In the end it must be as it is and has always been: great things are for the great, abysses for the profound, shudders and delicacies for the refined and, in sum, all rare things for the rare…” Friedrich Nietzsche

This quote has stayed with me, for many years since I first read it. And it is applicable again today.
I am reading Alain Badiou’s Ethics. It is one of those books, that make me cry. Inside. Tremendously, as I feel the words connecting to what I call myself. It is incredible to read words that describe my own struggle with life so precisely and to the point, formally even, and put into syllables those things I have found exceptionally difficult to say. Without falling back into nihilism. Without closing an eye to the impossible. “Nothing dispenses with the need for courage.” (Verso, 2012, p.50)
Although there remain many things that I continue to be skeptical about. And some things Badiou has apparently not understood in the same way I do. But that makes it even more precious to continue reading this small, yet biblical book. After having struggled my way through ‘Being and Event’ and ‘Logics of Worlds‘, I can breathe his sentences and choice of words. It’s like take a lavender bath. It makes me cry.
And it also creates a longing in myself to find my own voice, to acknowledge myself and the courage I need, and take up my pen and stop quoting other people to give strength to my own arguments.
Let’s think the impossible.