“At the beginning, then, globalization was a Communist idea. Today, it finally seems to be coming to fruition by means of liberalism. Put another way, history’s real irony is that globalization is being realized by the opponents of those who initially proposed it.”

“Death, however, is the fundamental question of existence, primarily since existence is only meaningful because of its precariousness. If we take away the certitude of its ending, it loses its essential structure. Even our greatest joys, which we recognize as being moments of eternity, draw their grandeur from their comparison with the precariousness of everything. There is another reason that death is the fundamental question of existence: it is that man’s existence is always more limited than his thoughts, which very naturally strain against their limits, as they forever look beyond for an invisible horizon.”

“Every positive law is rooted in a culture. Therefore, in order to have a world law there must be a world culture. And there is no such thing.”

“Every truly moral development requires such a passing through experiences, regrets, and sorrows. Only after a long voyage can the conscience recognize evil as such.”

“Human existence remains an enigma. The thinking species is destined to tragedy, in the sense that the questions it eternally poses never find a definitive answer. What is the answer to questions like: Why death? Why evil and conflict? What is justice? The deepest meaning of culture is to propose partial, provisional, or temporary answers to these queries. Man is the animal that interrogates his existence. The diversity of cultures characterizes humanity because humanity poses to itself questions that in their nature are finally unanswerable. Human existence, in other words, is an enigma, not a simple aporia, a ‘pathless’ condition. Human existence is not an impasse; rather, it opens up multiple ways to respond to these eternal questions. This is what creates those fissures, so hard to accept, between humans who are simultaneously alike in their common ‘tragic’ condition and different in the paths they tread as a consequence of such questioning. Only someone who had definitively resolved the enigma of human existence would have the right to unify and homogenize cultures. But this uncontested superman does not exist, even if during the past two centuries several have tried to personify him.”

“Individually, moral life consists in developing human relations between different personalities who are respected in their differences. Collectively, the search for unity passes not through the abolition of cultural differences but by their constant maintenance or sustenance. To become civilized is nothing other than to learn to genuinely recognize the other.”

“Opinions on the right of intervention naturally evolve with the times, espousing the dominant values of the period. Speaking generally, the opposite of what each period finds most important will not be tolerated. When religion dominated, it justified wars, as Montesquieu observed: ‘Religion gives to those who profess it a right to enslave those who do not, in order to more easily propagate it.’ Today, one can say the same thing of the morality of human rights, while religion is compelled to be tolerant because it has assumed a lesser importance.”

“Our contemporaries no longer seek a ‘socially homogeneous universal state,’ as Alexandre Kojève put it at the time of communism, but rather a morally homogenous universal state. It is natural that rather vague ambient idea of a world government should be put at the service of the dominant values of our times.”

“Some will respond: Do we therefore have to relativize everything, since we cannot draw a line between the absolute and the relative? Do we have to become accomplices to crimes because we do not want to become inquisitors? No. There is a way out of this impasse. Because an absolute norm cannot be precisely defined, one should refrain from institutionalizing it. Not to tolerate certain crimes ought to be a decision, not a matter of obedience to positive law. If in matters of such gravity the borders are indistinct, it belongs to conscience and not the law to mark them out. This, at least, is the position I want to defend.”

“The absolute certitude with which we assign good and evil indicates just how much a true pluralism of judgements and attitudes, a sense of nuance, a civilized hesitation before the difficult judgements of moral practice, are deserting us.”

“The conservatives who fear developments that they believe will ignore indelible aspects of the human condition would gain by attending to history and geography before they claim to know what mankind is, for the forms that the human enterprise has taken are sometimes more varied than they might think. But the followers of progress would do well to learn their own history and geography before legitimizing and legalizing any social development, for the forms of human existence are more coherent than they think, and they risk reestablishing archetypes that contradict their own points of reference.”

“The dream of a messianic reign lingers on in our thoughts and partially shapes them. The end of messianism will come only when we have abandoned our impatience: salvation remains always incomplete. Impatience for the reign of the Good can be seen in the machinations of the Inquisition, in both the red and brown totalitarianisms, but also in the invention of the International Criminal Court, that global righter of wrongs which has taken upon itself to purge the earth of its monsters. We will rebuild a common world only by avoiding this kind of impatience. We can struggle against evil, but we cannot pose as supreme righters of wrongs, searching out evil wherever it may be found and then eradicating it.”

“The lesson of the twentieth century is the following: we have limits that we do not choose, and which it would be in our interest to accept rather than suppress, given the damage attempts at suppression have caused.”

“The soul is the part of us that recognizes the enigmas of existence, without actually knowing them. It recognizes that these enigmas convey meaning, but does not know what that meaning is. It is the part of us that accepts the awkward presence of unanswerable questions. In other words, it represents the conscious limit of the mind, the eye that remains open to the void.”

“The subject is he who opens his eyes to human weakness and organizes society in a way that responds to this reality. Instead of unconsciously assimilating his heritage like man in olden societies, and instead of rejecting his heritage like the contemporary individual, he recognizes that he is an heir. Instead of remaining submerged in his world like man in olden societies, and instead of rejecting his world like the contemporary individual, he engages himself in this world. Engagement and the recognition of one’s heritage are expressions of accepted finiteness even within the quest for freedom.”

“To pursue a life-work is to create order amidst the overall disorder of the world. It is a flower in the tumult, meaning in the midst of meaninglessness. Even if the work does not express anything great, it mysteriously bears witness to what man is. It is a sign of the depth of humanity and as such establishes a sure link with symbolic immortality. Through it, man defines himself as a being who can escape the chaos of contingency to dominate the passing of time, a being who resists the absurd by trying to shape scattered bits and pieces into a meaningful whole. In other words, he is a being who challenges the necessity of death, both hopelessly and with confidence. Since one day he must shuffle off the stage, he hopes to leave behind a sign of his presence, a minute yet significant trace: an existence with a name. The life-work is a reflection of its author and remains after him, as if the image lingered in the mirror after the person himself had left.”

“Today, we are to believe that the love of humanity is normal (in both senses of the term), while the love of the particular is ignoble. But both are human. Love of the particular is natural, and the natural cannot be denigrated: it exists, and it belongs to life.”

“What characterizes man is not any unity which is finally, perfectly, achieved, but the activity and effort undertaken in view of unity, the action by which he progresses toward communion without ever completely realizing it.”

“When the Everlasting asked King Solomon what he wished to receive as a reward for his good behavior, Solomon replied, discernment. In granting Solomon discernment, God did not actually give him anything, for Solomon’s very request demonstrated that he possessed it already. Solomon thereby revealed that he has perceived the core of human weakness: we must judge here on earth, yet only God can judge, and God is not on earth—a terrible paradox.”