Totalizing philosophical reconciliation has historically demanded terror as its price
Evidence
But Kant also knew that the price to pay for such an illusion is terror. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given us as much terror as we can take. We have paid a high enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and the one, for the reconciliation of the concept and the sensible, of the transparent and the communicable experience. — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 513
Categorization
- XREF: Lyotard’s claim that Hegelian totality buys unity at the price of terror is the direct line Jameson interrogates. — connects to: Refusing equal value of lives yields state terrorism and philosopher-executioners
- ADDENDUM: The terror-as-price-of-totality structure resonates with the sacrifice article’s theme of violence stabilizing stratified society.