Author Topic: Faith in Science  (Read 43447 times)

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Holden

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A Question for Herr Hentrich & Senor Raul
« Reply #30 on: June 06, 2018, 03:39:47 am »
Herr Hentrich & Senor Raul,

Schopenhauer writes:
A much more striking, but also a much rarer, characteristic
of human nature, which expresses that desire to draw eternal
justice into the province of experience, i.e., of individuality, and
at the same time indicates a felt consciousness that, as I have
expressed it above, the will to live conducts at its own cost the
great tragedy and comedy, and that the same one will lives in
all manifestations,—such a characteristic, I say, is the following.
We sometimes see a man so deeply moved by a great injury
which he has experienced, or, it may be, only witnessed, that he
deliberately and irretrievably stakes his own life in order to take
vengeance on the perpetrator of that wrong. We see him seek
for some mighty oppressor through long years, murder him at
last, and then himself die on the scaffold, as he had foreseen,
and often, it may be, did not seek to avoid, for his life had value
for him only as a means of vengeance. We find examples of
this especially among the Spaniards. If, now, we consider the
spirit of that desire for retribution carefully, we find that it is
very different from common revenge, which seeks to mitigate
the suffering, endured by the sight of the suffering inflicted;
indeed, we find that what it aims at deserves to be called, not
so much revenge as punishment. For in it there really lies the
intention of an effect upon the future through the example, and
that without any selfish aim, either for the avenging person, for
it costs him his life, or for a society which secures its own safety
by laws. For that punishment is carried out by individuals, not
by the state, nor is it in fulfilment of a law, but, on the contrary,
(That Spanish bishop who, in the last war, poisoned both himself and the
French generals at his own table, is an instance of this; and also various
incidents in that war. Examples are also to be found in Montaigne, Bk. ii. ch.
12.)
always concerns a deed which the state either would not or
could not punish, and the punishment of which it condemns. It
seems to me that the indignation which carries such a man so
far beyond the limits of all self-love springs from the deepest
consciousness that he himself is the whole will to live, which
appears in all beings through all time, and that therefore the most
distant future belongs to him just as the present, and cannot be
indifferent to him. Asserting this will, he yet desires that in the
drama which represents its nature no such fearful wrong shall
ever appear again, and wishes to frighten ever future wrong-doer
by the example of a vengeance against which there is no means
of defence, since the avenger is not deterred by the fear of
death. The will to live, though still asserting itself, does not
here depend any longer upon the particular phenomenon, the
individual, but comprehends the Idea of man, and wishes to keep
its manifestation pure from such a fearful and shocking wrong.
 It is a rare, very significant, and even sublime trait of character
through which the individual sacrifices himself by striving to
make himself the arm of eternal justice, of the true nature of
which he is yet ignorant.


What do you think of a man such as the one described by Schopenhauer in the aforementioned passage.

Thank you.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2018, 03:44:22 am by Holden »
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.