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For other uses, see Lightness (disambiguation).

Lightness is a philosophical concept most closely associated with continental philosophy and existentialism, which is used in ontology. Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe Existentialism is a philosophical doctrine which posits that individuals create the meaning and essence of their lives and that this essence follows from their existence In Philosophy, ontology (from the Greek, genitive: of being (part The term "lightness" varies in usage but is differentiated from physical weight, such as "the lightness of balsa wood". In other words, "light like a bird," as Paul Valéry wrote, "and not like a feather". Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry (French pɔl valeˈʁi October 30, 1871 – July 20, 1945) was a French Poet

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Milan Kundera and Lightness

Milan Kundera's 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a vital exploration of the concept of Lightness. Milan Kundera (ˈmɪlan ˈkundɛra (born April 1, 1929, in Brno, Czechoslovakia) is a French Writer of Czech The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí is a Novel written by Milan Kundera in 1982, first published in 1984

Kundera uses Friedrich Nietzsche's doctrine of the Eternal Return to illustrate Lightness. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15 1844 August 25 1900 ( was a nineteenth-century German philosopher and classical philologist Eternal return (also known as " eternal recurrence " is a concept which posits that the Universe has been recurring and will continue to recur in a Eternal Return dictates that all things in existence recur over and over again for all eternity. This is to say that human history is a preset circle without progress, the same events arising perpetually and doomed never to alter or to improve. Existence is thus weighty because it stands fixed in an infinite cycle. This weightiness is “the heaviest of burdens”, for “if every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. Jesus of Nazareth (7–2 BC / BCE —26–36 AD / CE) ” At the same time, it is necessary for any event to occur in the cycle of events exactly as it has always occurred for the cycle to be identical; consequently, everything takes on an eternally fixed meaning. This fact prevents one from believing things to be fleeting and worthless.

The inverse of this concept is Kundera's “unbearable lightness of being. ” Assuming that eternal return were impossible, humankind would experience an “absolute absence of burden,” and this would “[cause] man to be lighter than air” in his lack of weight of meaning. Something which does not forever recur has its brief existence, and, once it is complete, the universe goes on existing, utterly indifferent to the completed phenomenon. “Life which disappears once and for all, which does not return” writes Kundera, is “without weight. . . and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime. . . means nothing. ” Each life is insignificant; every decision does not matter. Since decisions do not matter, they are "light": they do not tie us down. However, at the same time, the insignificance of our decisions - our lives, or being - is unbearable. Hence, "the unbearable lightness of being. " On the other hand, eternal existence would demand of us strict adherence to prescripted rules and laws; a sense of duty and rigorous morality.

"What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?" Kundera notes that this is not a new question. Parmenides posed it in the sixth century BC. Parmenides of Elea ( Greek:, early 5th century BC was an Ancient Greek Philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of He saw the world divided into pairs of opposites: light/darkness, fineness/coarseness etc. One half of the opposition he called positive (light, fineness, warmth, being), the other negative. We might find this division into positive and negative poles simple except for one difficulty: which one is positive, weight or lightness? Parmenides responded that lightness is positive, weight negative. Kundera then questions "Was he correct or not?" The lightness/weight opposition remains the most ambiguous of all. Kundera then asks, should one live with weight and duty or with lightness and freedom? In Nietzschean terms, weight is life-affirming in that to live with positive intensity is to live in a way you'd be prepared to repeat. The emptiness of Sabina's life in 'The Unbearable Lightness Of Being', and that she wanted to "die in lightness" — which is to say that she is indifferent to her life — shows that she would not want to repeat her life and would not accept an eternal return.

Italo Calvino and Lightness

Similarly to Greek philosopher Heraclitus, for Italo Calvino, Lightness is the flexible; the weightless; the mobile; the connective; vectors as distinct from structures. Heraclitus of Ephesus ( Ancient Greek: &mdash grc-Latn ''Hērákleitos ho Ephésios'' English Heraclitus the Ephesian) (ca Italo Calvino ( October 15, 1923 &ndash September 19, 1985) (ˈiːtalo kalˈviːno was an Italian journalist and writer of short Italo Calvino explored Lightness in the first of his Six Memos For The Next Millennium. He saw Lightness as an important aspect of post-modern society and existence that should be celebrated; he, like Heraclitus, never viewed Lightness as negative, indeed he never ascribed any evaluative content to it.

Calvino keenly explores the borderline between lightness and the superficial; he posits that a contemplative lightness may make light-heartnedness seem heavy and dim; the pursuit of lightness as a reaction to the dutifulness of life.

Calvino emphasises that he does not intend to exclude or to define as inferior the opposite, as for example light/heavy, quick/slow; instant deduction is not necessarily better than well-considered thought, the case may be even contrary. It simply communicates something which is only emblematic of lightness. The balance or tension between the two 'poles' is an important aspect.

In Six Memos he says that "It is true that software cannot exercise its powers of lightness except through the weight of hardware. But it is the software that gives the orders, acting on the outside world and on machines that exist only as functions of software and evolve so that they can work out ever more complex programs. The second industrial revolution, unlike the first, does not present us with such crushing images as rolling mills and molten steel, but with `bits' in a flow of information traveling along circuits in the form of electronic impulses. The iron machines still exist, but they obey the orders of weightless bits. "

Lightness in Eastern Philosophy

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali also deal with Lightness. This is an article about the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali For general information on sutras see Sutra. Book 3 describes Lightness or Laghima as being one of the eight siddhis, or eight perfections: the capacity to offset the force of one's facticity. Facticity ( French: facticité, German: Faktizität) has a multiplicity of meanings from "factuality" and "contingency" to This is defined in relation to Pullness or Garima, which concerns worldly weight and mass.

Zen Buddhism teaches that one ought to become as light as being itself. Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism, referred to in Chinese as Chan. Zen teaches one not only to find the lightness of being “bearable,” but to rejoice in this lightness. This stands as an interesting opposition to Kundera's evaluation of Lightness.

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Milan Kundera (ˈmɪlan ˈkundɛra (born April 1, 1929, in Brno, Czechoslovakia) is a French Writer of Czech Italo Calvino ( October 15, 1923 &ndash September 19, 1985) (ˈiːtalo kalˈviːno was an Italian journalist and writer of short In common usage existence is the world of which we are aware through our senses but in Philosophy the word has a more specialized meaning and is often contrasted with Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry (French pɔl valeˈʁi October 30, 1871 – July 20, 1945) was a French Poet Parmenides of Elea ( Greek:, early 5th century BC was an Ancient Greek Philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Heraclitus of Ephesus ( Ancient Greek: &mdash grc-Latn ''Hērákleitos ho Ephésios'' English Heraclitus the Ephesian) (ca Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15 1844 August 25 1900 ( was a nineteenth-century German philosopher and classical philologist Eternal return (also known as " eternal recurrence " is a concept which posits that the Universe has been recurring and will continue to recur in a The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí is a Novel written by Milan Kundera in 1982, first published in 1984 Six Memos for the Next Millennium is a book based on a series of lectures written by Italo Calvino for the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard
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