« public opinion in aesthetic matters | Main | i am deaf! »
May 10, 2008
napoleon at st. helena
Think of Napoleon at St. Helena. He who had been collecting soldiers and guns all his life, began to philosophize when he was bound hand and foot. Certainly he behaved in this new sphere like a beginner, a very inexperienced and, strange to say, pusillanimous novice. He who feared neither pestilence nor bullet, was afraid, we know, of a dark room. Men used to philosophy, like Schopenhauer, walked boldly and with confidence in a dark room, though they run away from gun shots, and even less dangerous things. The great captain, the once Emperor of nearly all Europe, Napoleon, philosophizes on St. Helena, and even went so far as to begin to ingratiate himself with morality, evidently supposing that upon morality his ultimate fact depended. He assured her that for her sake, and her sake alone, he had contrived his murderous business-he who, all the while a crown was on his head and a victorious army in his hands, hardly know even of the existence of morality. But this is so intelligible. If one where to come upon a perfectly new and unknown world at the age of forty-five, then surely everything would seem terrible, and one would take the incorporeal morality of the arbiter of destiny. And one would plan to seduce her, if possible, with sweet words and false promises, as a lady of the world.
Lev Shestov
Posted by amin at May 10, 2008 12:07 PM