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) — 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.
WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY - I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.
Since trifles make the sum of human things, And half our misery from our foibles springs.
The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.
'Melancholy' is prettier than 'depression'; it connotes a kind of nocturnal grace. Makes one feel more innocently beleaguered.
Surely the glory of journalism is its transience.
Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression, and by aggression.
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