The Humble Moon
Our humble moon.
That floating silver fossil.
Gently drifting from our orbit.
That reveals universal mysteries.
So often dismissed.
Declaring that glitter,
Doesn't always equal gold.
S. Camplin
31/01/2012
LDN 2012
LDN 2012
The Games.
A Nation's gripped.
Purpose of Olympics,
Global sport,
Fairplay.
Get hijacked,
By the corporate.
And now Dow is on the gain.
S. Camplin
S. Camplin
Dial M for Misogyny
Dial M for Misogyny
The myopic.
And microscopic.
Malevolent, masculine
Might of the 'masters'.
Maintained by mass media.
And the money machines.
S. Camplin
21/01/2012
The Curious Case of the Spooky Feline Spectre
The Curious Case of the Spooky Feline Spectre
In bed, and in slumber.
The twilight is done.
My cat?
She's beside me,
And snoozing along.
On awakening.
I hear creaking
Like doors,
And floorboards.
Too light for a person.
And it can't be my cat!
My inkling is of a spectre.
I feel. A feline.
Come along to inspect her?
A ghoul. A guardian.
Of her honour.
Or mine?
I trust, as I snuggle in cover,
That my curious
Spooky feline spectre,
Does lose interest soon!
S. Camplin
10/01/2012
To Console the Soul
To Console the Soul
Raging.
Weeping.
Raging again.
No retribution.
Cannot reconcile.
Console the soul.
Wild fantasies,
Of the worst kind.
Become a monster myself.
Waging war.
Wounds still raw.
Traumas so deep.
Creeps in, in my sleep.
And a recurring theme,
Is played out.
The horror so real.
But it was real.
And I'm raging.
And weeping.
And raging again.
All I've got.
To reconcile myself.
To console myself.
To console the soul.
S. Camplin
08/01/2012
Beyond Good and Evil?
Most questions of a philosophical nature inevitably lead one to question what must be the ultimate question in life: the meaning of life. Since the Enlightenment, humanity has been forced to re-evaluate its faith, its purpose, and with it the justification that religion had given work and status in society. Arguably, the biggest crisis was that facing the moralists. If there is no 'God' then our religion-oriented, law-based morality is called into question. As Dostoyevsky (1869) eloquently puts it: "If God does not exist, then everything is permitted". Or, seen from a more ethical dimension, as de Beauvoir (1947) contends: "If God is dead, then we are all responsible".
So then, what does constitute a meaningful life? According to Plato, the perspective defined as 'hypergood', involves our changing, a change which is seen as 'growth', or true 'satisfaction', or the attainment of 'higher consciousness'. However, Nietzsche tried to break out of the whole form of thought he defined as 'moral', to come to a more total self-affirmation. That to break away from this 'hypergood' of Plato's, is to experience a sense of liberation not usually experienced in everyday life. A feature that Charles Taylor (1989) explains as: "the modern notion of freedom which develops in the 17th Century portrays this as the independence of the subject, his determining of his own purposes without interference from external authority...the stress on modern freedom emerges in the rejection of paternalism. Each person is the best judge of his own happiness".
As for Iris Murdoch (1989), she ponders whether: "the self-forgetful pleasures that we can take in the sheer pointless independent existence of animals, birds, stones, and trees bring us closer to the moral good". Many modern environmentalists would agree that it does. And as Plato would remind us: "The desiring element, is by nature 'insatiable'". However, Nietzsche answers Plato in his characteristically uncompromising fashion with: "the worst wearisomely protracted and most dangerous of all errors hitherto has been a dogmatist's error namely Plato's invention of pure spirit and the good itself".
Thus Nietzsche's conviction that: "A living thing desires above all to vent its strength - life as such is will to power". This so-called 'will-to-power' assumes the development of one's desires, wishes, pleasures, one's notions of freedom, and one's consequences, no less. The will-to-power is the belief that one has the power to exert and elicit an influence on one's environment and others, and to do so such that, one gains full influence on one's environment and others; and to do so such that, one gains full pleasure not just in the success of the willing, but in the knowledge that one has willed. The conscious act of taking full responsibility for one's actions, and above all oneself, a striving for total and unequivocal independence. Nietzsche does not deny the worth of the virtues that Plato aspires to, those of self-sacrifice, the surrendering of one's sensual fancies with a view to gaining a contented soul, but questions the assumed supremacy of a life that is directed purely at achieving this state of being. In his own words: "it could be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for all life might have to be ascribed to appearance, to the will to deception, to selfishness and to appetite".
