The other week, while going through some old books of mine, I encountered this passage from Gilles Deleuze’s book on 17th Century philosopher Baruch Spinoza:
In the Ethics, it is in opposition to what Spinoza calls satire; and satire is everything that takes pleasure in the powerlessness and distress of men, everything that feeds on accusations, on malice, on belittlement, on low interpretations, everything that breaks men’s spirits (the tyrant needs broken spirits, just as broken spirits need a tyrant).
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