Truth and knowledge

28 Jan, 2018 at 11:50 | Posted in Varia | 1 Comment

The relation of knowledge to power is one not only of servility but of truth. Much knowledge, if out of pro­portion to the disposition of forces, is invalid, however formally correct it may be.If an émigré doctor says: ‘For me … is a patological case’, his pronouncement may ultimately be con­firmed by clinical findings, but its incongruity with the objective calamity visited on the world in the name of that paranoiac renders the diagnosis ridiculous, mere professional preening. Perhaps … is ‘in-himself’ a pathological case, but certainly not ‘for-him’. The vanity and poverty of many of the declarations against … by émigrés is connected with this. People thinking in the forms of free, detached, disinterested appraisal were unable to accommodate with­ in those forms the experience of violence which in reality annuls such thinking. The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.