Niezsche argues that all philosophy is personal, and that as such one should always bear this in mind when reading a philosopher's work, that one should always interpret a philosophy in the light of one's own needs and experiences. The other implication being that no one philosophy can ever profess to have realised the ultimate life-truth. And Nietzsche accuses philosphers such as Plato for displaying dishonesty in their writings, he writes: "they pose as having discovered and attained their real opinions through the self-evolution of a cold, pure, divinely unperturbed dialectic...while what happens at the bottom is that a prejudice, a notion...is defended by them with reasons sought after the event...which they baptize truths". He criticises the Platonists for equating nature with the pure and the good. That humans are naturally inclined towards the good, that it is only the corrupted, discontented soul that sways them in favour of 'wrong-doing'. Nietzsche's scathing retort is that nature is naturally competitive: "You want to live 'according to nature'? O you noble Stoics, what fraudulent words! Think of a being such as nature is, prodigal beyond measure, without aims or intentions, without mercy or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain; think of indifference itself as power - how could you live according to such indifference?".
To Nietzsche the Platonists seem content putting a stranglehold on their life, not being open to any potential sensual pleasures that may be a departure from their supposed 'norms' of activity. He regards our bodily sensations as the pilot that guides us to satisfy their cravings to fully realise our raison d'etre. And that we are not beholden to the notion of 'God', in any Christian, or orthodox religious way. He argues that: "the desire for 'freedom of will'...the desire to bear the whole and sole responsibility for one's actions and to absolve God, world, ancestors, chance, society from responsibility for them...to pull oneself into existence out of the swamp of nothingness...'Unfree will' is mythology: in real life it is only a question of strong and weak wills - it is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in himself when a thinker detects in every 'causal connection'... something of compulsion, exigency, constraint, pressure ... such feelings are traitors".
Nietzsche blames Plato and the moralists for trying to blind and distort us, the people, from seeing the true essence of our existence, and try to deny us the ultimate highs of our existence. With these highs come the ultimate lows of jealousy, hatred, as well as rejection and isolation. However, perhaps these feelings are a necessary part of the package, just as pleasure is, and are inevitably resulting from a choie of a life-advancing free life, as opposed to a life of self-denial. Nietzsche does not deny that there may be valid reasons for steering clear of the stormy heights of pleasure and pain, but as he sees it: "if your ship has been driven into these seas, very well! Now clench your teeth! Keep your eyes open! Keep a firm hand on the helm! - We sail straight over morality and past it, we flatten it...".
Nietzsche recommends that one be wary of accepting suffering as a condition for defending truth. In fact he is viciously critical of those who do: "it makes you stupid, brutal and bullish...as if 'truth' were so innocuous and inept a person she stood in need of defending!". No, his idea of bliss is to mix with those that increase our well-being, choose the good life, the free one. He has no sympathy for those who play the martyr. He believes that every exceptional being will naturally strive to elevate him or herself above the conventional confines of morality in society. To be an individual, to be independent of the validation of others. Nietzsche elucidates this point: "Few are made for independence - it is a privilege of the strong. And he (sic) who attempts it, having the completest right to it but without being compelled to, thereby proves he is probably not only strong but also daring to the point of recklessness. He ventures into a labyrinth, he multiplies by a thousand the dangers which life as such already brings with it".
According to Nietzsche actions are judged according to intention: "the first attempt at self-knowledge has been made... men became unanimous in the belief that the value of an action resided in the value of the intention behind it...The overcoming of morality, in a certain sense even the self-overcoming of morality". Nietzsche considers, in his own inimical but rather ironic way, that perhaps the value of a life aimed at self-surrender and selflessness is in actual fact a clever disguise aimed at yielding a selfish, smug, superiority-complex. One that yields pleasure for those who live according to the puritans moral code. He argues that no human being is ever going to give any real credence to the idea that just because a way of life, that is a pure one in Plato's case, leads to happiness and virtue, it is necessarily the truth. He thinks that one can be equally as happy living a 'bad' life, as living a 'good' life, and feels that this point has been neglected by the moralists. Now, although Nietzsche does believe in pure consciousness, he does not believe in divine judgement, therefore his attack on the moralists seems unfounded: "My judgement is my judgement: another cannot easily acquire a right to it".
