Pity and the Future by V. Taubman-Goldie


1845-1945, Historical Work, Max Stirner / Wednesday, April 20th, 2022

A plea for pity in the face of the battalions of Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Stirner, from the pages of The Suffragette for April 24, 1914. Valentine Francis Goldie-Taubman (1875 – ?) was an author.

 

They say – the practical, unsentimental folk – that this attitude of sympathy cannot last; that by our own showing the possession of power petrifies the heart; that it is the subjected position of women that makes them gentler by nature; and that once admitted to equal rights with man, they will inevitably become equally callous. It may be so; it may be that the world will one day become wholly populated by disciples of Nietzsche and Max Stirner, in which case my only consolation is that I shall be comfortably cremated before this age is reached. But I do not believe it: I think that the time IS at hand when society is ready for fellow ship, and that it only needs a big shake-up, the destruction of an age-old tyranny, to begin to usher in the new era. At least, woman’s freedom seems to me our last chance of remoulding the world nearer to the heart’s desire of myself and those who think with me. The battalions of the Parsifalites and the Also-sprach-Zarathustrans are already mustering for the encounter; and it is to the newly armed, pity-enlightened squadrons of my sisters that I look for the victor.

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