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is with the Bank and the Credit Line, and our atonement, the interest we pay back. We are the sacrifice.
Plato’s charm made us transcend, and to the Beauties of the Form tend; Paul’s clarity and grace made us convert from deed to faith and embrace the Cross’ verity in Christ’s charity laced; Kant’s bend made us ascend to a Kingdom of Ends;19 and Hegel’s lens made us befriend the Absolute Idea at history’s end.20
What was Nietzsche’s final end?
Greece versus Judea?
To toss away the gallant dream to a gayety that weeps?
What the choice? A Hammer that Builds? Asphyxia that breathes? What the climb? To icy mountain bowl that congeals
19 Kant’s philosophy posits three categorical imperatives, the Formula of Universal and Natural Law, the Formula of Humanity, and the Formula of Kingdom of Ends. The Universal and Natural Law formula says to “act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal of nature,” (421) ideally never leading to a contradiction. The Formula of Humanity encourages to act in “such a way that you treat humanity whether in your person, or in the person of another, always at the same time, as an end, and never as a means” (429).
Kant’s third categorical imperative posits “a rational being must always regard himself as legislator in a Kingdom of Ends, rendered possible by freedom of the will, whether as member or sovereign.” Moral duty arises only from the human capacity for autonomous self-direction. Kant. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. by Mary Gregor. UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 421- 434.
20 Hegel’s philosophy proposes a progressive unfolding of truth towards the Absolute Idea nascent at the end of linear history. It comes about by a concatenation of dialectical motions between theses and their antitheses, always reaching syntheses until the hour all tragic tensions are resolved and enlighted beings dwell in the Absolute Idea, where all things are unified in a transcendental apperception. This Hegelian Absolute Mind, to some critics, expresses a loftier consciousness than the religious one. To some extent, it transcends religion. Hegel. Phenomenology of Mind. Trans. by J. B. Baillie. Rev. 2d ed. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1949. See Introduction.
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