A long quotation on the role of violence, — some difficult issues consequent to deciding upon a violent act, necessary for survival. This world is a violent place. Homo Sapiens often have recourse to violence. Ask any who live in Ukraine, or who lived in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Syria… Places wet with blood,…
After more than five hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, there was little doubt Emmanuel Macron walked into the grizzly bear’s den — and he got mauled. With more than 100,000 Russian troops and heavy weapons massed on the Ukrainian border, the French president and his advisers had insisted that,…
We object to the inquisitors who want to create faith and virtue from without; We object to all forms of fascism which seek to fashion the happiness of man from without; And also the paternalism which thinks that it has done something for [humankind] by prohibiting him from certain possibilities of temptation, whereas what…
[Humankind] extends his control by instruments which enable him to devour distances and to multiply the output of his effort in time; but he is always and only one. However, instead of accepting his limits, he tries to do away with them. He aspires to act upon everything and by knowing everything. -excerpt the…
But the truth is that if division and violence define war, the world has always been at war and always will be; if man is waiting for universal peace in order to establish his existence validly; he will wait indefinitely: there will never be any other future. …Our hold on the future is limited;…
The specifically human form of aggression, violence, is closely connected to the awareness of death, which is exclusively human. The economy of violence is ruled by the logic of accumulation. The more violence you exert, the more powerful you feel. Accumulated killing power [Tötungsgewalt] produces a feeling of growth, force, power, [Macht] — of…
Nihilistic pessimismand rationalistic optimismfail in their effort to juggle awaythe bitter truth of sacrifice:they also eliminate all reasons for wanting it. Someone told a young invalid who wept because she had to leave her home, her occupations, and her whole past life, “Get cured. The rest has no importance.” “But if nothing has any…
A child’s face is so moving, it is not that the child is more movingor that [she] has more of a right to happiness than the others:it is that [she] is the living affirmation of human transcendence;[she] is on the watch, she is an eager hand held out to the world,[she] is a hope,…
American history has been about guns. Ask any indigenous American. Ask any Republican for that matter… Yesterday I watched an old Western movie entitled, Last Train From Gun Hill, staring Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn. The plot as you can guess is about outlaws and gun-play. The “good guy,” the one wearing the star…
Choice/Responsibility and Fate/Doing What Your Daddy Done The trick it seems when it comes to philosophy is to make sense of a coincidence of opposites. On the one hand, is our intuitive sense of choice, that decisions are pivot points with consequences for which we blame ourselves (and others) or believe to be praiseworthy. …
