There are common things, deeply carved into his nature, between the human of pre-modern and modern world. One of them is the will of revenge. Friedrich Nietzsche in On the Genealogy of Morals brilliantly reveals how some of today’s most moral values of “good and evil” had once bases merely in this nature of the human being. In the past, humans were much sincerer in seeking this will, however, the human of our era has an incredible skill to justify revenge with bringing freedom, and thus, they name it “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, “Operation Enduring Freedom”, and so on; thus, they show incredible skills to cover the blood of their revenge.
And, you are not ready how to react to a person who, with all his sincerity, apologizes however asserts that they try to “minimize the collateral damage”!* They call it collateral damage, but we know that it means our little sisters, our little brothers, mothers, and fathers, and so on, but it’s nothing, just a “collateral damage”! Unintendedly, I remember Nietzsche who sarcastically says: “I consider it as an advance, as evidence of a freer , more generous, more Roman Conception of law when the Twelve Tables of Rome decreed it as a matter of indifference how much or how little the creditor cut off in such cases: ‘si plus minusve secuernunt, ne fraude esto.’”**
--------------------------
* One of my professors at AUAF had about the same statement.
** “If they have secured more or less, let that be no crime.” (English translation from Walter Kaufmann’s footnote).
No comments:
Post a Comment