Nietzsche then, without apology, attacks the so-called 'free spirits', those that make moves for securing democracy in the so-called modern age: "men without solitude one and all... while they cannot be denied courage and moral respectability, are unfree and ludicrously superficial". Nietzsche also turns his attention to those of a religious nature, and attacks them on the grounds that they encourage a life of sacrifice. He rather magnanimously, accepts the idea that some forms of religious belief and conduct, and he cites Buddhism here, may lead to a finer life where one can withdraw and experience peace and contentment; and also cites the way that they encourage everyone to regard themselves as being part of something higher, even if they cannot, or will not lead their life in such a way as to experience these heights of existence for themselves.
What Nietzsche sees in these 'soulful' attempts at enlightenment is that, above all else, they aspire towards some kind of sanction that promises that existence is meaningful, and is worthwhile: "something transfiguring - refined, mad and divine". The advocates of virtue believe that aspiring towards virtue is an innate characteristic, it is just as natural as nature itself. That all wrong-doing is done without the exercise of will, and the perpetrator of wrong-doing would reconsider his/her actions if they knew their actions would ultimately lead to an unsatisfactory judgement from some divine source, or other. Plato argues that it is a combination of rationality and instinct that will satisfactorily lead one to the 'good' life, whereas Socrates, Nietzsche points out, thought it more pertinent to suggest that a rational contemplation of these issues and actions at stake would necessarily lead to the 'good'.
Nietzsche forcibly contends: "When the highest and strongest drives, breaking passionately out, carry the individual far above and beyond the average lowlands of the herd conscience, the self-confidence of the community goes to pieces... consequently it is precisely these drives which are most branded and caluminated. Lofty spiritual independence, the will to stand alone, great intelligence even, are felt to be dangerous: everything that raises the individual above the herd and makes his neighbour quail is henceforth called evil". And Nietzsche condemns those that use the fear of judgement to repress the true desires of the individual, that is the church, the government, and not least the Platonists. He ridicules the Platonists for wanting to make everyone equal before God whilst promising an acquisition of a higher state of consciousness, when it is obvious to him that one cannot reach the heights of existence without there being a lower form of existence. One cannot appreciate one without the other, it is illogical to think otherwise, and Plato would not like to be accused of that. He also accuses Plato of being immoral in his condemnation of a relativist approach to ethics, as Nietzsche espouses. That is, a morality for all seasons is not in keeping with Plato's thesis, as Nietzsche maintains: "it is immoral to say: 'What is good for one is good for another".
As far as Nietzsche is concerned, honesty is the most exalted form of activity, that the life that he aspires to is the most honest form of existence, he contends: "Honesty - granted that this is our virtue, from which we cannot get free... And if our honesty should one day none the less grow weary... let us send to the aid of our honesty... our aventurer's courage... let us go to the aid of our 'god' with all our 'devils'!... Is life not a hundred times too short to be - bored in it?". And with this very poetic, dramatic use of language to demonstrate his lust for life, he brands the Platonists as boring, and as a cop out. That growth is characterised by the experiencing of the new, or different, or more specifically the feeling of newness, and that Plato desires to shut off this opportunity to experience newness, and that in the act of advocating a life of self-denial, Plato denies his inner conflict of the will-to-power versus self-surrender.
Nietzsche contends that: "There is a master morality and slave morality ...mediation between the two are apparent and more frequently confusion and mutual misunderstanding between them... even within the same man, within one soul... ''We who are truthful' - thus did the nobility of ancient Greece designate themselves... The noble type of man feels himself (?!) to be the determiner of values, he does not need to be approved of... such a morality is self-glorification". The slave morality is wary of the master, and console themselves with the belief that s/he cannot be happy and fulfilled in his/her expression of power. Another effective use of language by Nietzsche to discredit and expose the weakness of the moralists.
The moralists, according to Nietzsche, are fearful and lazy observers of life, who threaten the activists that the end of the world is nigh, in order to protect their life of inactivity, and are dishonest in their means of securing this. He cites Jesus Christ as being the best living example of the true essence of the most desiring Platonist, the longing to be loved, totally and unconditionally. Nietzsche writes: "the martyrdom of the most innocent and longing heart which never had sufficient of human love, which demanded love, to be loved and nothing else... the story of a poor soul unsated and insatiable in love who had to invent hell so as to send those who did not want to love him - and who, having become knowledgeable about human love, finally had to invent a god who is wholly love... who has mercy on human love because it is so very paltry and ignorant!".
