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April 14, 2008
All men lie when they begin to speak
Truth exists only in order that men who are separated in time and space might establish between themselves some kind of communication at last. That is, a man must choose between absolute loneliness with truth, on the one side, and communion with his neighbors and falsehood, on the other.
All men lie when they begin to speak: our language is so imperfectly arranged that the principle of its arrangement presupposes a readiness to speak untruth. The more abstract the subject is, the more doe the disposition to lie increases, until, when we touch upon the most complicated questions, we have to lie incessantly, and the lie is the more intolerable an coarse the more sincere we are. For a sincere man is convinced that veracity is assured by the absence of contradictions, and in order to avoid all appearance of lie, he tries to make a logical agreement between his opinions: that is to raise his lie to Herculean heights.
Forgive him his lie, for he speaks it only with his lips. Let him say what he will, how he will; so long as we hear in his words the familiar note of the call to battle, and the fire of desperate inexorable resolution burns in his eyes, we will understand him. We are used to decipher hieroglyphs. But if he, lie the Germans of today, accepts truth and the norm as the final goal of human aspirations, we shall also know with whom we have to deal, were he by destiny endowed with the eloquence of Cicero. Better utter loneliness than communion with such a man. Yet such communion does not exclude utter loneliness; perhaps it even assists the hard achievement.
Lev Shestov
Posted by amin at April 14, 2008 1:22 AM