Intensity: an ethical ideal?

READING

DAY 6

Intensity: an ethical ideal?

Can the promise of intensity live up to its claims? This question opens up the general ethics of contemporary life. Tristan Garcia’s book The Life Intense paints a picture of an ethical paradigm for feeling and experiencing ‘intensity’, but also ‘the ideal’, with intensity defining a huge shift from the pre-modern paradigms for supposed ‘good human life’ (regarding piety, stability, and grace).

So, intensity is the constant drive to ‘feel alive’, and life therefore isn’t about the good or the bad (virtues), but ‘the degree to which life is felt’. We must FEEL alive, and all tools should be employed to pursue this drive.

We explored Garcia’s three proposed strategies to approach the decree of intensity: 1. Variation (CHANGE CHANGE CHANGE —we must change place, change friends, change things. Never standing still, we must always update). 2. Increase/accelerate (A constant growth and exponentialism), and 3. Premaverism/The First Time (Remember our first time darling?)

We explored what it is to ‘spice up your life!’

Based on:

Tristan Garcia, “The Life Intense”