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The Highest Type Of Intelligence, Says Aristotle, Manifests Itself In An Ability To See Connections Where No One Has Seen Them Before, That Is, To Think Analogically.

-J. M. Coetzee

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The Highest Type Of

J. M. Coetzee

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The Highest Type Of Intelligence, Says Aristotle, Manifests Itself In An Ability To See Connections Where No One Has Seen Them Before, That Is, To Think Analogically.

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It’s Admirable, What You Do, What She Does, But To Me Animal-welfare People Are A Bit Like Christians Of A Certain Kind. Everyone Is So Cheerful And Well-intentioned That After A While You Itch To Go Off And Do Some Raping And Pillaging. Or To Kick A Cat.

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Moral Corruption

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He Even Knew The Reason Why: Because Enough Men Had Gone Off To War Saying The Time For Gardening Was When The War Was Over; Whereas There Must Be Men To Stay Behind And Keep Gardening Alive, Or At Least The Idea Of Gardening; Because Once That Cord Was Broken, The Earth Would Grow Hard And Forget Her Children. That Was Why.

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Once I Lived In Time As A Fish In Water, Breathing It, Drinking It, Sustained By It. Now I Kill Time And Time Kills Me.

Erasmus Dramatizes A Well-established Political Position: That Of The Fool Who Claims License To Criticize All And Sundry Without Reprisal, Since His Madness Defines Him As Not Fully A Person And Therefore Not A Political Being With Political Desires And Ambitions. The Praise Of Folly, Therefore Sketches The Possibility Of A Position For The Critic Of The Scene Of Political Rivalry, A Position Not Simply Impartial Between The Rivals But Also, By Self-definition, Off The Stage Of Rivalry Altogether.

Speaking The Words He Had Been Taught, Directing Them No Longer Upward But To The Earth On Which He Knelt, He Prayed: 'for What We Are About To Receive Make Us Truly Thankful.' ... He... Felt His Heart Suddenly Flow Over With Thankfulness... Like A Gush Of Warm Water... All That Remains Is To Live Here Quietly For The Rest Of My Life, Eating Food That My Own Labour Has Made The Earth To Yield. All That Remains Is To Be A Tender Of The Soil.

Was It Serious? I Don't Know. It Certainly Had Serious Consequences.

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As For September 11, Let Us Not Too Easily Grant The Americans Possession Of That Date On The Calendar. Like May 1 Or July 14 Or December 25, September 11 May Seem Full Of Significance To Some People, While To Other People It Is Just Another Day.

It Is A World Of Words That Creates A World Of Things.

My Response, A Dubious And Hesitant One, Is That It Has Been And May Continue To Be, In The Time That Is Left To Me, More Productive To Live Out The Question Than To Try To Answer It In Abstract Terms.

The Barbarians Come Out At Night.

In Its Conception The Literature Prize Belongs To Days When A Writer Could Still Be Thought Of As, By Virtue Of His Or Her Occupation, A Sage, Someone With No Institutional Affiliations Who Could Offer An Authoritative Word On Our Times As Well As On Our Moral Life.

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