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Literary notes about highest (AI summary)

The word “highest” in literature is employed as a superlative marker to convey the utmost degree of quality, virtue, or power, often elevating abstract ideals to a position of supreme importance. For example, it is used to depict nature in its most exalted manifestation—“nature in the highest form” [1]—and to express the apex of emotional or metaphysical states, as seen in the notion of the “highest love” which transcends personal affection to become a symbol of pure abstraction [2]. Philosophers and writers similarly employ “highest” to denote the ultimate measure of knowledge or power, with Nietzsche discussing the “highest power” as a critical concept in his work [3] and Plato questioning what constitutes the “highest of all knowledge” [4]. Thus, whether describing physical peaks, moral virtues, or intellectual ideals, “highest” functions as a versatile literary tool that transforms ordinary attributes into references of ultimate aspiration.
  1. Character is nature in the highest form."
    — from The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie and J. Berg Esenwein
  2. The highest love is the love not of a person, but of the highest and purest abstraction.
    — from Symposium by Plato
  3. But truth is not postulated as the highest measure of value, and still less as the highest power.
    — from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book III and IV by Nietzsche
  4. But what do you mean by the highest of all knowledge?
    — from The Republic by Plato

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