No Comment, Quotation — August 2, 2008, 6:45 am
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Es gibt aber neben den blinden Lobpreisen der Heimat eine ganz andere und schwere Pflicht, nämlich sich auszubilden zum erkennenden Menschen, dem die Wahrheit und die Verwandtschaft mit allem Geistigen über alles geht und der aus dieser Erkenntnis auch seine Bürgerpflicht würde ermitteln können, wenn sie ihm nicht schon mit seinem Temperament eingeboren ist. Vollends im Reiche des Gedankens gehen alle Schlagbäume billig in die Höhe.
We will blindly sing the praise of our home country, but another and more burdensome duty weighs upon each of us, namely to raise ourselves up and educate ourselves as comprehending human beings for whom truth and the bonds of the world of the spirit are transcendent, and further to ascertain from that knowledge our true duty as citizens, if we were not born with an instinctive sense of that duty already. In the realm of thought it is only fitting that all frontier posts be swept away.
–Jacob Burckhardt, Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen p. 11 (1905)(S.H. transl.)
More from Scott Horton:
No Comment — April 12, 2013, 11:11 am
A new report from Seton Hall University exposes government surveillance of attorney-client conversations
No Comment, Six Questions — March 18, 2013, 9:00 am
Rashid Khalidi on how the United States sustains the failure of the Israel-Palestine peace process
No Comment, Six Questions — February 4, 2013, 9:00 am
Alex Gibney on his documentary investigating the Roman Catholic Church’s handling of child sex-abuse cases
Years of consideration preceding the inclusion of the word “phat” in Random House’s 1996 Compact Unabridged Dictionary:
Scientists created crash helmets that stink when cracked and fruit flies to whom blue light smells delicious.
In Belize, a construction company bulldozed a 2,300-year-old Mayan temple to make road fill.
“This is the heart of the magic factory, the place where medicine is infused with the miracles of science, and I’ve come to see how it’s done.”