Nietzsche despises the Platonists and the moralists for their fear of life, their fear of anything sensual, their fear of death. Their glorification of a life primarily concerned with the shame of existence, the reverential rather than the sensational, when in actual fact their craving is for a secure, safe love. Nietzsche contends: "He who has sat alone with his soul day and night, year in year out, in confidential discord, and in his cave - it may be a labyrinth, but it may be a goldmine... The hermit does not believe that a philosopher... has ever expressed his real and final opinions in books". They desire above all the acquisition of a clean, well-balanced, rather safe existence.
Nietzsche suggests a transcendence and a transvaluation of all values, and not just a suggestion for an alternative set of values. There is no value to be discovered in the world, but it is therefore all the more important to endow it with value. So, how is this to be done? Nietzsche asks that we question our most fundamental value, that is: truth. And if Nietzsche can make us share in some of his doubts, then he is half way to convincing us that he speaks the truth, that being, that there is no truth. He argues: "The falseness of a judgement is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgement:.. The question is to what extent it is life advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving... that to renounce false judgements would be to renounce life. To recognise untruth as a condition of life: that, to be sure, means to resist customary value-sentiments in a dangerous fashion; and a philosophy which ventures to do so places itself, by that fact alone, beyond good and evil".
Such a philosophy would place itself beyond good and evil by the force with which it denies the grounds on which we base our value judgements. So what gives Nietzsche the ability to gain as Tanner (1994) puts it, a: "god's eye view of the human condition, from which he can make judgements beyond good and evil?... He never answers this question directly, though he is certainly aware of it". There was a time when Nietzsche was seen as the anti-Christ, a Nazi sympathiser and anti-feminist, now it seems he is enjoying a renaissance in terms of followers. And as R. J. Hollingdale (1965) points out: "He's a philosopher who has a lot to say about contemporary conditions... There is no dogma. He says dogmatism belongs to the past and he argues that we simply don't know enough to know what's right or wrong".
Walter Kaufman's book, written in 1950, entitled Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-Christ, cited Nietzsche as the heir to the Enlightenment. However, the French Nietzschean philosophers, such as Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard do not see that, as the Enlightenment believed that the right ideas would lead to the right action. But for Nietzsche there is no absolute right or wrong. As Dannhauser (1974) points out in his book: Nietzsche's view of Socrates: "Nietzsche's exposition of the doctrine of the will to power is coupled with a rejection of previous philosophy. By pointing to the importance of instincts in philosophizing and the weakness - even the incompetence - of reason, Nietzsche seeks to show the philosophers do not discover the truth but interpret the world according to their will".
Nevertheless, the Communists have been hostile towards Nietzsche. Georg Lukacs, the Hungarian philosopher, demounced Nietzsche's work in his book of 1952: The Destruction of Reason, and criticised him for providing: "a continuous polemic against Marxism and socialism... a morality for the socially militant bourgeoisie and middle-class intelligentsia of imperialism". But some contemporary feminist writers have taken up his ideas, notably Carol Diethe in her book: Nietzsche's Women: Beyond the Whip; she is well aware of his sexist remarks but puts them into the context of when he was writing, and looks closely at the women who he influenced and who thought he was wonderful, ignoring the misogynistic remarks and concentrating on the liberating effect his work has had on their lives.
Hollingdale agrees that Nietzsche's life and works cause problems for people, he says: "Nietzsche certainly is destructive; he can always show your opinion is wrong. He shakes people's beliefs in the righteous of their views. He says that what is right is right because it's right for you. And of course if you argue, as he does, that reason doesn't deliver truth, then the floor of ethics begins to shake".
Beyond Good and Evil reads as a long, sustained, sometimes rambling and disorganised; often scathing, humourous and ironic, but ultimately coherent monologue. Towards the end of the book Nietzsche looks to the philosophers of the future, and sees them being predominantly characterised by, what are now seen as postmodern ideas. That life has no absolute meaning, and is therefore open to any interpretation. Nietzsche writes: "today, being noble, wanting to be different, independence and the need for self-responsibility pertains to the concept 'greatness'; and the philosopher will betray something of his ideal when he asserts: 'He shall be the greatest who can be the most solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent, the man beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, the superabundant of will; this shall be called greatness: the ability to be as manifold as whole, as vast as full'. And; to ask it again: is greatness - possible today?".
