Index to this series
CHAPTER V Action [1]
We shall have three readings of the chapter on action.
All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.
A theme of this reading is that our life is a story, but we are not the author.
Nam in omni actione principaliter intenditur ab agente, sive necessitate naturae sive voluntarie agat, propriam similitudinem explicare; unde fit quod omne agens, in quantum huiusmodi, delectatur, quia, cum omme quod est appetat suum esse, ac in agendo agentis esse modammodo amplietur, sequitur de necessitate delectatio. … Nihil igitur agit nisi tale existens quale patiens fieri debet.
(For in every action what is primarily intended by the doer, whether he acts from natural necessity or out of free will, is the disclosure of his own image. Hence it comes about that every doer, in so far as he does, takes delight in doing; since everything that is desires its own being, and since in action the being of the doer is somehow intensified, delight necessarily follows. … Thus, nothing acts unless [by acting] it makes patent its latent self.)