ITT: darkest philosophy Carlo Michelstaedtr: suicide is the

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ITT: darkest philosophy

Carlo Michelstaedtr: suicide is the only true act

> Once consciousness refuses to forego its quest for a meaning that is no longer available, it is left to affirm nothing but voiceless passion. That is the point at which "man would rather will nothingness than not will at all." Suicide becomes the self's only proper act, its sole affirmation, the form of a transcendent and impossible identity.

>the "philosophy of life" that inherits the metaphysical project induces cosmic suicide. And this explains the cryptic parable that appears on the first, blood-stained page of Persuasion and Rhetoric. Having sketched an oil lamp in the process of extinction, Michelstaedter glosses it with these words in Greek: "The lamp goes out for lack of oil. I, overflowing at the brim, extinguished myself."

>Michelstaedter's suicide does not attest to the failure of persuasion, as one might be tempted to read it. It enacts it. For the suicide, as Schopenhauer argues, does not will death. The suicide "wills life ... and is only dissatisfied with the conditions under which it has presented itself to him. ... Just because the suicide cannot give up willing, he gives up living."