At times, Nietzsche lapses into false idealism, and liberally employs the use of "the rhetorician's art" to make his points, he argues against Plato: "Wellbeing as you understand it - that is no goal, that seems to us an end! ...The discipline of suffering, of great suffering - do you not know that it is this discipline alone which has created every elevation of mankind hitherto? That tension of the soul in misfortune which cultivates its strength". Nietzsche makes far too many sweeping statements, even if they are persuasive and eloquently put. And employs many devices to make his point, for instance he uses leading language devices, that is, he talks of us and them. And makes great use of repetition to emphasise his point. He also uses too much ambiguity and irony in his work, mixed with his heavy cynicism, for one to completely trust his good sense. Nonethless, his incisive tongue and cutting humour makes for a very interesting and entertaining read.
I recall with relish the titbit that Nietzsche draws our attention to: "I know nothing that has led me to reflect more on Plato's concealment and sphinx nature than that happily preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was discovered no 'Bible', nothing Egyptian, Pythagorean, Platonic - but Aristophanes. How could even a Plato have endured a life - a Greek life which he had denied - without an Aristophanes!".
However, Nietzsche argues in favour of a relativist approach to morals in a dogmatic style; which means that our judgements are only relative to our own needs and experiences. Nietzsche calls towards the philosophers of the future and predicts that they will not only question the worth of morality, but even that there is a morality at all: "We modern men are, thanks to the complicated mechanism of our 'starry firmament', determined by differing moralities". Foucault argues that the philosophy of Plato is only accessible to a small elite, which seems a bit rich, but he says: "I think, that the principal aim, the principal target of this kind of ethics was an aesthetic one. First, this kind was only a problem of personal choice. Second, it was reserved for a few people in the population;... The reason for making this choice was the will to live a beautiful life, and to leave to others memories of a beautiful life".
Foucault is not ignorant of the fact that Plato and others like him were not overly concerned with religious problems. They were much more concerned with their moral conduct, their ethics, and their relations to themselves and others. Foucault writes: "My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my positivism leads not to apathy but to a hyper- and pessimistic activism. I think that the ethico-political choice we have to make everyday is to determine which is the main danger".
I think it is interesting to note that Foucault recognised that Plato's idea that the contemplation of oneself would lead to the dissipation of one's illusions, was an ontological rather than a psychological form of contemplation. He contends: "Plato asks, "How can the eye see itself?" The answer is apparently very simple, but in fact it is very complicated. For Plato, one cannot simply look at oneself in the mirror. One has to look into another eye, that is, one in oneself, however in oneself in the shape of the eye of the other. And there, in the other pupil, one will see oneself: the pupil serves as a mirror. And, in the same manner, the soul contemplating itself in another soul (or in the divine element of the other soul), which is like its pupil, will recognise its divine element". Plato asks us to seek detachment from our self in order that we see ourselves as we truly are, and in doing so we can more effectively procure the well-being of our souls, rather than being blindly driven by our desires and impulses.
But, both Plato and Nietzsche are fundamentally concerned with the potential meaninglessness of their lives, and their philosophies are an attempt to provide meaning and substance to an otherwise meaningless existence. For Savater (1996) a fundamental feature of life is to combine a consideration and acceptance of desire, with the idea that we share the world with other desiring beings. And that it is only through the recognition of this that one can ever hope to achieve the fulfillment of one's desires. Savater tells us: "I want to identify myself with an object that is infinite, that is to say, I want to recognize you so that you may recognize me. Thus the theme of recognition turns out to have a profoundly ethical content, namely this: that I cannot receive from other people more than I myself am prepared freely and generously to give to them. The more I keep back from them, the more of my own human reality I will turn out to lose". One's main concern then is not with the repressing of one's desires but with a consideration of a more open and honest way of securing one's own happiness. A view not too different from Plato, and perhaps even Nietzsche himself.
References:
Nietzsche, F., Beyond Good and Evil (Penguin Books Ltd, London : 1990).
Plato, Gorgias (Penguin Books Ltd, Middlesex: 1960).
So then, what does constitute a meaningful life? According to Plato, the perspective defined as 'hypergood', involves our changing, a change which is seen as 'growth', or true 'satisfaction', or the attainment of 'higher consciousness'. However, Nietzsche tried to break out of the whole form of thought he defined as 'moral', to come to a more total self-affirmation. That to break away from this 'hypergood' of Plato's, is to experience a sense of liberation not usually experienced in everyday life. A feature that Charles Taylor (1989) explains as: "the modern notion of freedom which develops in the 17th Century portrays this as the independence of the subject, his determining of his own purposes without interference from external authority...the stress on modern freedom emerges in the rejection of paternalism. Each person is the best judge of his own happiness".
