It is an unmistakable trait of tyrannical epochs to attack the freedom of thought, which manifests itself in the detestable form of censorship. This delirium of subjecting souls to uniformity has fortunately never been realized, although the violence employed to achieve it has always achieved patent results. Ideological censorship is a crime, unjustifiable from any point of view; it is a disgrace in every century and a condemnation of the very values on which it thinks it stands. That is why today’s attempt to bend authors of the past to the despicable ideology that has dominated Western thought by subjugating universities and the media will be a permanent blemish. Only incurable scoundrels find anything remotely reasonable in censoring those who, dead, cannot defend themselves; in adulterating their words, falsifying them, and selling as theirs lines that they never wrote. Beyond that, there is nothing to be said.
Category: Notes
Perhaps Nothing Would Be as Beneficial…
Perhaps nothing would be as beneficial to modern philosophy as inserting literary exercises in the curricula of universities; that is, encouraging aspiring philosophers to write short stories, short poems perhaps, forcing them to transform philosophy into literature. Obviously, such an exercise would be a direct confrontation with what is today considered the only acceptable way to do philosophy. And that is why it would be so beneficial. It is not a matter of selling ideas through art, something abominable, but of clarifying the concrete role of philosophy, that is, inserting it in concrete questions, showing that there is a fundamental connection between it and life, the former not being reduced to a game of abstract constructions, a useless game for those who seek answers to real questions. Without a doubt, this would be a very useful exercise for students.
The intellectual trajectory of Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse’s intellectual trajectory is admirable. The “posthumous writings of Joseph Knecht”, especially “The Three Lives”, are like a synthesis of a lifetime dedicated to study, of a long immersion in the highest philosophies of the East and the West; a synthesis of the great religions and the great understandings of reality, starting from the simplest to the most complex elements, from practical morals to abstractions of thought. And to see such lines coming from the author of Demian… Not a few have tried to harmonize East and West in the last century; but very few have done it with the beauty achieved by Hesse.
The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse
This beautiful novel is an admirable attempt to synthesize what is the highest and noblest in human existence. If we analyze it carefully, we see that virtuosity, in its multiple faces, has been carefully distributed among the characters and the plot of the novel. A difficult task! and therefore worthy of the greatest appreciation. Structurally, the work is interesting for providing us with some very predictable lines and leaving some gaps in the story. This makes us reflect on the need for surprise when there is a harmonious whole expressing a deep and powerful message. In a narrative entirely steeped in this harmony, how much is to be gained by surprise? We notice in the work the honorable effort to give voice to the ineffable, to express through the simplicity and complexity of silence, music, and the starry sky, as if these elements needed no more than their own presence to tell us what they have to say. Joseph Knecht’s life ends in a scene of unforgettable symbolism: every detail contributes to the central message of the work. The radiant beauty of the landscape, the contrasts between youth and old age, instinct and rationality, health and disease, the simultaneously humble and courageous act of the schoolmaster who challenges and allows himself to be swallowed up by nature, all these, taken together, seem to tangent the complexity of life. For some reason, springs to mind the image of Hermann Hesse flying high, very high, in the same years when an army of authors was throwing literature into depravity…