The obsession with reasoning from every possible angle is the death of reasoning: there are no limits to thought, the points of view are never exhausted. This is why any treatise or system that claims to be complete is doomed to failure from the start. Broad reasoning requires the confrontation of opposing propositions and invariably cancels them out one by one when approached with impartiality. If broadens the work, it broadens by annihilating itself and showing itself to be increasingly flawed. For every valid reasoning there is an equally valid contrary reasoning. If the thinker opts for comprehensiveness, he must necessarily give up assertiveness—and, consequently, potency.
Tag: philosophy
Morally Man Measures Himself Less by His Affinities…
Morally, man is measured less by his affinities than by his repulsions. We know him by looking at what he rejects or, in other words, what is contrary to his character. His friends tell less about him than his adversaries, what he does less than what he peremptorily refuses to do. Moral sympathizes with caution and rejects with convulsing nerves.
Building a Fragmentary Work
The thinker gains a lot by choosing, as Nietzsche and Cioran did, to build a fragmentary work. Letting go of the presumptuous and counterproductive delirium of attainable unity, i.e., of supposedly attainable perfection, the thinker can concentrate on conferring precision and potency to small fragments. Moreover, the superiority of a collection of aphorisms over an essay is indisputable: the latter hardly ever justifies rereading; the former’s innate multiplicity makes complete assimilation impossible all at once. Furthermore: building in fragments makes it possible to precisely settle the disparate and complicated mental movements, while developing and deepening a single reasoning certainly imposes a limit—that is, it forces the mind to dismiss a large part of its manifestations.
An Honorable Man, Aware of His Own Dignity
An honorable man, aware of his own dignity, if convinced politely and respectfully that a certain action is good and just, will willingly perform it, and be grateful for the advice. If, on the other hand, this same honorable man is ordered to perform a certain action under threat of punishment, he will react by instinct, driven by his own honor, in a manner contrary to the disrespectful one who threatened him. From this the natural conclusion: orders and threats are offenses to anyone who has a sense of dignity.