When Something Is Rightright In The Highest Senseit Must Not Be Demonstrable, It Must Be Debatable. We

When something is right—right in the highest sense—it must not be demonstrable, it must be debatable. We mortals must strive for it in configurations that are accessible but not absolutely attainable. This then leads to areas where imponderable rather than quantifiable concepts honor the master and produce the artistic urge. Here it is especially the service to, and with, the word that enthralls me—that subtlest of efforts that takes the word to the dividing line that separates it from the ineffable. This also contains a longing for the correct dimensions according to which the universe was created, and which the reader should see through the word as through a window.

Ernst Junger, A German officer in occupied Paris, 18 July 1943

The path to God in our age is inordinately long, as if man had lost his way in the endless expanses that are the product of his own ingenuity. Even the most modest advance is therefore a great achievement. God must be imagined anew. Given this condition, man is essentially capable only of negativity: He can purify the vessel that he embodies. That will suit him well, for new luster brings increased exhilaration. Yet even the greatest rule he can impose upon himself culminates in atheism, where no god dwells, a place more terrifying than if it had been abandoned by God. Then one day, years later, it may happen that God answers—it could be that He does so slowly, through the antennae of the spirit; or He may reveal Himself in a lightning bolt. We sent a signal to a heavenly body, and it turns out to be inhabited.

Ernst Junger, A German officer in occupied Paris, 7 May 1943

Henry Weston Keen (1899-1935) - Skull Crowned with Snakes and Flowers, 1930

illustration for John Webster's 'The Duchess of Malfi'

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Where motion is experienced time is unveiled. In such a mental action we can stop and dwell on something. We may recall the passage in De interpretatione: ΐστησι ή διάνοια, thinking stands still with something. The mind, too, has the character of a moving thing. Even when we are not experiencing something moving in the sense of some entity presently at hand, nevertheless motion taken in the broadest sense, hence time, is unveiled for us in experiencing our own self.

Martin Heidegger, Basic Problems

Sword of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, Archduke of Austria and Duke of Burgundy (1459-1519)

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