To believe that will has power over potentiality, that the passage to actuality is the result of a decision that puts an end to the ambiguity of potentiality (which is always potentiality to do and not to do) β this is the perpetual illusion of morality.
Interpretation
This quote explores the illusion that human will can decisively transform potential choices into reality, emphasizing the inherent ambiguity of potentiality.
Giorgio Agamben's quote delves into the complex relationship between will and potentiality, suggesting that our belief in the power of will to transform potential outcomes into actual decisions is a mirage. He points out that potentiality inherently involves uncertainty and the possibility of action or inaction, and he critiques the moral implications of assuming that will can simply overcome this ambiguity to create definitive realities.
In practice
In a philosophy class discussing the nature of reality and choice.
Modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system
Remembrance restores possibility to the past, making what happened incomplete and completing what never was. Remembrance is neither what happened nor what did not happen but, rather, their potentialization, their becoming possible once again.
One day humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for good.
Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.
Lies 1: There is only the present and nothing to remember. Lies 2: Time is a straight line. Lies 3: The difference between the past and the futures is that one has happened while the other has not. Lies 4: We can only be in one place at a time. Lies 5: Any proposition that contains the word 'finite' (the world, the universe, experience, ourselves...) Lies 6: Reality as something which can be agreed upon. Lies 7: Reality is truth.
A man can smile and smile and be a villain.
It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.
Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.
Every right is married to a duty, every freedom owes a corresponding responsibility.
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