Sublime

Arendt upset many of her Jewish compatriots when she reported that the Eichmann she saw in the dock was not the depraved monster many had made him out to be. She experienced him, rather, as ‘terribly and terrifyingly normal’.[188] She was struck by how this perpetrator of horrendous crimes against humanity was in fact just a man, and a fairly

like to tell Ronnie someday that nervous exhaustion is an element built into the court system.

It is also important to keep in mind that the Stoics thought suicide was permissible only under certain circumstances. Musonius tells us, for example, that it is wrong for us to choose to die if our living “is helpful to many.”7 Inasmuch as Stoics, in doing what they take to be their social duty, will be helpful to many, they will rarely find

It was on the 28th of July, which I believe was a Wednesday, that I visited my father for the first time during his illness and for the last time in his life. The moment I saw him I knew why I had put off this visit so long. I had told my mother that I did not want to see him because I hated him. But this was not true. It was only that I had hated

As Stalin, who knew something about the business of mortality, supposedly said, “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” Statistics stay silent in us.

A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering has no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and still more intensely.

perfunctory