I was listening to Walter Kaufman talking about Existentialism in talks on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and so on, and he made the point that Nietzsche, for all his talk of the necessary cruelty of power, was not at all interested in power as mere abuse. He was, Kaufman says, very decent. His category for talking about cheats was often to talk of dirtiness. Dirtiness was for the weak. Kaufman went on to talk about how Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith (eg Abraham) is exemplified in Nazi executioners who did their evil work with confidence in (this is so stupid) German-ness. The teleological suspension of the ethical made Jay Bernstein wonder why anyone ever took Kierkegaard's reading as saying something good about God.
Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac shows him to be the knight of faith, able to pull off the impossible of freedom to do anything and live entirely reconciled to his construct of universals, his ideas of the whole. Anders Breivik appears to enjoy the same psychological freedom. And this goes back to my post Right and Right. It isn't enough to be the knight of faith. Montezuma was a man of faith, as the song goes. It is important to be correct.
Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7
No comments:
Post a Comment
This is your chance to be heard, really heard! Finally the world will take you seriously. So do try to post something worthwhile.