In the introduction to After the Holocaust: The Book of Job, Primo Levi, and the Path to Affliction (to be published this year by Cambridge University Press), Alford writes:
Is is good to know and accept one's nakedness and vulnerability before fate and might so that we do not become what [Simone] Weil called a Pharisee, one who worships the empire of might, social power in all its forms. This is perhaps the hardest thing for humans to do: not to confuse goodness and might––that is, not to worship might because it is might. Yet it is essential if we are to become just and good. "Only he who knows the empire of might and knows how not to respect it is capable of love and justice" (Weil, from The Illiad or The Poem of Force)
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