Reply #12: Please define "fanaticism", or is it like "justice"?

[arendt]

> Those who hold the rule of law above justice seem fanatical to me. > And, I don't like it.

Sorry, wrong answer. The rule of law is definable, justice is not.
One man's "justice" is another man's "tyranny".

By definition, fanaticism is unchanging in its assumptions. The rule
of law acknowledges it can be incomplete or even wrong. You are
playing word games to say that admission of imperfection is fanaticism.

> As much as SCS might have freed us, it is religion that held
> intellectualism through our darker ages. Those holders were
> fanatics of their day. And, I like them.
I really suggest you get the dictionary definition of fanaticism.

First, religion caused the Dark Ages. To say that religion saved
intellectualism is to ignore "the beam in its own eye".

If anyone "held intellectualism", it was peaceful Irish monks (see
"How the Irish Saved Civilization") who were originally of the Arian
heresy common among the barbarians in that part of the world.

To call them fanatics is another twisting of the word. They were
just ordinary people who were lucky enough to be in an out of the
way place while all hell was breaking loose on the Continent.

Why don't you give me a definition of fanatic?

arendt