>From Steiner, G., _Errata_ (London: Phoenix, 1998), p. 135.
"In the course of teaching a revision class on Kant, Donald (MacKinnon) came
across a news item. The commanding officer of the French parachute regiments
in Algeria had ordered his men to torture him, with the identical means and
obscenities inflicted on their Algerian prisoners. Having undergone this
exercise, General Massu announced that the pain was bearable, that the
hideous reports published about torture were weak-kneed exaggerations. 'We
will now put Immanuel Kant aside,' said Donald as he entered the class. To
him, this news-story embodied the fact of absolute, transcendent evil. It
put in question not only Kant's providentialism but the capacity of human
reason to cope with extremities of human conduct. To continue with academic
exegesis after reading such matter was inadmissible; or rather, admissible
solely if an authentic relation could be shown between the monstrous in
Massu and Kant's ethics."
> Saint-Ford in "Juliette" (De Sade)arranges for a gang of men to assail him
> with whips.
> The libertine is not afraid of being treated in the way he treats the
> others [note however that he has some choice in the matter, that he is not
the involuntary object of another libertine's "sins" but rather the willing
master of his own abjection]. De Sade says "he rejoices in his
> inner heart that he has gone for enough to deserve such treatment"...
> In other words, this is the libertine's expiation for his sins against the
> others.
> Doesn't this "succeeds in embracing a whole conception of man, culture and
> nature and discovery
> of new forms of expression"?
One might compare the propensity of rogue gunmen to turn their firearms on
themselves when they have finished randomly "executing" others. Some
expiation. What this act really accomplishes is to forestall the possibility
of a justice or retribution that might come from the other: the (surviving)
victims often complain that gunman's suicide has "cheated" them of their
chance of revenge...
- Dom
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