/lit/ - Literature

>>17370900
>the best thinkers of the ancient and modern world were both great warriors
>superficial says the soifag
Really makes you think.

This board moves too fast, so I didn't get to respond in time.

Last thread:
>>/lit/thread/S15891967


"If my dear brother had any inkling of what I toss away en passant, he would be through with me for good. I would have laid hands on his most hallowed treasure. "Freedom of the press" and "capital punishment" - I usually give these phrases a wide berth at the family table, for were I to voice even the slightest criticism, the game could be up for me altogether.

He would never get it into his head that freedom begins where freedom of the press ends. "Freedom of thought" - this means that he would never test his stale ideas in a state of primeval freedom. I am willing to grant that he is rooted in liberal traditions, although they are more diluted and mitigated in him than in my genitor. Even good ideas have their time. Liberalism is to freedom as anarchism is to anarchy.

Cadmo, to enlighten me, often takes me along to his "Storm Companions:' I am not really welcome there - perhaps they even regard me as an agent of the Domo, who, by the by, knows about their meetings but considers them irrelevant, indeed almost useful. "A barking dog never bites:'

The main reason I have a hard time getting along with these men is their indecisiveness. They feel when they ought to think, and vice versa. All they have inherited from Socrates is skepticism; but, unlike Xenophon, they would not hoist him on their shoulders and carry him out of the fighting. Convinced as they are of the temporal and finite nature of things, they shy away from pain, sacrifice, devotion.

...

Such ponderings repeatedly make me aware of the limits to the writing of history or, rather, to its contemplation. The suffering begins the instant we take pen in hand.

I agree with my teacher Vigo that we succeed only in achieving more or less sharp-edged perspectives - lanes through the grown forest. Above all, we have to disregard the will, disregard partisanship. The true historian is more of an artist, especially a tragedian, than a man of science.

When I, as I am doing here, examine the powerful man's relationship to his opponent, I stumble upon the antithesis between the person who lays claim to freedom of action and the person who lays claim to freedom of thought. These are figures that recur not only in history but in myth as well, all the way into the animal kingdom. Fable lives on them; the lion is powerful, Reynard the fox is cunning."

>>15079709
I'll do my best, although I may just out myself as a terrible teacher.
Here's the entire quote so that we have it:

"They found no mischief in me. I remained normal, however deeply they probed. And also straight as an arrow. To be sure, normality seldom coincides with straightness. Normalcy is the human constitution; straightness is logical reasoning. With its help, I could answer satisfactorily. In contrast, the human element is at once so general and so intricately encoded that they fail to perceive it, like the air that they breathe. Thus they were unable to penetrate my fundamental structure, which is anarchic.

That sounds complicated, but it is simple, for everyone is anarchic; this is precisely what is normal about us. Of course, the anarch is hemmed in from the first day by father and mother, by state and society. Those are prunings, tappings of the primordial strength, and nobody escapes them. One has to resign oneself. But the anarchic remains, at the very bottom, as a mystery, usually unknown even to its bearer. It can erupt from him as lava, can destroy him, liberate him. Distinctions must be made here: love is anarchic, marriage is not. The warrior is anarchic, the soldier is not. Manslaughter is anarchic, murder is not. Christ is anarchic, Saint Paul is not. Since, of course, the anarchic is normal, it is also present in Saint Paul, and sometimes it erupts mightily from him. Those are not antitheses but degrees. The history of the world is moved by anarchy. In sum: the free human being is anarchic, the anarchist is not.”

A good quote explaining the Anarch in his own words:
>>15072309
And your original posts:
>>15074326
>>15075588