By most accounts, Boris Savinkov, one of the leading exponents of terrorism in the last century, lived, nearly as a matter of life and breath, to engage in terror.  Indeed, from what we can tell, Savinkov terrorized for the "sheer pleasure" of it.

     Not that Savinkov, living as he did in the waning days of tsarist Russia and the ensuing Bolshevik Revolution, did not have ample reason to wage terror on the established order.  Whether it was the Tsar or the Bolsheviks, the Russian government did not view its people kindly.  There was much to protest.  Of course, this doesn't justify Savinkov's callous disregard for human life in the service of what he considered to be a greater good.  Absolutely not.  It does, however, demonstrate the lengths to which people go to secure the freedom to build the type of authority best suited for them.

    But the latter belies the point.  To live to contest and destroy authority when one's objective is to simply institute a new type of the same does little to enlarge the social imaginary or the common good.  If methodology is all, meaning immediately falls by the wayside:  principles without principle collapse quickly.

    Live to question, yes, but always question a life intended to destroy itself.