Finally, as for the common people, the great majority, who exist and are only allowed to exist to serve and to be of general utility, religion gives them an invaluable sense of contentment with their situation and type; it puts their hearts greatly at ease, it glorifies their obedience, it gives them (and those…
To love humanity for the sake of God – that has been the noblest and most bizarre feeling people have attained so far. That the love of humanity, in the absence of any sanctifying ulterior motive, is one more stupidity and abomination; that the tendency to love humanity like this can only get its…
There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, and, of its many rungs, three are the most important. People used to make human sacrifices to their god, perhaps even sacrificing those they loved the best – this sort of phenomenon can be found in the sacrifice of the firstborn (a practice shared by all…
Why atheism today? God “the Father” has been thoroughly refuted; and so has “the Judge” and “the Reward-giver.” The same for God’s “free will”: he doesn’t listen, – and even if he did, he wouldn’t know how to help anyway. The worst part of it is: he seems unable to communicate in an intelligible…
And what infuriated the slavesabout and against their masters was never faith itself,but rather the freedom from faith,that half-stoic and smiling nonchalancewhen it came to the seriousness of faith. Enlightenment is infuriating. Slaves want the unconditional;they understand only tyranny, even in morality.They love as they hate,without nuance, into the depths, to the point of…
From the beginning,Christian faith has been sacrifice:sacrifice of all freedom, of all pride, of all self-confidence of the spirit;it is simultaneously enslavement and self-derision, self-mutilation. There is cruelty and religious Phoenicianism in this faith,which is expected of a worn-down,many-sided, badly spoiled conscience. Its presuppositionis that the subjugation of spirit causes indescribable pain,and that the…
This weekend I am in Louisville, Kentucky. I like Louisville. On the Ohio River the city draws from the past and reaches for a future. I am reminded of the story of Daniel Boone, that he was a Kentuckian. There is a regional pride here, a linkage to what is owed to the past. …
Yesterday was spent at the Holocaust Museum in Skokie, illinois. The New York Times in a 2021 article lists 21 such museums in the United States. In my better judgment there will never be enough of such places. I am still reeling, trying to grasp the meaning of the images and the artifacts that I…
A new breed of philosophers is approaching. I will risk christening them with a name not lacking in dangers. From what I can guess about them, from what they allow to be guessed (since it is typical of them to want to remain riddles in some respect), these philosophers of the future might have…
“My judgment is my judgment: other people don’t have an obvious right to it too” – perhaps this is what such a philosopher of the future will say. We must do away with the bad taste of wanting to be in agreement with the majority. “Good” is no longer good when it comes from…
