A Philosophical Postscript on the Paris Attacks

Diesel the police dog who displayed many of 

the virtues associated with nobility of soul

In the wake of the Paris attacks, political leaders in France and elsewhere wrapped themselves in the tricolore and affirmed a predictable set of values, including Egalité, a revolutionary concept which, as Nietzsche points out, has penetrated deeply into the tissue of modernity, providing the prototype for all our moral theories regarding the universality of so-called human rights.

What these politicians cannot see is that, in practice, this false and fatal idea of equality of all souls has allowed the base and resentment-ridden to challenge every order of rank and thereby effectively undermine the very notion of society. It has thus provided our enemies - including the Islamists - with an explosive weapon against which we have no defense.

But then our Christian idealism has of course rendered the very notion of enmity impossible; we are encouraged to not only regard those who hate us and wish to do us harm as brothers and as equals in the sight of God, but love them and forgive them for their crimes committed against us.

Thus, when asked about those killed in Paris, one commentator and cryptotheologian shamefully masquerading as a philosopher, said we should mourn all those who had died - presumably this includes the bombers and gunmen - as the loss of any life is a tragedy and that no one life is of a greater value than any other.

Thankfully, no one in their right mind really believes this. Indeed, sane people everywhere were more upset by the death of Diesel the police dog than of Abdelhamid Abaaoud and his accomplices in mass murder. What’s more, they recognise something that Christopher Hitchens repeatedly pointed out; namely, that it is not only perverse (and suicidal) to love such people, but ultimately immoral inasmuch as it implies an unwillingness to actively confront and engage with the evil they embody and make manifest.

In sum:

Firstly, there is no equality between souls; not because, as D. H. Lawrence argues, each soul is uniquely different and thus incomparable, but, on the contrary, because each soul is perfectly comparable within an ethical context and some lives clearly lack beauty, lack integrity and lack style in comparison to others.

Secondly, it is our duty - as citizens and as men and women who are interested in the care of the self - to combat and destroy the enemies of civilization and of parrhesia.