The reality is that the faithful of the post-post modern world of today are terribly afraid and insecure, about their beliefs, which runs into conflict with nearly everything we have learned for the past three, four centuries. And they only deceive themselves in trying to reconcile belief, which by nature is irrational, with reason. Whereas I am quite confident in my own ignorance and complete misunderstandingof everything. Though this lack of having to uphold and maintain any dogma, is precisely what allows me to be tolerant of others, except when the intolerance of others becomes a tool of repression against freedom of thought. It also has permitted me to be more humane with my neighbor (whomever my neighbor may be). This is not a "blessing" of faith, but the result of an enlightened principle of reason and rationalism that is at the true foundation of any non-ideological based layicism of the State. It's about having the humility to admit one's own ignorance of the unknowable, which is something that religion has always tried to override in the form of claiming exclusive ownership to the Truth. A the Truth, moreover, that has quite often become the "irrefutable" alibi (precisely because it defies reason and thus can't be rationally argued against - though also not rationally proven, which the religious conveniently forget) to the religious institution and the political power structure, to destroy anything and anyone that dares to challenge their hegemony over controlling society and in repressing free, non-dogmatic thought. Indeed it has been religion, not atheism, which has been the single greatest tool of intolerance, repression and war in the history of the world. It is therefore a the Truth based upon the most irrational and consequently indemonstrable, of means; because, in point of fact, founded exclusively upon Faith. Nonetheless this the Truth, because of the sway that the religious institutions have always held over society and governments, has always succeeded in bringing the necessary pressure to bear in finding a so called just recourse to the most barbaric forms of intolerance, repression and war. Ever since the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius forbade paganism in 380 and then made any form of pagan sacrifices punishable by death in 391, the world has come to know the cruel and repressive side of religion, which since that moment in a variety of forms has more often than not brought the sword, nothing else, rather than humane and civil practices. I will try to now give you a precise description of my profound ignorance that has set me free and thereby allowed me to be more compassionate and tolerant. Just the other day on the Pincio in Rome I had made what now strikes me as some rather inept comments on Nietzsche to my students, and on this occasion I had been unable to say anything apposite about him. Look, I told them, I've been wrestling with Nietzsche for decades, but haven't gotten any further with him. Nietzsche has always fascinated me, but I've never understood him properly. To be honest, it's the same with all the other philosophers, I told them, with Schopenhauer and Pascal, to name just two. All my life I've found them difficult and done no more than begin to understand them. They've always been Greek to me, though I've always been attracted and excited by them. The more I study these men's writings, I told my students, the more helpless I become. It's only in moments of megalomania that I can claim to have understood them, just as it's only at such moments that I can claim to have understood myself. The more I study myself, the farther I get from the truth about myself, the more obscure everything about me becomes, I told them, and it's the same with the philosophers. When I think I've understood them I've actually understood nothing. This is probably true of everything I've studied. But now and then, in moments of megalomania, I venture to say that I've understood something about these philosophers and their writings. None of these men or their works can be understood, not Pascal, not Descartes, not Kant, not Shopenhauer, not Schleiermacher, to name only those who preoccupy me at present, those who I'm working on at the moment. With the greatest ruthlessness toward them and toward myself, I added. With the greatest audacity and the greatest impudence. For when we work on one of these philosophers, I said, it's impudent and presumptuous to take hold of them and, as it were, tear the philosophical guts out of the living body. It's always impudent to set about a work of philosophy, but without such impudence we can't approach it and get anywhere philosophically. We actually have to attack these philosophical writings as roughly and toughly as possible--and the writers themselves, whom we must always think of as enemies, as our most formidable opponents, students. I have to pit myself against Shopenhauer if I want to understand him, but I fail, against Kant, against Montaigne, against Descartes against Schleiermacher--you understand--but with these I also fail. I have to be against Voltaire if I want to get to grips with him properly and have some prospect of success. But so far I've been pretty unsuccessful at getting to grips with the philosophers and their works. Life will soon be over; my existence will be extinguished, I told them, and I'll have achieved nothing. Everything will have remained firmly closed to me. In the same way I've been pretty unsuccessful in getting to grips with myself. I treat myself as an enemy and go into philosophical action against myself, I told my students. I approach myself with every possible doubt, and I fail. I achieve absolutely nothing. I have to regard the mind as an enemy and go into philosophical action against it if I am actually to enjoy it. But I probably don't have enough time, just as none of them had enough time. Man's greatest misfortune is that he never has enough time, and that's what's always made knowledge impossible. So all we have ever achieved is an approximation, a near miss. Anything else is nonsense. When we are thinking and don't stop thinking, which is what we call philosophizing, we come to realize that our thinking has been wrong. Up to now all their thinking was wrong, whoever they were and whatever they wrote, yet they didn't give up on their own violation, I told my students: they gave up because nature forced them to because of sickness, madness, and finally death. They didn't want to stop however great their privations, however grievous their sufferings; they carried on against all reason and despite all warnings. Yet they all committed themselves to false conclusions, I told my students--ultimately to nothing, whatever this nothing might be, which, though we know it is nothing and therefore cannot exist, still dooms everything to failure, halts all progress, and finally brings everything to an end. And yet this end is at once a new beginning, their failure and mental violation, our salvation and way to toleration and treating others humanely, without violating their dignity and purpose in this world and this life which ultimately fades away into the dark ebony of the inscrutable abyss.