The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

 
God's comic, again and again

[A]ssuming that the gods also philosophize -- something which many conclusions have already driven me to -- I don't doubt that in the process they know how to laugh in a superhuman and new way -- and at the expense of all serious things!

Gods delight in making fun: even where sacred actions are concerned, it seems they cannot stop laughing.

§ 294, Beyond Good and Evil

So many people who demand respect really mean to say: power.

When a religion has achieved even the most trivial degree of power, even the tiniest bit of social influence, it has forfeited all right to deference. Ever since Pascal, we have known that it is the fate of every religious man to endure others' laughter --

    and if he is utterly incapable of this, it is the duty of the state not to protect the religious man from laughter but rather to protect the one who laughs from the religious man's rage.

Daniel Kehlmann, from a new "Politics and Fiction"-themed print quasi-symposium

Laughter I declare sacred: you higher men, for my sake learn to laugh!

§ 7, "An Attempt at Self-Criticism," in Birth of Tragedy

Is the above probably lame attempt at slight reframing/bookending pretty much merely a flimsy excuse to excerpt here, for our future wondering-about, what we found to be the most knockout passage (among numerous contenders) in the current BookForum?

The answer is laughably obvious.

posted by TiR at 7:01 AM