Sublime

This liberalism relies upon the idea that consciousness is not a thing but an activity; that its elemental constituent is not some soul-like substance but the activity of understanding; that it knows itself and the world only imperfectly, through its reflections on the world and itself; that its freedom is a matter of degree and a function of its u

Berlin, lui, pense que l’État devrait défendre la « liberté négative » des citoyens – leur liberté contre les interférences d’autrui – tout en les laissant poursuivre leur « liberté positive », leur conception d’une vie de bien. L’État devrait résister à la tentation de se mêler de la vie privée des citoyens et ne devrait jamais essayer de soigner

There is, I believe, a long period, measured not in centuries but in millennia—between the earliest appearance of states and lasting until perhaps only four centuries ago—that might be called a “golden age for barbarians” and for nonstate peoples in general. For much of this long epoch, the political enclosure movement represented by the modern nat

instead of elected officials, permanently subject to control and dismissal, who were to ensure the functioning of government until such time as “every cook would learn how to rule the State”, there is a professional bureaucracy, freed from responsibility,

The idea of the Citizen is that his individual human nature shall be constantly and creatively active in altering the State. The Germans are right in regarding the idea as dangerously revolutionary. Every Citizen is a revolution. That is, he destroys, devours and adapts his environment to the extent of his own thought and conscience.

Ce que les fascismes avaient réussi à combiner restait le long de l’ancien vecteur — celui qui va vers la modernisation à partir des anciens terroirs. Ils étaient parvenus à amalgamer le retour à un passé rêvé — Rome ou Germania — avec les idéaux révolutionnaires et la modernisation industrielle et technique, le tout en réinventant une figure de l’