Lord Byron writing in praise of renegacy

And though I hope not unscathed to go, Who conquers me shall find a stubborn foe. The time hath been, when no harsh sound would fall From lips that now may seem imbued with gall; Nor fools nor follies tempt me to despise The meanest thing that crawl’d beneath my eyes: But now, so callous … Read more

Nietzsche on the virtues of renegacy and apostasy

how little, to him, does the changing of an opinion seem contemptible per se! On the contrary, how highly he prizes the ability to change an opinion as a rare and valuable distinction, especially if he can retain it far into old age! And his pride (not his pusillanimity) even reaches so high as to be able to pluck the … Read more

Nietzsche on escaping a cult: Part 2

…and-I have escaped. Think not that I will urge you to run the same perilous risk! or that I will urge you on even to the same solitude! For whoever proceeds on his own path meets nobody: this is the feature of one’s “own path.” No one comes to help him in his task: he … Read more

Things I’ve learned from being in the IMT

Being in the IMT was a miserable experience. But there is much I have learned from it. If there is anything I have learned from reading philosophy, it is amor fati – the love of fate, a concept taught by the Ancient Stoics and also by modern philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche. It is hard to … Read more

Dostoevsky, Demons and being in a revolutionary cult

*SPOILERS INCLUDED* I have just finished reading Dostoevsky’s Demons for the second time. A conviction that has been drummed into me from my time doing A-Level English Literature is that you can never truly ‘get’ a novel until you have read it more than once. It took several re-readings for me to appreciate the poetic … Read more