I Am Not A Conservative — Neo

The Old View Was That Delicacy Of Language Was Part Of The Nature, The Sacred Nature, Of Eros And That To Speak About It In Any Other Way Would Be To Misunderstand It. What Has Disappeared Is The Risk And The Hope Of Human Connectedness Embedded In Eros. Ours Is A Language That Reduces The Longing For An Other To The Need For Individual, Private Satisfaction And Safety.

The Utilitarian Behaves Sensibly In All That Is Required For Preservation But Never Takes Account Of The Fact That He Must Die... His Whole Life Is Absorbed In Avoiding Death, Which Is Inevitable, And Therefore He Might Be Thought To Be The Most Irrational Of Men, If Rationality Has Anything To Do With Understanding Ends Or Comprehending The Human Situation As Such.

The First Discipline Modernity's Originators Imposed Upon Themselves Was That Of Self-restraint, Learning To Live With Vulgarity. Their High Expectations For Effectiveness Were Made Possible By Low Expectations Of What Was To Be.

Historicism And Cultural Relativism Actually Are A Means To Avoid Testing Our Own Prejudices And Asking, For Example, Whether Men Are Really Equal Or Whether That Opinion Is Merely A Democratic Prejudice.

We Need History, Not To Tell Us What Happened Or To Explain The Past, But To Make The Past Alive So That It Can Explain Us And Make A Future Possible.