In late September 2025, at Charlie Kirk's ceremony in Arizona, the widow of the deceased forgave his killer, but Trump no longer. Trump called Kirk “a noble spirit, a missionary with a large sense of mission”, after which added“ He did not hatred his opponents. He wanted what was best for them. This is where Charlie and I disagreed. I hatred my opponents. And I don’t want what's best for them.”
This apparent contradiction is simply a key feature of Trump's universe. Trump himself, of course, is not a “noble spirit”: he hates his opponents, considers them to be the garbage that should be annihilated. However, this brutal hatred must be justified someway – and that is why Trump needs individual like Kirk, presented as a man with a dove of heart, who even wishes his enemies the best. For the same reason, Christians request a good Christ, whose death justifies the brutal persecution of non - Christians. Kirk must so be raised to a martyr with almost divine qualities: this elevation is only the another side of Trump's brutality medal.
The standard logic of hypocrites is: we attack a given country to aid victims of oppressive regime. In the 1930s, even Japan claimed that by occupying most of China, their population was civilized. Chinese, like wayward children, had to be disciplined for their own good. Bernard-Henry Lévy attempted to follow the same lead, reasoning of the mediate East war: Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank what it is doing to aid Palestinians to liberate them from the yoke of Muslim fundamentalists who oppress them.
In the case of Trump and Israel, the masks have already fallen. present it is said openly that the enemy should be destroyed, and here again a Kirk-like individual is needed. Trump does not set fresh paths here – on front pageCountries Plato beautifully illustrates how Trump populists (there Polemarch plays their role) treat their opponents (in this function Socrates, a narrator):
“And Polemarch says, “Socrates, I think you are on your way to the city; you want to return. You've got a good idea, I said. – And you see – says – how many of us are there? How could I not? – Well, then you must – he says – either defeat those here, or you will stay put. – Well – I say – 1 more anticipation remains; possibly we can convince you that we request to let us go home. Can't you convince those who don't listen? “No measure,” says Glaukon. “So that we will not listen, be sure.”
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The attitude of refusing to perceive to the enemy erstwhile we are stronger of him, we encounter one more time in the arena of large politics and even in philosophy. 1 of the standard charges against Hegel is that the concept of dialectic movement assumes a tendency to proceed reasoning to the end, in order to extract any consequences of a given thought or attitude. Let's say that I am an ascetic – reasoning about it will lead me to conclude that asceticism is an egotistic attitude, due to the fact that it means a complete focus on myself, a desperate effort to erase all remnants of pleasance and joy.
Hegel, however, knows this: at the very beginning of his Science of logic, where it analyses the logical order of pure categories of reasoning without any empirical assumptions, notes that Learning logic However, it is based on (supported in time) an act of will, a conscious decision inactive being made to reason. Ascetica can simply say – well, I'm truly egotic, but I don't care, I won't think what my ascetica means – I'll just accept that's what I am.”
Refusing to perceive and/or to think is not only a decision of large fundamental importance, but besides happens continuously in our lives. Those who unconditionally support Israel simply do not take into account all the apparent evidence that we are dealing with genocide here – they reject them in advance as anti-Semitic lies.
What happens to me and decision me is – erstwhile I late put forward arguments to argue that we are facing a crisis of the environment, in consequence I heard another variation about "we will not listen, be sure." This was briefly justified by the fact that the fight against global warming is simply a run based on dark schemes (i.e. the quest to destruct the rich West).
In the same taste said Trump at the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2025 erstwhile he stated that climate change was “the top scam the planet has seen.” This attitude is based on precisely the same imagination and concept of justice that in Country Several pages later express Trazymes: “I say that what is right is nothing but what is in the interests of the stronger.” The Trazymes further prove that:
‘each government establishes laws for its own interests. Democracy establishes democratic rights, dictatorship – dictatorial, and another governments do the same. And if Business, the Force will establish them, then they declare to the rulers that it is just to the rulers, which is in the interests of the rulers, and whoever breaks these laws, they punish it for it as though the law breaks and is unjust. So this is, good soul, what I mean; that in all country justice is 1 and the same: the interests of the established government. The government has strength. So, whoever checks well, it turns out that justice everywhere is 1 and the same: the interests of the stronger.”
Isn't that Trumpism in its purest form? The justice he imposes on the weak is the arbitrary justice of the stronger. If Brazil sentences Trump's friend Bolsonaro to prisonTrump raises customs by 30%. The United Kingdom, since Starmer prostrates before Trump, is treated better than another European countries.
Trump does everything to make his opponents hurt – even without pretending that the suffering he causes them is good for them. However, it is not adequate to reverse this attitude and do what can be expected to benefit everyone. This is where logic gets complicated. Let us callback how brutally Walter Benjamin rejected Goethe's guiding thought that it is crucial to guarantee that everything in life has consequences. It's hard. comments:
"This is no uncertainty 1 of Goethe's most vile maxims, which no 1 would have expected. It's the imperative of advancement in his darkest form. It is not that the consequences are the fruits of appropriate action, or even that the consequences themselves are already that fruit. On the contrary, the fruit born is simply a sign of bad action. Good people's actions do not give emergence to “consequences” that could be attributed to them (or only to them). The action produces nothing little than what it has in it. The insight into what a certain kind of action has in it is simply a way of proving what will result. ”
For this position, there is an apparent counterargument: what about combating global warming, atomic war, or AI dominance? Aren't consequences all that matters now? Benjamin's argument seems to repeat the old discrimination between poiesis a praxis: “poiesis” is an action to make something that will proceed to be erstwhile the action ends(works of art, table, whatever), while “praxis” is an action that is simply a goal for itself (like artistic performance).
However, it can besides be said that actions with an external nonsubjective besides have any value in themselves. Imagine a large collective effort to make something that will reduce harm to the environment - even if it fails, the action itself is the realization of a certain form of social solidarity, and thus has immanent affirmative value. The heel of evil bears an exclusionary orientation to an external goal (bad or good) in which 1 does not take into account “what a peculiar kind of action has in itself”.
Jean-Claude Milner has shown me that for non-European countries war is simply a average state of affairs, that it is always lurking somewhere in the background, that peacetime is just the occasional gaps between armed conflicts, while the Christian West considers peace to be a large culmination of historical progress, a final state to which we all aspire. seemingly it was in Nazi Germany, which all the time referred to ewiger Frieden, eternal peace that will come after the final victory. This imagination of future lasting peace was the justification (and even required) for a complete mobilization for the last war that would end all wars.
Today the same madness is spreading throughout the world. Trump brought peace, giving full support to Israel and bombing Iran; Netanjahu seeks to bring peace to the mediate East, escalating the war against the Palestinians and committing genocide. Of course, that is right – erstwhile Israel has killed all Palestinians, peace will indeed come. So there is besides a logic in this madness that had respective states nominate Trump and Netanyahu for the Nobel Peace Prize.
There are 3 conclusions to be drawn. Firstly, learning how to live in a threat of war may be the only way to bring peace. Secondly, let us beware of the “noble spirit” whose function is to justify brutality. Thirdly, in a truly emancipated society, people do not take action with good consequences – they take action with no consequences.
** From English she translated Catherine the Formers. Fragments Countries Plato translated by Władysław Witwiski (a part in the public domain as part of the Free Lessons project).
