Your complimentary articles
You’ve read two of your four complimentary articles for this month.
You can read four articles free per month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please
Poetry
Consequentialism at the Pearly Gates
by Daniel Galef
‘The road to Hell is paved with good intentions’?
But what of the reverse? Just like some un-
expectedly benevolent inventions
(penicillin was first designed to be a gun),
ill will can double-cross itself: a power
of pure destruction, terrible and terrific,
like spoiled wine into water may un-sour,
begrudgingly prove . . . utile – optimific.
The steps to Heaven glint with evil’s glamour;
is such salvation simply an award
for those who, stoking fires of Götterdämmer-
ung, before the raging forge grow bored,
until they, fumbling blindly with a hammer,
bang a ploughshare from a bungled sword?
© Daniel Galef 2023
Daniel Galef is a lapsed philosophy major who currently teaches literature and rhetoric at the University of Cincinnati. His first poetry book Imaginary Sonnets, is out this summer from Able Muse Press.