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assumes only the form of an offense to private property, good is represented only as charity. This simple equivalent is sufficient to characterize Superman's moral world. In fact, we realize that Superman is obliged to continue his activities in the sphere of small and infinitesimal modifications of the immediately visible for the same motives noted in regard to the static nature of his plots: each general modification would draw the world, and Superman with it, toward final consumption. |
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On the other hand, it would be inexact to say that Superman's judicious and measured virtue depends only on the structure of the plot, that is, on the need to forbid the release of excessive and irretrievable developments. The contrary is also true: the immobilizing metaphysics underlying this kind of conceptual plot is the direct, though not the desired, consequence of a total structural mechanism which seems to be the only one suited to communicate, through the themes discussed, a particular kind of teaching. The plot must be static and must evade any development, because Superman must make virtue consist of many little activities on a small scale, never achieving a total awareness. Conversely, virtue must be characterized in the accomplishment of only partial acts, so that the plot can remain static. Again, the discussion does not take on the features of the authors' preferences as much as their adaptation to a concept of 'order' which pervades the cultural model in which the authors live and where they construct on a small scale "analogous" models which mirror the larger one. |
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1. Critique of Pure Reason, "Analytic of Principles," chapter 2, section 3. |
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2. See in particular Hans Reichenbach, The Direction of Time (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1956). |
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3. For the Sartrian discussion, see Being and Nothingness, chapter 2. |
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4. Ibid. |
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5. Reichenbach, pp. 36-40. |
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6. See Chapter 1 of this book. |
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