Night of the night

21st May 2012

Quote

Wealth is neither an evil nor a curse. Wealth, like power, is part of man’s greatness and of the beauty of life. The solution to man’s problems is to be found not by sharing out weakness, poverty and mediocrity – but by seeking power and wealth; they alone have permitted and conditioned everything magnificent and brilliant that has ever been done in culture, in civilization, in life [… T]he aim is not to combat wealth with a view to achieving a general mediocrity, an ‘equality’ of mediocrity. The aim is still wealth: wealth that has becomes progressively universalized, socialized wealth.

12th May 2012

Quote

‘”I am not only a thinking being. I am the bearer of an absolute Knowledge. And this Knowledge is actually, at the moment when I think, incarnated in me, Hegel. Therefore, I am not only a thinking being; I am also – and above all – Hegel. What, then, is this Hegel?” To begin with, he is a man of flesh and blood, who knows he is such. Next, this man does not float in empty space. He is seated on a chair, at a table, writing with a pen on paper. And he knows that all these objects did not fall from the sky; he knows that those things are products of something called human work. He also knows that this work is carried out in a human World, in the bosom of a Nature in which he himself participates. And this World is present in his mind at the very moment when he writes to answer his “What am I?” Thus, for example, he hears sounds from afar. But he does not hear mere sounds. He knows in addition that these sounds are cannon shots, and he knows that the cannons too are products of some Work, manufactured in this case for a Fight to the death between men. But there is still more. He knows that he is hearing shots from Napoleon’s cannons at the Battle of Jena. Hence he knows that he lives in a World in which Napoleon is acting.’