Susan Sontag on balance

"The truth is balance. However the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie."

Off to speak in Minnesota and then Michigan. See you soon. In the mean time, I leave you to contemplate this:

There were two friends of the king, and both were proved guilty of a crime. Since he loved them the king wanted to show them mercy, but he could not acquit them because even a king's word cannot prevail over the law. So he gave this verdict: A rope was to be stretched over a deep chasm and, one after another, the two were to walk across it. Whoever reached to the other side was to be granted his life.

It was done as the king ordered, and the first of the friends got safely across. The other, still standing on the same spot, cried to him: "Tell me, friend, how did you manage to cross?" The first called back: "I don't know anything but this: whenever I felt myself toppling over to one side, I leaned to the other."

Moral: Life is paradoxical. It exists through opposites. The key is to feel your way through it.

Posted April 26, 2005
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Comments

felix gerena

Yes, your soul is always between opposites. It risks tearing by the force of every side. But the opposites exist because they are not integrated properly, they are not mediated. Schelling said that goodness and evil don´t exist one without the other and that the only way to avoid this opposition is reaching to a situation in which both are unnecessary, in which they are indifferent, you are not moved in a positive way nor in a negative way by it.

Posted by: felix gerena | April 26, 2005 at 05:53 PM

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