“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
Let me begin with a selection of sentences from this Chapter: From the start, the Christian faith is a sacrifice: a sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of the spirit; at the same time, enslavement and self-mockery, self-mutilation. The passion for God: there are peasant types … and sometimes an Oriental ecstasy worthy of a slave … and a womanly tenderness and lust …. … God … seems […]
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“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.” First and most importantly, Camus asks us to think. In a world that seems even more a charnel house, one even more defined by victims and executioners, he asks us to think about those distinctions. Israelis are not the enemy. On October […]
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In Nietzsche’s first chapter, “On the Prejudices of Philosophers” he settles scores with dead philosophers he considers having merely written “personal confessions” and “involuntary and unconscious memoir(s)” instead of philosophy. Reading it is the equivalent of ‘white-line fever’ where you’re roaring, semi-consciously, along an interstate at night, silent, darkness flowing past, the dashboard the only light aside from your headlights. Occasionally a flash of insight breaks through the drone of […]
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I believe in human agency when a person lives in a free society. In China, Russia or North Korea, or other countries of their ilk, that agency is restricted by threats of State violence. That is not the case here, yet. We should not make excuses for the choices others make. Unless that person is mentally ill, I think we have to respect that person’s capacity to make a […]
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