As for Iris Murdoch (1989), she ponders whether: "the self-forgetful pleasures that we can take in the sheer pointless independent existence of animals, birds, stones, and trees bring us closer to the moral good". Many modern environmentalists would agree that it does. And as Plato would remind us: "The desiring element, is by nature 'insatiable'". However, Nietzsche answers Plato in his characteristically uncompromising fashion with: "the worst wearisomely protracted and most dangerous of all errors hitherto has been a dogmatist's error namely Plato's invention of pure spirit and the good itself".
Thus Nietzsche's conviction that: "A living thing desires above all to vent its strength - life as such is will to power". This so-called 'will-to-power' assumes the development of one's desires, wishes, pleasures, one's notions of freedom, and one's consequences, no less. The will-to-power is the belief that one has the power to exert and elicit an influence on one's environment and others, and to do so such that, one gains full influence on one's environment and others; and to do so such that, one gains full pleasure not just in the success of the willing, but in the knowledge that one has willed. The conscious act of taking full responsibility for one's actions, and above all oneself, a striving for total and unequivocal independence. Nietzsche does not deny the worth of the virtues that Plato aspires to, those of self-sacrifice, the surrendering of one's sensual fancies with a view to gaining a contented soul, but questions the assumed supremacy of a life that is directed purely at achieving this state of being. In his own words: "it could be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for all life might have to be ascribed to appearance, to the will to deception, to selfishness and to appetite".
Niezsche argues that all philosophy is personal, and that as such one should always bear this in mind when reading a philosopher's work, that one should always interpret a philosophy in the light of one's own needs and experiences. The other implication being that no one philosophy can ever profess to have realised the ultimate life-truth. And Nietzsche accuses philosphers such as Plato for displaying dishonesty in their writings, he writes: "they pose as having discovered and attained their real opinions through the self-evolution of a cold, pure, divinely unperturbed dialectic...while what happens at the bottom is that a prejudice, a notion...is defended by them with reasons sought after the event...which they baptize truths". He criticises the Platonists for equating nature with the pure and the good. That humans are naturally inclined towards the good, that it is only the corrupted, discontented soul that sways them in favour of 'wrong-doing'. Nietzsche's scathing retort is that nature is naturally competitive: "You want to live 'according to nature'? O you noble Stoics, what fraudulent words! Think of a being such as nature is, prodigal beyond measure, without aims or intentions, without mercy or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain; think of indifference itself as power - how could you live according to such indifference?".
To Nietzsche the Platonists seem content putting a stranglehold on their life, not being open to any potential sensual pleasures that may be a departure from their supposed 'norms' of activity. He regards our bodily sensations as the pilot that guides us to satisfy their cravings to fully realise our raison d'etre. And that we are not beholden to the notion of 'God', in any Christian, or orthodox religious way. He argues that: "the desire for 'freedom of will'...the desire to bear the whole and sole responsibility for one's actions and to absolve God, world, ancestors, chance, society from responsibility for them...to pull oneself into existence out of the swamp of nothingness...'Unfree will' is mythology: in real life it is only a question of strong and weak wills - it is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in himself when a thinker detects in every 'causal connection'... something of compulsion, exigency, constraint, pressure ... such feelings are traitors".
Nietzsche blames Plato and the moralists for trying to blind and distort us, the people, from seeing the true essence of our existence, and try to deny us the ultimate highs of our existence. With these highs come the ultimate lows of jealousy, hatred, as well as rejection and isolation. However, perhaps these feelings are a necessary part of the package, just as pleasure is, and are inevitably resulting from a choie of a life-advancing free life, as opposed to a life of self-denial. Nietzsche does not deny that there may be valid reasons for steering clear of the stormy heights of pleasure and pain, but as he sees it: "if your ship has been driven into these seas, very well! Now clench your teeth! Keep your eyes open! Keep a firm hand on the helm! - We sail straight over morality and past it, we flatten it...".
Nietzsche recommends that one be wary of accepting suffering as a condition for defending truth. In fact he is viciously critical of those who do: "it makes you stupid, brutal and bullish...as if 'truth' were so innocuous and inept a person she stood in need of defending!". No, his idea of bliss is to mix with those that increase our well-being, choose the good life, the free one. He has no sympathy for those who play the martyr. He believes that every exceptional being will naturally strive to elevate him or herself above the conventional confines of morality in society. To be an individual, to be independent of the validation of others. Nietzsche elucidates this point: "Few are made for independence - it is a privilege of the strong. And he (sic) who attempts it, having the completest right to it but without being compelled to, thereby proves he is probably not only strong but also daring to the point of recklessness. He ventures into a labyrinth, he multiplies by a thousand the dangers which life as such already brings with it".
