There are philosophers whose ideas are worth little, but whose lives were in many ways exceptional and pitched at a level of spiritual intensity that the rest of us reach only occasionally if at all. Simone Weil is one example, Ludwig Wittgenstein another. This Wittgenstein fragment gives me shivers and goose bumps:
A beautiful garment that is transformed (coagulates as it were) into worms and serpents if its wearer looks smugly at himself in the mirror.
Ein schoenes Kleid, das sich in Wuermer und Schlangen verwandelt (gleichsam koaguliert), wenn der, welcher er traegt, sich darin selbstgefaellig in den Spiegel schaut. (Culture and Value, p. 22)
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