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A look at Tzscheu

Ever since the confrontation with philosophers and philosophy began within the framework of the Hadeze cultural revolution, and the philosophical studies at Croatian Studies were solemnly closed a few years ago, HDZ ministers, what can I say, have really started

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Photo: Shutterstock
Photo: Shutterstock
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

"We have to be brave, we have to be wise. We can't be brave, because if it's courage, it can be madness. And wisdom? It's not enough to sit under a plum tree and think about philosophy, because being in a safe zone you don't gain anything, but you lose a lot. According to to that, to unite courage and wisdom."

Although the great Plato considered them to be the two greatest human virtues, the mentioned words about courage and wisdom are not - as you might think before being seduced by their beauty - a quote from his famous dialogue Phaedo, also known under the title "On the soul". These are neither the thoughts from Plato's treatise "Protagoras", in which his teacher Socrates contemplates courage and wisdom, nor the introspective Stoic concept that was written down by the ruler and philosopher Marcus Aurelius "To himself", nor is it the reflection on wisdom from "The Courage of Truth ” by Michel Foucault: the quoted words about courage, wisdom, folly and sitting under a plum tree were heard at the twenty-first General Assembly of the HDZ in Šibenik, and were spoken by a prominent HDZ agrarian economist, manager, political scientist and minister of foreign and European affairs Gordan Grlić Radman.

Ever since the confrontation with philosophers and philosophy began within the framework of Hadeze's cultural revolution, and the philosophical studies at Croatian Studies were solemnly closed a few years ago, HDZ's ministers, what can I tell you, have really taken off. At the time of the covid pandemic and strict general quarantine, only the most famous example, the Minister of the Interior explained the extraordinary flexibility towards mass gatherings of Catholics by saying that "repression is the last thing that should be encouraged in this situation", concluding: "I would like to recall Nietzsche's thought , which says that people who have a powerful reflex towards punishment are not to be trusted."

For days, Croatia laughed at the Minister of Police talking about Nietzsche, then the minister strictly warned not to say "about Nietzsche", but correctly "not even about Tzsche", but that was already a joke. If you thought that the minister's thought was a joke, it is because only in Croatia is it possible for the skepticism of Friedrich Nietzsche towards repression to be shared by a minister of the interior, i.e. the minister of police, i.e. the minister of a department whose entire basis rests on the concept of repression and punishment: "I would recall Nietzsche's thought, which says that people who have a powerful reflex towards punishment are not to be trusted."

In the HDZ, however, not only the Minister of the Interior deals with philosophy. After all, Immanuel Kant divided man's sense into internal and external. Andrej Plenković thus divided the HDZ's school of philosophy into internal and external feelings - yes, excuse me, jobs - so just as the Minister of Internal Affairs, in charge of the department of repression and punishment, expressed skepticism towards the concept of repression and punishment the other day, so it is now the minister of foreign affairs, in charge of the department of wisdom and courage, expressed skepticism towards the concept of wisdom and courage.

"We have to be brave, we have to be wise. We cannot be brave, because if it is courage, it can be folly. And wisdom, it's not enough to sit under a plum tree and think about philosophy, because being in a safe zone you don't gain anything, but you lose a lot. Therefore, unite courage and wisdom."

For days, Croatia laughed at the head of diplomacy who talks about philosophizing under a plum tree, the newspaper 24 sata even made a survey with the question "what Grlić Radman wanted to say", and no one really bothered to understand his words.

So let's go in order.

"We must be brave, we must be wise." What did Grlić Radman want to say? This is clear: we must be brave, we must be wise, so being brave and wise is easy. However.

"We cannot be brave, because if it is courage, it can be madness." What did Grlić Radman want to say? We must be brave, but we cannot, because courage can be folly, and we, I will remind you, do not have to be brave and crazy, but brave and wise. We therefore cannot so much have to be brave as we must not be able to be crazy. In short, we have to be brave, but we don't have to - in fact we must not - be brave.

Very good. How then do we stand with wisdom?

"Wisdom? It is not enough to sit under a plum tree and think about philosophy, because being in a safe zone you do not gain anything, but you lose a lot." What did Grlić Radman want to say? We must be wise, but we must not, because by being wise in the safe zone under the plum tree we gain nothing and lose a lot. So what do we have to do? In order to get anything, let alone more, we should therefore be wise and not be wise: if "it is not enough to sit under a plum tree and think about philosophy", it is enough - says simple logic - to sit under a plum tree and not think about philosophy. For such a thing, however - to get out of the safe zone under the plum tree - we must not only be wise, but we must also be brave, because there, in the wide and unexplored wasteland outside the shade of the plum tree, we will have to take a good risk: not to lose much , but everything. But alas. Brave - as we learned in the previous lesson - neither we can, nor should we be.

So what?

"Accordingly, to unite courage and wisdom." What did Grlić Radman want to say? We must unite courage and wisdom, and unite them at a safe distance far from the plum, under which we will reconcile our historical task of not being brave with the historical task of not being wise. In Stoic philosophy, we call this the Grlić-Radman paradox: in order to be brave and wise, not only do we not have to, but we must not be wise and brave. Such, shitty and stupid, we will reach Grlić-Radman's moral ideal: to be wise and brave enough not to say something wise or do something brave at any moment.

What does it look like in political-philosophical practice? For example: there is a worldwide covid pandemic, Croatia is locked in a strict quarantine, but bishops, priests and their congregations ignore the lockdown and lick the corpses of saints at mass gatherings: the police are expected to act the same as they do with the so-called "citizens" who defy the lockdown, and the Croatian police minister, shitty in front of the Church and stupid in front of the microphone, then says that he would "remember Nietzsche's thought that he does not trust people who have a strong reflex towards punishment".

Or: a world war is on the horizon, Israel under the high patronage of the United States is plowing Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinian children are being killed, the same is expected from Croatia as it expected from the world in the mythical ninety-first, and the Croatian foreign minister, crap under America and stupid under a plum, he says that "we must be brave and we must be wise". So he explains: "We cannot be brave, because if it is courage, it can be madness." And wisdom, it is not enough to sit under a plum tree and think about philosophy, because being in a safe zone you do not gain anything, but you lose a lot. Therefore, unite courage and wisdom."

Brave and wise, nothing about anything.

Yes, sorry, nothing about Nietzsche.

(n1info.hr)

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