The reduction of excellence to lifeless form paradoxically secures its survival.

Evidence

The excellent, however, not only cannot escape the fate of being thus deprived of life and spirit, of being flayed and then seeing its skin wrapped round a lifeless knowledge and its conceit. Rather we recognize even in this fate the power that the excellent exercises over the hearts, if not over the minds, of men; also the constructive unfolding into universality and determinateness of form in which its perfection consists, and which alone makes it possible for the universality to be used in a superficial way. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1055

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A compressed paradox worth sitting with: the flaying of excellence into dead, surface-usable form is itself the proof of its power — formalization as both diminution and guarantee of survival.
• XREF: connects to: The old subject survives as mere for-itself after its substance is dissolved — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 9; A theory’s survival in a changed research program signals its intellectual merit. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 1840

Broader Connections

• A theory’s survival in a changed research program signals its intellectual merit. #exemplifies (0.82) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1840
• The old subject survives as mere for-itself after its substance is dissolved #exemplifies (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 9