Sublime

je pense que des relations authentiques, des amitiés authentiques et des communautés philosophiques authentiques ne sont possibles qu’à petite échelle. Le risque existe d’aboutir à une politique du bien-être technocratique et réductrice, qui remplacerait les relations par des inventaires informatisés et qui accorderait beaucoup trop d’autorité à de

Tous

Ortega held the process to be the driving force of history. The “reciprocal action between the masses and select minorities,” he wrote, “is the fundamental fact of every society and the agent of its evolution for good or evil.” Ortega’s masses we now call the public. By “select minorities” he meant the admirable few: elites who, at their best, lavi

But many attended only out of curiosity or a sense of occasion, or because Sartre had made some small difference in some aspect of their lives — or because the ending of such an outsized life simply demanded some gesture of participation.

Liberalism’s old hegemony has ended but not yet been replaced by a new worldview. To command majority support, politics has to start with what most people value: family, friendship, locality, community and country.

La voix des gens ne change jamais, pas davantage que l'expression de leur regard. Au milieu de l'effondrement physique généralisé à quoi se résume la vieillesse, la voix et le regard apportent le témoignage douloureusement irrécusable de la persistance du caractère, des aspirations, des désirs, de tout ce qui constitue une personnalité humaine.

Freud’s work is best read as a long elegy for the intelligibility of our lives. We make sense of our lives in order to be free not to have to make sense.

Augustine is our contemporary. He has directly and indirectly shaped the way we understand our pursuits, the call to authenticity.