Autor: Walsh, David

Buch: The Third Millenium

Titel: The Third Millenium

Stichwort: Gerechtigkeit als Realität

Kurzinhalt: The classic philosophers discovered that justice is not simply an aspiration. At its deepest level, it is a reality that is constitutive of human existence

Textausschnitt: 123a The classic philosophers discovered that justice is not simply an aspiration. At its deepest level, it is a reality that is constitutive of human existence. The pull toward the transcendent Good was not realized through abstract reflection, but through the existential struggle to live in accordance with its reality. The growth of the soul is itself a distinctly expanded reality of the human condition. Aristotle coined the verb athanatizein (immortalize) to convey a sense of the enlargement of reality it entailed. Striking too is the extent to which Nietzsche recognizes his own forlorn dedication to truth as deriving from the same source. It is with some discomfort that he acknowledges that his own critique of truth is derived from the same altar at which Plato worshipped. Nietzsche was not only the most pious of the godless, but the most self-perceptive. Even the nihilistic will to transcend all values drew its strength from the love of transcendent Being. How else can we identify the will to go beyond all limits? The modern impulse, whether exemplified by Nietzsche's unresolved honesty or the truncated objectivity of science and rights, is rooted not so much in a turn away from transcendent Being as in its inconclusive realization. A tragic incapacity to recognize the source of its own deepest inspiration is the defining feature of our world. (Fs)