Page 23 - GALIET THE HEROIC SPECTACLE OF MORALS: Hume IV

Galiet & Galiet
unless an age of darkness follows!”74
“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of his labor, which he taketh under the sun?75
O Vanity! Where is thy source? Might it be despicable submission and slavery?76
“The vain person takes pleasure in every good opinion that he hears about himself (quite irrespective from any prospect of utility, and likewise irrespective of truth or falsehood), just he suffers at any bad opinion: for he submits himself to both, he feels submissive to both, from that old submissive instinct that breaks out in him. It is the ‘slave’ in the blood of the vain person...”77
Hume! And you dare admit it! What an example you give! P can express regard for me (Hume) and I (Hume) am flattered. P expresses contempt for me (Hume) and I (Hume) am mortified.78 Indeed. Indeed. How you also submit, naturally, instinctively! You too are an unconscious slave!
Ì Freud to Hume. Slaves indeed but to whom? Naturally I am anxious to know. My studies in hysteria show that we are enslaved to our unconscious, which seethes with repressed desires. Because of this, I doubt the very notion of free will. Let’s suppose volition exists, then how would you explain our mighty impulse towards self-destruction?
Were not these, Freud, the very principles that the three mighty emperors of Attic tragedy, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides depicted as ατη? Yes, ate! This wrath, this madness, this delusion that leads human beings to folly! Ruin! Self-destruction!
74 Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy II. Purgatory. Trans. Robin Kirkpatrick. New York: Penguin Classics, 2006. XI 91-93.
75 Ecclesiastes. 1:1-2. The Bible. Ecclesiastes. The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Augmented Third Edition. Ed. By Michael D. Coogan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
76 Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil. Aphorism 259.
77 Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. Marion Faber. Oxford University Press, 1998. Aphorism 261. 78 Virtue Ethics. Section 223. 97
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