willtotruth

Monday, August 14, 2006

Norman Finkelstein’s Will to Truth

Norman Finkelstein should be critically read and thoughtfully considered. For me, Finkelstein embodies Nietzsche’s question about a will to truth.

For example:


… the strength of a spirit should be measured according to how much of the “truth” one could still barely endure - or to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified.

Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil, 39



Since Alan Dershowitz has been shown by Finkelstein to be an academic fraud, constructing arguments and points of view without balance or, for that matter, without evidence or reason, I take Dershowitz to embody the direct opposite of a strong spirit like Finkelstein. Remember, however, that it is not just Dershowitz who “requires” truth to be shrouded, falsified and so on. It is also his readers, who so complacently accept his writing, finding in it all they need to quench their lack of spirit for getting at the truth of matters.

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