The Final Battle
The Final Battle
This chapter presents one final twist, acute divergence, or digression that remains in the relation between Arendt and Weil's notions of heroism. This twist originates in one of Nietzsche's aphorisms: “The heroic consists in doing a great thing (or in not doing a thing in a great fashion) without feeling oneself to be in competition with others before others. The hero always bears the wilderness and the sacred, inviolable borderline within him wherever he may go” (Nietzsche, Human, 391–92). The image of the wilderness here—which Arendt's hero struggles to constrain—provides significant insight into Weil's notion of heroism.
Keywords: Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, heroism, Nietzsche, hero, philosophy
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