Truth, The Mechanics of Virtue, aphorism 230

230


Truth is often a solution to a confrontation with a dominating social organ.  It wants revenge and a reversal of ranks.  The fact that it achieves its overthrow by securing the true is only a stroke of luck.  We will hazard ambiguity: nature determines the outcome, not the moralist — in the sense that the conditions, not the moralist, determine the outcomes — and the moralist is an outcome and therefore not really a moralist after all.  Eventually however, despite its dishonest beginnings, the motive can actually build up a superior being — and quite honestly.  These highest expressions are rare, but they could not develop in any other way.  If one wants truth, one also wants a mental overthrow of the dominant.  But one cannot have both truth and peace.  Truthfulness, in abundance, is an irritation that one rubs ... but must never cure.



A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism



Popular posts from this blog

A valuable book, A Human Strategy, aphorism 387

387 A valuable book may be torn to pieces without diminishing the human spirit, just so long as the words have already been read and understood.  To feel the loss of the book — at its material destruction, even though one had already digested its contents fully and had aligned oneself toward its overall direction — is evidence that one values the non-human being over human becoming , the static thing over the dynamic process .  In response to the fear of our unknowable future we would rather freeze ourselves into a single stage of growth at the expense of the entire metamorphosis. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism
Read more
The Ascetic Impulse: We think we deliberately hurt ourselves when it is simply that we do know which version of ourselves will satisfy our needs more fully. We try on a personality as if trying on new clothes. Bizarrely, the self we beat up has heretofore been a complete stranger.
Read more