
Sec. 302
The Gay Science (1882)
The slyer virus: The West's anti-westernism (2002)
Sec. 302
The Gay Science (1882)
Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: The divergent scales of values scream in discordance, they dazzle and daze us, and in order that it might not be painful we steer clear of all other values, as though from insanity, as though from illusion, and we confidently judge the whole world according to our own home values. Which is why we take for the greater, more painful and less bearable disaster not that which is in fact greater, more painful and less bearable, but that which lies closest to us. Everything which is further away, which does not threaten this very day to invade our threshold — with all its groans, its stifled cries, its destroyed lives, even if it involves millions of victims — this we consider on the whole to be perfectly bearable and of tolerable proportions.
Le Commerce et le Gouvernement (1776), as quoted in Marx's Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 5.
“It is we who create value and our desires which confer value. In this realm we are kings”
1920s, What I Believe (1925)
Context: We are and irrefutable arbiters of value, and in the world of value Nature is only a part. Thus in this world we are greater than Nature. In the world of values, Nature in itself is neutral, neither good nor bad deserving of neither admiration nor censure. It is we who create value and our desires which confer value. In this realm we are kings, and we debase our kingship if we bow down to Nature. It is for us to determine our good life, not for Nature – not even for Nature personified as God.
[Léon Brillouin, Science and Information Theory, second edition, Academic Press, New York, 1962, 0-48643-918-6, 9]
Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter VII, On Foreign Trade, p. 93