08 July 2009
grumpiness is the fifth truth condition
'Would anyone with their wits about them not be mistrustful, in these times in which each day is an ambush of the worst, of a tee-shirt plastered with the face of a rebel genius? Who does not see to what a slaughterhouse of concepts and real action we are led by the noisy parade for life and impatience, for plenitude and the fire of sun, and for youth, when what alone is needed to save thought is the idea and patience, the void and the cold Constellation, an ageless tenacity' - Alain Badiou, 'Rimbaud's Method', Conditions, p. 90.
Heine recalling his meeting with Hegel in Berlin. Heine, expressing his appreciation of the night-sky, was met with this response from Hegel:
'The stars, harrumph, the stars are only a gleaming leprosy on the sky.' - quoted in Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, p. 119.
