“Ethics and Aesthetics Are One”

Let us suppose that for a long time now, in the modern West, religion has been the name of a certain wound. I am specifically referring to Latin Christianity as a wound, due to its historic excesses, its ever-deepening irrelevance, and our inveterate sense of its externality.1 This inherited—perhaps even debilitating—wound has in time become universal: Europe's history, and wound, have become the rest of the world's. Europe's pains have become the pain of others the world over, as that continent, under its banner of modernity, has become a compass for orienting “universal” modes of life. If Europe laughs, so does the world, and if Europe aches, an obsequious world aches as well. Indeed, to the extent that pain engenders a European confusion, such a confusion becomes the world's.