{"id":4224,"date":"2021-11-17T03:34:58","date_gmt":"2021-11-17T03:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=4224"},"modified":"2021-11-19T23:51:30","modified_gmt":"2021-11-19T23:51:30","slug":"why-we-are-restless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2021\/11\/17\/why-we-are-restless\/","title":{"rendered":"Why We Are Restless"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

How Shall We Be Happy?<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Husband-and-wife team the Storeys set out to explain how our discontent stems from 16th<\/sup>-century philosophy\u2014and what we should do about it.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Review by Delaney Thull<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Why We Are Restless<\/em> surveys the lives and ideas of four French philosophers\u2014Montaigne, Pascal, Rousseau, and Tocqueville\u2014to find the starting point of our peculiarly American pursuit of happiness. While the 1500s may seem a strange place to begin such a search, husband and wife co-writers Benjamin and Jenna Silber Storey make a powerful case that the invention of \u201cimmanent contentment\u201d in early modern France has everything to do with the infinite restlessness of the postmodern United States. \u00a0<\/p>

Immanent contentment is the idea that \u201clife simply\u2014not the philosophic life or the holy life or the heroic life, but simply life<\/em>\u2014can be enough to satisfy the longings of the human heart.\u201d And the way to achieve this satisfaction is a mode of living characterized by \u201cmoderation through variation<\/em>: an arrangement of our dispositions, our pursuits, and our pleasures that is calculated to keep us interested, \u2018at home,\u2019 and present in the moment, but also dispassionate, at ease, and in balance.\u201d<\/p>

According to the Storeys, Montaigne was the original proponent of immanent contentment. He rejected a life of politics and power and was ambivalent to religion. Instead, he retreated to the pastimes and hobbies of his country home and sought to cultivate a life of pleasures and comforts, alongside the delights of socializing with like-minded peers. His modern invention was the idea that society can exist apart from the \u201ctraditional forms of human association: city and kingdom, family and church.\u201d Accordingly, he developed a new ideal for friendship as a relationship of intimacy and full acceptance, like you might hope to find with God, but without judgement or the need for forgiveness. \u00a0These new values shaped bourgeois culture. Such a pursuit of immanent contentment can take place only under conditions of material prosperity and only for persons without much responsibility as caregivers, citizens, or believers.<\/p>

Pascal challenged Montaigne, arguing that immanent contentment is impossible because the \u201cbasic choice for modern man is between sadness papered over with diversion, and the anguished but clear-eyed search for God.\u201d Pascal observed the attempts of people to live according to Montaigne\u2019s ideas, and he noticed deep longing and dissatisfaction in the hearts of people whose lives were outwardly very pleasurable and comfortable. He thus concluded that the only option for true happiness is to give oneself over wholeheartedly to the pursuit of transcendence. For Pascal, human lives ought not to be a ramble through pleasures and distractions, but be like \u201ccomets,\u201d burning brightly unto eternity, \u201cbeginning in anguish and culminating in joy.\u201d<\/p>

Rousseau takes up Pascal\u2019s idea that life should be lived in full-on devotion to something greater than the self, but he rejects the claim that transcendence is the thing to seek. Rather, he advocates searching for the \u201csentiment of existence,\u201d found in living life to the fullest. He looks for fulfillment not in Montaigne\u2019s simple and social life, nor in Pascal\u2019s yearning for God and the world to come, but in radical and bohemian experiments in living, designed to solve the problem of bourgeois sadness and restlessness. He looks for contentment in politics and power, in women and love, and in philosophy and solitude, though he fails to be satisfied with each in turn.<\/p>

Tocqueville chronicles how the search for immanent contentment ceases to be merely a private project, but \u201can all-pervasive social and political phenomenon\u201d in America. The Storeys argue that immanent contentment \u201coften stands as a shared anthropological assumption\u201d which is found across all of our political divisions, \u201corienting the arguments of both the right and the left.\u201d On their view, \u201cmany of the debates of modern politics can be understood as arguments about the political vision that best serves the individual pursuit of immanent contentment.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

The basic demands of modern life are hardly the stuff of burning comets.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

For the person of faith who is seeking happiness, the Pascalian rejection of immanent contentment in favor of transcendence seems the most Christian of these four projects. But it is hard to know exactly what such a life would look like\u2014the basic demands of modern life are hardly the stuff of burning comets.<\/p>

One potential answer comes from a strand of thought in contemporary Christian self-help and devotional literature that calls us to rest in the smallness of our lives, to seek and find God in the ordinariness of the day-to-day. I\u2019m tempted to call this advice out as a Montaignian impulse\u2014the idea that we can squash yearning and find true satisfaction if only we will shrink the horizons of our world, settle for the ordinary, and stop expecting to find God in deep, transcendent ways.<\/p>

And yet God of course does meet us in our daily details, for Scripture calls us to worry not about tomorrow, about what we will eat and wear, reminding us that God even clothes the lilies of the fields and provides for the birds of the air. If the pleasures of home offer any fulfillment, it is not because they are sufficient in their charms, as Montaigne suggests, but because God chooses to encounter us by showing concern and providing for our daily needs. Thus Christians ought to faithfully attend to the ordinariness of most of our lives, but in a way that seeks delight in loving God and neighbor, without expecting our daily activities to have the fulfilling powers of ultimate things. We must avoid the modern trap of expecting to find full contentment by accepting the anguish of our unfulfilled desires and turning to God as the source of all joy.<\/p>

The Storeys give us one more piece of advice. Their book calls for cultivating what they call \u201cthe art of choosing.\u201d Instead of taking a Montaignian approach by cultivating a variety of hobby projects and social connections, held constantly at arm\u2019s length and without too much care and attachment, while always keeping our options open, we should learn to bet it all on things that matter. We should make commitments of depth and demandingness\u2014in our relationships, in our faith, and in our work. Rather than living life as a long, distracted ramble, we ought to dig in, for only then will we have a hope of encountering that which transcends this world.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Delaney Thull<\/strong> is a philosophy Ph.D. student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.<\/em><\/p>

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Why We Are Restless<\/strong> was published on April 6, 2021 by Princeton University Press. You can find a copy on their website here<\/a>. <\/em>
<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Husband-and-wife team the Storeys set out to explain how our discontent stems from 16th-century philosophy\u2014and what we should do about it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"0","ocean_second_sidebar":"0","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"0","ocean_custom_header_template":"0","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"0","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"off","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-newsletter","entry","has-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farefwd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Why-We-Are-Restless-3D.jpg?fit=1500%2C1383&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4224"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4233,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224\/revisions\/4233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}