \u2014 part parable and part thought experiment, illustrating the paradox of intimacy. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

He writes:<\/p>\n

\n

One cold winter\u2019s day, a number of porcupines huddled together quite closely in order through their mutual warmth to prevent themselves from being frozen. But they soon felt the effect of their quills on one another, which made them again move apart. Now when the need for warmth once more brought them together, the drawback of the quills was repeated so that they were tossed between two evils, until they had discovered the proper distance from which they could best tolerate one another. Thus the need for society which springs from the emptiness and monotony of men\u2019s lives, drives them together; but their many unpleasant and repulsive qualities and insufferable drawbacks once more drive them apart. The mean distance which they finally discover, and which enables them to endure being together [means] that the need for mutual warmth will be only imperfectly satisfied, but on the other hand, the prick of the quills will not be felt.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Complement Schopenhauer\u2019s parable with Octavio Paz on how to inhabit love as \u201ca knot made of two intertwined freedoms\u201d<\/a> and Alain de Botton on the challenge of closeness<\/a>, then revisit Schopenhauer on the power of music<\/a> and the mark of genius<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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