Opinions, opinions
Opinions, Arendt very persuasively argues, obstruct true thought; true thought banishes opinions.
It is in [the nature of thought] to undo, unfreeze as it were, what language, the medium of thinking, has frozen into thought—words (concepts, sentences, definitions, doctrines), whose “weakness” and inflexibility Plato denounces so splendidly. . . . The consequence of this peculiarity is that thinking inevitably has a destructive, undermining effect on all established criteria, values, measurements for good and evil, in short on those customs and rules of conduct we treat of in morals and ethics.
[…] It was the simple inability of men like Adolf Eichmann to think, she posited, that turned them into killers and destroyers. Instead of thoughts they had opinions, customs, “morality” imposed by society. Their society did not encourage its citizens to think (and perhaps no society ever does).
Brooke Allen, The Banality of Eros
[x]#767 fan zondag 12 september 2004 @ 20:07:02
