“The true sign of decadence is not the collusion of the university and the state (something that is by no means incompatible with honest barbarity), but the theory and guarantee of academic freedom, when in reality people assume with brutal simplicity that the aim of study is to steer its disciples to a socially conceived individuality.”

— Walter Benjamin

The Life of Students (1915)

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Walter Benjamin 70

German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892… 1892–1940

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Variant: Mayor aims of general theory:
(1) There is a general tendency toward integration in the various sciences, natural and social.
(2) Such integration seems to be centered in a general theory of systems.
(3) Such theory may be an important means for aiming at exact theory in the nonphysical fields of science.
(4) Developing unifying principles running "vertically" through the universe of the individual sciences, this theory brings us nearer the goal of the unity of science.
(5) This can lead to a much-needed integration in scientific education.
Source: 1950s, "General systems theory," 1956, p. 38, cited in: Alexander Laszlo and Stanley Krippner (1992) " Systems Theories: Their Origins, Foundations, and Development http://archive.syntonyquest.org/elcTree/resourcesPDFs/SystemsTheory.pdf" In: J.S. Jordan (Ed.), Systems Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1998. Ch. 3, pp. 47-74.

“Poetry, like life, states that the very self of a thing is its relations, its having-to-do-with other things. Whatever is in the world, whatever person, has meaning because it or he has to do with the whole universe: immeasurable and crowded reality. The technique of poetry aims for the intensification of a thing through showing the likeness of what is in that thing to something else--to everything else, as different.”

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“Admirers of the ‘purified’ Nietzsche have been hard put to unite his sanctioning of barbarity with an often subtle and rarefied cultural critique. But we can easily dispose of this dichotomy. In the first place, the union of ultra-refinement and brutality was by no means a personal quirk requiring psychological elucidation, but a universal, psychical-moral distinguishing mark of imperialist decadence.”

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“Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State; and it is for the individual in so far as he coincides with the State.... It is opposed to classical Liberalism.... Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual.”

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“For liberalism, the individual is the end and society the means… For fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends. The state, therefore, guards and protects the welfare and development of individuals not for their exclusive interest but because of the identity of the needs of individuals with those of society as a whole.”

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