Justice can sleep for years and awaken when it is least expected. A miracle is nothing more than dormant justice from another time arriving to compensate those it has cruelly abandoned. Whoever knows this is willing to suffer, for he knows that nothing is in vain.
- Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale
- Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale
Apart from whatever value there may be in assertions such as ‘a categorical imperative exists within us’, we can still ask what such an assertion tells us about the person asserting it. There are moral codes that are meant to justify their author to other people; other codes are meant to soothe the author and allow him to be content with himself. Some arc intended to nail him to the cross and humiliate him, others to exact vengeance for him, or hide him, or transfigure him and set him above and beyond. One moral code serves its author to forget, another to make others forget him or forget something about him. One sort of moralist would like to exercise his power and creative whims upon mankind; a different sort, and perhaps Kant himself uses his moral code to announce: 'What is honourable about me is that I can obey-and it should be no different for you than for me!’ In short, moral codes too are only a sign-language of emotions.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886)