According to Nietzsche actions are judged according to intention: "the first attempt at self-knowledge has been made... men became unanimous in the belief that the value of an action resided in the value of the intention behind it...The overcoming of morality, in a certain sense even the self-overcoming of morality". Nietzsche considers, in his own inimical but rather ironic way, that perhaps the value of a life aimed at self-surrender and selflessness is in actual fact a clever disguise aimed at yielding a selfish, smug, superiority-complex. One that yields pleasure for those who live according to the puritans moral code. He argues that no human being is ever going to give any real credence to the idea that just because a way of life, that is a pure one in Plato's case, leads to happiness and virtue, it is necessarily the truth. He thinks that one can be equally as happy living a 'bad' life, as living a 'good' life, and feels that this point has been neglected by the moralists. Now, although Nietzsche does believe in pure consciousness, he does not believe in divine judgement, therefore his attack on the moralists seems unfounded: "My judgement is my judgement: another cannot easily acquire a right to it".
Nietzsche then, without apology, attacks the so-called 'free spirits', those that make moves for securing democracy in the so-called modern age: "men without solitude one and all... while they cannot be denied courage and moral respectability, are unfree and ludicrously superficial". Nietzsche also turns his attention to those of a religious nature, and attacks them on the grounds that they encourage a life of sacrifice. He rather magnanimously, accepts the idea that some forms of religious belief and conduct, and he cites Buddhism here, may lead to a finer life where one can withdraw and experience peace and contentment; and also cites the way that they encourage everyone to regard themselves as being part of something higher, even if they cannot, or will not lead their life in such a way as to experience these heights of existence for themselves.
What Nietzsche sees in these 'soulful' attempts at enlightenment is that, above all else, they aspire towards some kind of sanction that promises that existence is meaningful, and is worthwhile: "something transfiguring - refined, mad and divine". The advocates of virtue believe that aspiring towards virtue is an innate characteristic, it is just as natural as nature itself. That all wrong-doing is done without the exercise of will, and the perpetrator of wrong-doing would reconsider his/her actions if they knew their actions would ultimately lead to an unsatisfactory judgement from some divine source, or other. Plato argues that it is a combination of rationality and instinct that will satisfactorily lead one to the 'good' life, whereas Socrates, Nietzsche points out, thought it more pertinent to suggest that a rational contemplation of these issues and actions at stake would necessarily lead to the 'good'.
Nietzsche forcibly contends: "When the highest and strongest drives, breaking passionately out, carry the individual far above and beyond the average lowlands of the herd conscience, the self-confidence of the community goes to pieces... consequently it is precisely these drives which are most branded and caluminated. Lofty spiritual independence, the will to stand alone, great intelligence even, are felt to be dangerous: everything that raises the individual above the herd and makes his neighbour quail is henceforth called evil". And Nietzsche condemns those that use the fear of judgement to repress the true desires of the individual, that is the church, the government, and not least the Platonists. He ridicules the Platonists for wanting to make everyone equal before God whilst promising an acquisition of a higher state of consciousness, when it is obvious to him that one cannot reach the heights of existence without there being a lower form of existence. One cannot appreciate one without the other, it is illogical to think otherwise, and Plato would not like to be accused of that. He also accuses Plato of being immoral in his condemnation of a relativist approach to ethics, as Nietzsche espouses. That is, a morality for all seasons is not in keeping with Plato's thesis, as Nietzsche maintains: "it is immoral to say: 'What is good for one is good for another".
As far as Nietzsche is concerned, honesty is the most exalted form of activity, that the life that he aspires to is the most honest form of existence, he contends: "Honesty - granted that this is our virtue, from which we cannot get free... And if our honesty should one day none the less grow weary... let us send to the aid of our honesty... our aventurer's courage... let us go to the aid of our 'god' with all our 'devils'!... Is life not a hundred times too short to be - bored in it?". And with this very poetic, dramatic use of language to demonstrate his lust for life, he brands the Platonists as boring, and as a cop out. That growth is characterised by the experiencing of the new, or different, or more specifically the feeling of newness, and that Plato desires to shut off this opportunity to experience newness, and that in the act of advocating a life of self-denial, Plato denies his inner conflict of the will-to-power versus self-surrender.
