Page 37 - GALIET THE HEROIC SPECTACLE OF MORALS: Hume IV

Galiet & Galiet
contortions.116 The spectacle of the fall of the Roman Empire or any other empire is closely linked to decadence and amorality: are we humans or cannibals? Hume’s spectacle becomes ghostly in the dark. Whose ideology would one choose amidst a sea of gurus and charlatans? Where is our fortitude? For it is fortitude of character, not lack of it that confounds and moves tragic spectators most. Who does not admire a Jesus, a Gandhi or our imaginary Quixote and Hamlet? Yes. Idealism. Only idealism can save us from this labyrinth. We need Icarus’ wings even if we have to perish. Where are our heroes? Those that will fulfill their duties in relation to the forces opposing a moral attitude of will?117 Do we have any categorical imperatives left at all? Only then, perhaps, we can become authentic beings in the world. We crave and yearn for that beauty of being, that innocence, that lost paradise, yet the west goes shopping, terrorists misinterpret scriptures and the third world is destitute and drug-ridden. What is our poem? We tread the path of humanism, of thousands of great and virtuous minds of genius whose labors, and dreams and ideals cannot be fully forgotten nor deconstructed. Indeed, we progress and digress, we create and destroy, but why do we dwell on earth? Is it just because of virtue? Of Merit? Not long ago, a German poet, in his despair, wrote these most enlightening of thoughts from whose spark an entire philosophy derived:
“Full of Merits is Man, but not because of them, but for Poetry he dwells on the earth.”
Holderlin
And on this earth, amidst our wolves and serpents, Minerva’s owl118 still dwells: wise, crepuscular owl, whose spanning wings glide amidst analytic, descriptive days and mythic, oniric nights, always soaring, as if a dove, to grasp empyrean light. Crepuscular owl,
116 Religious Tolerance website. “Every religion emphasizes human improvement, love, respect for others, sharing other people’s sufferings. On these lines, every religion had more or less the same view point and the same goal.” The Dalai Lama.
117 Kant. The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. The Doctrine of Virtue Trans. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge University Press, 1991. 223
118 Hegel says that philosophy is akin Minerva’s owl.
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