I started reading this book on Feb 4th. A lot happened in the past three months and I finally finished it. It was indeed a long journey, but it deserves.
Preface and Intro
The topic of the book is overliving, which might sound thrilling.
the paradox of trying to cure someone who wanted to die and who looked almost dead
The reason of such purpose is
The tragic tradition links overliving to the loss of a particular quality through a single traumatic event.
disgust at life
Overliving is not but tragedy.
Tragedy may, rather, be associated with obscurity and bewilderment and the inability to make sense of a story as an orderly whole.
Tragedies of overliving are associated with repetition: time goes on but without the possibility of change.
through which we are aware
death is not the ultimate tragic experience.
Tragic overliving often blurs the distinction between life and death.
For characters who have lived too long, suicide is often seen not as a solution, but as an irrelevance.
Why a end shall not be met? One reason might be “cleaness”
be no end to their guilt, shame, and sense of pollution; no river could ever make them clean.
Another trickier reason is “no difference”. When living hell
Thales, who claimed there was no difference between life and death, was asked, “Why do you not die?” He replied, “Because there is no difference.”?
Of course there might be physical reason that
suicide might be not merely wrong, but impossible.
and suicide may be worse than being killed.
What is the right time to die?
Time is always of central importance in tragedy; tragic time is always out of joint. Tragedies of overliving express the fear that time may always be the enemy of humanity. Time is resisted or goes wrong, lives end too soon or too late.
kairos, the right moment, or qualitative time (to feel that one has lived too long is to suspect that one’s kairos has already passed)
Repetition 如果用轮回这个词会更让人痛苦吧。
The use of repetition enacts the anguishing sense that there is mere addition without alteration
there is always a contrast between overliving and outliving.