9:04pm July 6, 2013

“The Leibnizian ‘optimum’ - health - is not a numerical quotient, but an allusion to the greatest fullness of relationship possible in a total world-manifold, the organization with the greatest richness and reality. Diseases, in this sense, depart from the optimum, for their organization or design is impoverished and rigid (although they have frightening strengths of their own). Health is infinite and expansive in mode, and reaches out to be filled with the fullness of the world; whereas disease is finite and reductive in mode, and endeavors to reduce the world to itself.”

Oliver Sacks, delivering a concise description of the feeling of illness as constraint, in “Perspectives" from Awakenings 1983 edition, p 209 (via cruisecontrolforcool)

I don’t think I’ve lost any richness to the world just because I’m not healthy. And I don’t think healthy people are that much less constrained than unhealthy people. Quote just doesn’t fit with what I know of the world. :-/

5 notes