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Best book ever

Rebellion can be observed here in its pure state and its original complexities

REBELLION AND ART

Art is the activity that exalts and denies simultaneously. "No artist tolerates reality" says Nietzsche.

Pisarev, the greatest theoretician of Russian nihilism, declares that the greatest fanatics are children and adolescents.

HISTORICAL REBELLION

Freedom that terrible word inscribed on the chariot of the storm*, is the motivating principle of all revolutions. Without it, justice seems inconceivable to the rebel's mind.

*Philotée O'Neddy

...Blake observes "when he [Milton] spoke of demons and of hell, is that he was a real poet and on the side of the demons, without knowing it"

The Dundies Rebellion

Romanticism, Lucifer-like in its rebellion, is really useful for adventures of the imagination

the struggle between Satan and death in Paradise Lost, the favorite poem of the Romantics, symbolizes this drama...death (with,...sin) is the child of Satan

Sade was executed in effigy; he, too, only killed in his imagination. Prometheus ends in Onam. Sade is still a prisoner when he dies, but this time in a lunatic asylum...

Sade's republic is not founded on liberty but on libertinism

In Sade's fortress republic, there are only machines and mechanics

ABSOLUTE NEGATION

Historically speaking the first coherent offensive is that of Sade

his negation is also, of course, the most extreme

the only logic known to Sade was the logic of his feelings

Nietzsche believed God is dead in the souls of his contemporaries

Until Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, rebellion is directed only to a cruel and capricious divinity -a divinity who prefers, without any convincing motive, Abel's sacrifice to Cain's and, by so doing, provokes the first murder.

This is the explanation of the Lama Sabactani and the heart rending doubt of Christ in agony
For God to be man he must despair

From this point of view, the New Testament can be considered as an attempt to answer, in advance, every Cain of the world, by painting God in softer colors and by creating an intercessor between God and man

In Cain the first act of rebellion coincides with the first crime

This new language is incomprehensible without the concept of a personal god, which is slowly beginning to form in the minds of Lucretius and Epicurus contemporaries

"I have escaped your ambush O destiny, I have closed all paths by which you might assail me"
Epicurus

Like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, Epicurus banishes death from the human existence

"We spend our lives", writes Epicurus, "in waiting, and we are all condemned to die". Therefore we must enjoy ourselves.

Antigone rebels but she does so in the name of tradition (...) in her case, rebellion is, in one sense, reactionary

It cannot be said, therefore, that the ancients were unaware of metaphysical rebellion

condemned forever because he refuses to ask forgiveness

The sons of Cain



The first mythologies describe Prometheus as an eternal martyr.

Part One, The Rebel

What is a rebel?
[one who says "no" yet not renouncing; it's like the slave who reaches the point saying "enough!"; there's this feeling that one is right]