Europe no longer believes in evil but only in misunderstandings to be resolved by discussion and dialogue. She no longer has enemies but only partners. If she is nice to extremists, she thinks, they will be nice to her, and she will be able to disarm their aggressiveness and soften them up. Europe no longer […]
There is nothing more insidious than a collective guilt passed down from generation to generation, dyeing a people with a kind of permanent stain. Contrition cannot define a political order. As there is no hereditary transmission of victim status, so there is no transmission of oppressor status. The duty of remembering implies neither the automatic […]
In short, the great enigma of our postmodern age is how American society grew so wealthy and free to create so many residents that became so angry at the conditions that have made them so privileged — and how so many millions abroad fled the intolerance and poverty of their home country, and yet on […]
While America is a project, Europe is a sorrow. Before long, it will amount to little except the residue of abandoned dreams. We dreamed of a great diversity where we might live well, seek personal fulfillment, and, if possible, get rich—and all this in proximity to great works of culture. This was a worthwhile project, […]
We now live on self-denunciation, as if permanently indebted to the poor, the destitute, to immigrants—as if our only duty were expiation, endless expiation, restoring without limit what we had taken from humanity from the beginning. This wave of repentance spreads through our latitudes and our governments like an epidemic. An active conscience is a […]
Europe has surely engendered monsters. But it has, at the same time, engendered the ideas that made it possible to slay monsters. European history is a succession of paradoxes: arbitrary feudal power gave rise to democracy; ecclesiastical oppression, to freedom of conscience; national rivalries, to the dream of a supranational community; overseas conquests, to anticolonialism; […]
Tiden efter er «moderniteten», som måske bedre enn noget andet lader sig bestemme som kritisk mod det deroppe – mod autoriteten, vertikaliteten. Moderniteten er i sin essens kristendommens tilbagegang og metafysikkens endeligt. Det er forandringssamfundet. Men ikke enden på historien. Moderniteten er anti-metafysisk og anti-sakral. Det moderne individet foranlediges til at forlade en moralsk krævende […]
Tiden før er preget af et stærkt nomos – Loven: det hierarki av traditioner, vaner, normer, ritualer, der regulerer dagliglivet, i sidste instans forankret i en forestilling om et forsyn. Der er nære forbilleder, og der er retningslinjer i kulturen, som den enkelte forventes at tilegne sig, tilpasse sig, indordne sig under. Der er hierarki, […]
Sorgene legg seg yver deg og klemmer deg ned i ei varm boslege. Lat meg likevel røra på meg, prøva kreften, letta på torvone – lat meg gjera som tordivelen når han ein vårdag grev seg ut or mydungen. Olav H. Hauge Dropar i austvind (1966)
«Every important freedom that Western individuals possess rests on free expression. We observe what is wrong, and we say what is wrong, in order that it may be corrected. This is the message of the Enlightenment, the rational process that developed today’s Western values: Go. Inquire. Ask. Find out. Dare to know. Don’t be afraid […]
