Today, let's have a bit of fun with a contest. The quote--only one--will be a bit longer today, but juicy, I assure you. And about this quote, I pose three questions:
- About whom is this quote made? Where the subject's name was mention in the text, I have substituted 'X.' So, in other words, "who is X?"
- In addition to guessing whom X is, whom else might X be than your guess (or knowing answer)? Suggest one or more persons besides your best guess (or knowing answer) about who also might fit the criteria for X. (The quote is not by X but it's about X.) Extra credit for justifying your answers!
- Who wrote this about X?
N.B. I have also provided alternative verb tenses to veil whether X is a contemporary or a historical figure. I am conceding, however, by keeping certain pronouns, that X is male.
You can--if you wish--post your answers in the comments below or on the Facebook post of this blog. No cheating by using Google!
Your prize? Accolades from me. A shout-out? Whatever, it's for fun--and edification. I will reveal the identity of X and the author of the piece quoted tomorrow in a post to follow this one. As to alternative identities of X, there is no single "right" answer (the piece was written about a single individual), but some answers will prove more imaginative and appropriately provocative and will be so judged.
The quote:
The problem of X’s charisma is relatively easy to solve. It is/was to a great extent identical with what [an observer] calls the “fanatical faith this man has/had in himself,” and it rests/rested on the well-known experiential fact that X must have realized early in his life, namely, that modern society in its desperate inability to form judgments will take every individual for what he considers himself and professes himself to be and will judge him on that basis. Extraordinary self-confidence and displays of self-confidence therefore inspire confidence in others; pretensions to genius waken the conviction in others that they are indeed dealing with a genius. This is merely the perversion of an old and justified rule of all good society according to which everyone has to be capable of showing what he is and of presenting himself in the proper light. The perversion occurs when the social role becomes, as it were, arbitrary, when it is completely separated from the actual human substance, indeed, when a role consistently played is unquestioningly accepted as the substance itself. In such an atmosphere any kind of fraud becomes possible because there appears to be no one at all left for whom the difference between fraud and authenticity matters in the least. People therefore fall prey to judgments apodictically expressed because the apodictic tone frees them from the chaos of an infinite number of totally arbitrary judgments. The crucial point is that not only is the apodictic quality of tone more convincing than the content of the judgment but also the content of the judgment, the object judged, becomes irrelevant. . . . . To assess correctly this phenomenon of charisma in X’s case we have to remind ourselves that in present-day society it is not really all that difficult to create an aura about oneself that will fool everyone—or just about everyone—who comes under its influence. In this respect X behaved no differently than have many less talented charlatans. It goes without saying that under these conditions the rule of a good upbringing that says one must not blow one’s own horn has to be ruthlessly put aside. The more that the vulgar practice of unbridled self-praise spreads in a society which for the most part still adheres to the rules of good upbringing, the more powerful its effect will be and the more easily that society can be convinced that only a truly “great man” who cannot be judged by normal standards could summon the courage to break rules as sacrosanct as those of good breeding. In other words, X holds/held a far greater fascination for generals and other members of good society than he did for the “old fighters” who, like him, came from the mob strata of society.
In the prevailing chaos that inability to form judgments created, however, X’s superiority went/goes considerably beyond the fascination, the mere “charisma,” that any charlatan can emanate. The awareness of the social possibilities that the modern inability to judge offered, and the ability to exploit them, are/were supported by the vastly more telling insight that in the modern world’s chaos of opinion the normal mortal is yanked about from one opinion to another without the slightest understanding of what distinguishes the one from the other. X knew from his own most personal experience what the maelstrom was like into which modern man is drawn and in which he changes his political or other “philosophy” from day to day on the basis of whatever options are offered him as he whirls helplessly about. He is himself that . . . [news-follower] of whom he says that “in a city [in which] twelve [news sources] each report the same event differently … he will finally come to the conclusion that it is all nonsense.” What distinguished X from this . . . [news-follower] and his desperation was/is simply that he had discovered one fine day that if you really hang onto any one of the current opinions and develop it with (as he was fond of saying) “ice-cold” consistency, then everything would somehow fall back into place again. X’s real superiority consists/consisted in the fact that under any and all circumstances he had an opinion and that his opinion always fit perfectly into his over-all “philosophy.” In this social context (and only in this context) superiority is indeed increased by fanaticism because obvious and demonstrable errors can no longer undermine it. What immediately reasserts itself after any demonstrated error is the fact that one not only has an opinion but also embraces that opinion and is therefore capable of judgment. And in politics, where one constantly has to act and therefore constantly has to make judgments, it is indeed altogether correct in a practical sense and more advantageous to reach any judgment and to pursue any course of action than not to judge and not to act at all.
