Attachment and detachment

Use in the book

Attachment exclusively to abstract kinds can spend benevolence on humanity as a whole while leaving little for individuals. A later list criticizes motives that detach people from one another by attaching each to himself. These are not objections to every bond: religion is credited with binding powerfully to the dead. The brief reading note that substitutes detachment for contempt gives another limit. Detachment need not take the form of contempt. Together the passages ask what a bond includes, excludes or sacrifices rather than identifying attachment itself as either virtue or weakness.

Places to read

1. I, p. 134, entry 6, ¶2Abstract attachment can dry up affection for individuals.
2. I, p. 304, entry 6, ¶1Religion sustains a bond with the dead.
3. I, p. 332, entry begun p. 331, no. 2, ¶8A reading correction rejects contempt in favor of detachment.
4. II, p. 911, entry 2, ¶2Self-attachment accompanies disunion from others.

Translation in this edition

The English translation preserves the unexplained sentence about individuals presenting themselves too much. It supplies no object naming whom religion binds. The page 355 correction remains a reading note with no invented object for detachment.