Re: cautious optimism

Thus in the forward march of history - I mean marriage - there come
along with woman all the follies of finitude, this puttering around, and
an egotism peculiar to woman. As wife, as mother - well, here is an
egotism of which the man has no intimation. Society has licensed it
under the name of love - good heavens, no, it is the most powerful
egotism in which woman most certainly does not love herself foremost but
through (egotistically) loving her own she loves herself. From then on
ideas, and every higher infinite striving likewise, whistle in vain for
the man - yes, even if our Lord and his angels tried to move him, it
would do no good, because the egotism of the mother is such an enormous
power that she can hold him fast.

Woman has a dangerous rapport with finitude in a way quite different
from man. She is, as The Seducer says, a mystification (see "The
Banquet"); there is a moment in her life when she deceptively appears to
be infinitude itself - and that is when man is captured. And as a wife
she is quite simply - finitude.


- What the judge in the second part of "Either/Or" says in his way about
women is to be expected from a married man who, ethically inspired,
champions marriage.

Woman could be called "the lust for life." There is undoubtedly lust for
life in man, but essentially he is structured to be spirit, and if he
were alone, left all alone to himself, he would not know (here the judge
is right) how to begin, and he would never really get around to
beginning.

But then "the lust for life," which is within him indefinitely, becomes
m