8 quotes
When even the dictators of today appeal to reason, they mean that they possess the most tanks. They were rational enough to build them; others should be rational enough to yield to them.
The End of Reason (1941)
With the abolition of otium and of the ego no aloof thinking is left. … Without otium philosophical thought is impossible, cannot be conceived or understood.
The End of Reason (1941)
The inversion of external compulsion into the compulsion of conscience … produces the machine-like assiduity and pliable allegiance required by the new rationality.
The End of Reason (1941)
Whoever desires to live among men has to obey their laws—this is what the secular morality of Western civilization comes down to. … Rationality in the form of such obedience swallows up everything, even the freedom to think.
The End of Reason (1941)
The new order contradicts reason so fundamentally that reason does not dare to doubt it. Even the consciousness of oppression fades. The more incommensurate become the concentration of power and the helplessness of the individual, the more difficult for him to penetrate the human origin of his misery.
The End of Reason (1941)
The world is so possessed by the power of what is and the efforts of adjustment to it, that the adolescent's rebellion, which once fought the father because his practices contradicted his own ideology, can no longer crop up. … Psychologically, the father is … replaced by the world of things.
The End of Reason (1941)
If this truth has once and for all been discarded and men have decided for integral adjustment, if reason has been purged of all morality regardless of cost, and has triumphed over all else, no one may remain outside and look on. The existence of one solitary "unreasonable" man elucidates the shame of the entire nation. His existence testifies to the relativity of the system of radical self-preservation that has been posited as absolute.
The End of Reason (1941)
Men have been released from [concentration] camps who have taken over the jargon of their jailers and with cold reason and mad consent (the price, as it were, of their survival) tell their story as if it could not have been otherwise than it was, contending that they have not been treated so badly after all.
The End of Reason (1941)