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Showing posts from August, 2022

The USA Cultural Empire

Opera Garnier, Paris, 2021

For the Sake of Humanity

I don’t contend that extraordinary people are always bound to commit breaches of morals. I simply hinted that an ‘extraordinary’ man has the right... that is not an official right, but an inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep... certain obstacles, and only in case it is essential for the practical fulfilment of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of benefit to the whole of humanity). I maintain that if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not have been made known except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred, or more men, Newton would have had the right, would indeed have been in duty-bound... to eliminate the dozen or the hundred men for the sake of making his discoveries known to the whole of humanity. But it does not follow from that that Newton had a right to murder people right and left and to steal every day in the market. [Raskolnikov] [Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866), Crime and Punishment]

Falagueira, Amadora