Merold Westphal: Politics

Explore interesting quotes on politics.
Merold Westphal: 28 quotes0 likes

“In a revolutionary age talk of equality may well have represented a passion to provide full human dignity to those who had previously been denied it by systems of political and economic domination; but in the present age it softens the spiritual requirements that are an essential ingredient in human dignity. Thus the slogans of equality serve not so much to elevate individuals to the dignity of being human as to free them from the responsibility of rising to this vocation.”

Merold Westphal

Source: Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society (1992), p. 49

“It is precisely the acceptance of political, ethical, and religious heteronomy which leads Hegel to label Judeo-Christian culture a slave culture.”

Merold Westphal

Source: History and Truth in Hegel’s Phenomenology (1979), p. 34

“For the amoral herd that fears boredom above all else, everything becomes entertainment. Sex and sport, politics and the arts are transformed into entertainment. … Nothing is immune from the demand that boredom be relieved (but without personal involvement, for mass society is a spectator society).”

Merold Westphal

Source: Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society (1992), p. 50

“For the amoral herd that fears boredom above all else, everything becomes entertainment. Sex and sport, politics and the arts are transformed into entertainment… Nothing is immune from the demand that boredom be relieved.”

Merold Westphal

but without personal involvement, for mass society is a spectator society

p. 50
Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society (1992)