Erich Fromm: Love is an art form.
Theodor Adorno: Fidelity to love is the only means we have to resistance. Walter Benjamin: We must love without hope. Hannah Arendt: Why is it so hard to love the world? W.H. Auden: We must love one another or die."...how vulnerable is the whole texture of facts in which we spend our daily life; it is always in danger of being perforated by single lies or torn to shreds by the organized lying of groups, nations, or classes..."
Hannah Arendt
"Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever..."
— Hannah Arendt
(All of the above from scholar Samantha Rose Hill via her Twitter feed: @Samantharhill)
Honor mattered because character mattered. And character mattered because the fate of the American experiment with republican government still required virtuous leaders to survive. Eventually, the United States might develop into a nation of laws and established institutions capable of surviving corrupt or incompetent public officials. But it was not there yet. It still required honorable and virtuous leaders to endure. Both Burr and Hamilton came to the interview because they wished to be regarded as part of such company.
“For there was no doubt in Bundy’s mind about his ability to handle... the world. The job was not just a happenstance thing; he had, literally and figuratively, been bred for it, or failing this, Secretary of State. He was the brightest light in that glittering constellation around the President, for if those years had any central theme, if there was anything that bound the men, their followers and their subordinates together, it was the belief that sheer intelligence and rationality could answer and solve anything.”
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