Tuesday, April 26, 2005
The ultimate argument of reason is POWER?
The time has come, it seems, to face the facts: revolution is movement, but movement is not a revolution. Politics is only a gear-shift, and revolution only its overdrive: war as "continuation of politics by other means" would be instead a police pursuit at greater speed, with other vehicles. The ultima ratio very carefully engraved on pieces of artillery under Louis XIV expressed quite well the procedure for changing speed. The piece of artillery is a mixed vehicle that synthesized two velocities of displacement: that of the relatively rapid trator-drawn cannon, and the lightning speed of the projectile toward its explosion as the ultimate argument of reason...
Paul Virilio - Speed and Politics, 1977 (but sounding like it could have been written about the Gulf War)
