/lit/ - Literature

>>9704587
>But the sovereign is the only real self.
The single sovereign is incomplete, is so in the attempt to be absolute of his own. The sovereign of his own cannot reproduce, that is cannot continue, that is cannot change, and in being incapable and unworldly, he treats the realm as a prostitute. Yet if one were to make him only a symbol, and give power to the council, you'd be empowering administrators, secularizing power, giving it to keepers and not makers, to the book and not the breath, to curators and not authorities. It would be no different from any other human prejudice, like suddenly giving a carpenter the crown. Therefore factual power must stay with the king, but still the king musn't act.

The king therefore has to have a queen. The queen must be what the king is not. Seemingly the acting principle, she is only doing what the king has told her. She acts, but she's wholly empty of her own intention; the king does not act, but he owns all intention. Without him she would be still, as if dead; without her he would not stop, as if he were time. The queen is a toy and the king is a beast--one is to be read and the other lacks the faculty; yet they are together: they love one another, but know nothing of the other; there is no passion in their marriage, not personal nor racial nor public. They do not appear to the world together: she appears on high, he appears down below--she speaks, he listens; she orders, he questions. They only are together when they are alone together, when there is no world but they--it is there that the king acts, acts as pure force to be contained.

As he's made to act, he is unwholesome. Because he's unwholesome, he's limited: Because he's limited, he's graspable: Because he's graspable, he's attainable: Because he's attainable, he can be lost: Because he can be lost, he's inessential: Because he's inessential, he can be let go of: Because he can be let go of, he is forgotten: Because he is forgotten, he becomes the base. And because of this as a whole, his government can be trusted.

One sees him, as he would a sage, seemingly lost in the city--in truth only sight seeing, watching the featherless chicken sing, enjoying the song that is under even the numbers. One sees him, and hears him say strange, even irritating things. The king lives on Holiday. He's as useless to solving the world's fears as old men discussing in the market place believing only themselves to be right. If you ask him a favor, he will insult you; if you take from him, he will praise you--for the king does not allow debt, so he does not find the world perplexing, as there are no true gifts. When his subjects have a problem, they know they will only to solve it on their Own, although not with their person.

This way you procure a sage-king, this way the philosopher is king.

[this is still a work in progress and part of a much larger work]