The Abiding Appeal of Self-Immolation
Those who engage in self-immolation today are raging against a world grown immune to the human quest for meaning and self-sacrifice.
Those who engage in self-immolation today are raging against a world grown immune to the human quest for meaning and self-sacrifice.
In our nihilistic age, Boito’s Mefistofele may be primed for a comeback.
Housman was a singular creature, a noble-minded nihilist of intense feeling.
Negativity, including the aestheticization of aggression, can serve as temperature shock, coaxing the culture into respecting the integrity of certain barriers.
Defenders of ‘the nation’ often fall back on practical issues of scale and power balance, ignoring the Biblical and Platonic tradition that celebrates the diversity of nations as an aesthetic good.
Henry James praised Ivan Turgenev because, though the man possessed a pessimistic streak, in his novels he painted tender pictures that bled sympathy for all.
Capitalism does not destroy other values, nor does it come without respectable merits. Quite the contrary: the profit motive has elevated human existence to unprecedented levels. We can feed more mouths, cure more of the sick, educate, and elevate more people than we have ever been able to do. The problem lies instead in the fallibility of human nature.
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