Abstract philosophical systems offer only the consolations of death

Evidence

As soon as one considers a system abstractly and theoretically, one puts himself, in effect, on the plane of the universal, thus, of the infinite. That is why reading the Hegelian system is so comforting. I remember having experienced a great feeling of calm on reading Hegel in the impersonal framework of the Bibliotheque Nationale in August 1940. But once I got into the street again, into my life, out of the system, beneath a real sky, the system was no longer of any use to me: what it had offered me, under a show of the infinite, was the consolations of death; and I again wanted to live in the midst of living men. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 148

Categorization

• XREF: The concrete lived episode in the Bibliotheque Nationale (August 1940) is a vivid anchor for the reader’s typology project — this is bad faith’s serious man writ as philosophical comfort. — connects to: Being-towards-death frames mortality as the source of authentic existence — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 933
• SHARE: The image of reading Hegel in the Bibliotheque Nationale in occupied Paris, then stepping into the street, is a striking anecdote about the failure of abstract consolation.