Longing for a Return to Sacrifice

“It was Nietzsche, after all, who had scoffed at the merely sane among the philosophers and who predicted that these timid remnants of philosophy’s bygone age would soon be shoved aside by the throng of ecstatic Dionysiac revelers with no qualms about delivering a coup de grace to the philosophic tradition. Nietzsche’s influence in this regard has been both profound and catastrophic, but it is to the writings of his intellectual successor, Martin Heidegger, that we must look to find a more systematic revival of philosophic ecstasy. Heidegger’s enigmatic ponderings constituted a lifelong effort to turn the philosophical apparatus into a distillery for brewing on final flask of the ancient sacrificial elixir” (Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, p. 254).