"Fear and laziness, which Benjamin Constant recognises as his essence, are still possible sources of philosophical knowledge, whereas mere fear of physical pain seems to me a question without a horizon, as does all so-called materialist-sensuous metaphysics. A passage from Constant's Red Notebook is very interesting: "I am so lazy and so curious... I remain wherever fate throws me until I make a connection that places me in a completely different realm." I see that liberal theories, however interesting they may be, such as those of Hobbes or Constant, are not the work of purely liberal people. Fear, as Hobbes says, is its essence (he was born in 1588, when the Spanish Armada was approaching England, where there was terrible panic; in his autobiography he tells us that his mother then gave birth to twins, he and fear — or anxiety? — metus geminos paruit, meque metumque simul)"
~ Schmitt on pain, Letter to Jünger, 1934
May 5, 2025 1K 11