Nietzsche contends that: "There is a master morality and slave morality ...mediation between the two are apparent and more frequently confusion and mutual misunderstanding between them... even within the same man, within one soul... ''We who are truthful' - thus did the nobility of ancient Greece designate themselves... The noble type of man feels himself (?!) to be the determiner of values, he does not need to be approved of... such a morality is self-glorification". The slave morality is wary of the master, and console themselves with the belief that s/he cannot be happy and fulfilled in his/her expression of power. Another effective use of language by Nietzsche to discredit and expose the weakness of the moralists.
The moralists, according to Nietzsche, are fearful and lazy observers of life, who threaten the activists that the end of the world is nigh, in order to protect their life of inactivity, and are dishonest in their means of securing this. He cites Jesus Christ as being the best living example of the true essence of the most desiring Platonist, the longing to be loved, totally and unconditionally. Nietzsche writes: "the martyrdom of the most innocent and longing heart which never had sufficient of human love, which demanded love, to be loved and nothing else... the story of a poor soul unsated and insatiable in love who had to invent hell so as to send those who did not want to love him - and who, having become knowledgeable about human love, finally had to invent a god who is wholly love... who has mercy on human love because it is so very paltry and ignorant!".
Nietzsche despises the Platonists and the moralists for their fear of life, their fear of anything sensual, their fear of death. Their glorification of a life primarily concerned with the shame of existence, the reverential rather than the sensational, when in actual fact their craving is for a secure, safe love. Nietzsche contends: "He who has sat alone with his soul day and night, year in year out, in confidential discord, and in his cave - it may be a labyrinth, but it may be a goldmine... The hermit does not believe that a philosopher... has ever expressed his real and final opinions in books". They desire above all the acquisition of a clean, well-balanced, rather safe existence.
Nietzsche suggests a transcendence and a transvaluation of all values, and not just a suggestion for an alternative set of values. There is no value to be discovered in the world, but it is therefore all the more important to endow it with value. So, how is this to be done? Nietzsche asks that we question our most fundamental value, that is: truth. And if Nietzsche can make us share in some of his doubts, then he is half way to convincing us that he speaks the truth, that being, that there is no truth. He argues: "The falseness of a judgement is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgement:.. The question is to what extent it is life advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving... that to renounce false judgements would be to renounce life. To recognise untruth as a condition of life: that, to be sure, means to resist customary value-sentiments in a dangerous fashion; and a philosophy which ventures to do so places itself, by that fact alone, beyond good and evil".
Such a philosophy would place itself beyond good and evil by the force with which it denies the grounds on which we base our value judgements. So what gives Nietzsche the ability to gain as Tanner (1994) puts it, a: "god's eye view of the human condition, from which he can make judgements beyond good and evil?... He never answers this question directly, though he is certainly aware of it". There was a time when Nietzsche was seen as the anti-Christ, a Nazi sympathiser and anti-feminist, now it seems he is enjoying a renaissance in terms of followers. And as R. J. Hollingdale (1965) points out: "He's a philosopher who has a lot to say about contemporary conditions... There is no dogma. He says dogmatism belongs to the past and he argues that we simply don't know enough to know what's right or wrong".
Walter Kaufman's book, written in 1950, entitled Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-Christ, cited Nietzsche as the heir to the Enlightenment. However, the French Nietzschean philosophers, such as Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard do not see that, as the Enlightenment believed that the right ideas would lead to the right action. But for Nietzsche there is no absolute right or wrong. As Dannhauser (1974) points out in his book: Nietzsche's view of Socrates: "Nietzsche's exposition of the doctrine of the will to power is coupled with a rejection of previous philosophy. By pointing to the importance of instincts in philosophizing and the weakness - even the incompetence - of reason, Nietzsche seeks to show the philosophers do not discover the truth but interpret the world according to their will".
Nevertheless, the Communists have been hostile towards Nietzsche. Georg Lukacs, the Hungarian philosopher, demounced Nietzsche's work in his book of 1952: The Destruction of Reason, and criticised him for providing: "a continuous polemic against Marxism and socialism... a morality for the socially militant bourgeoisie and middle-class intelligentsia of imperialism". But some contemporary feminist writers have taken up his ideas, notably Carol Diethe in her book: Nietzsche's Women: Beyond the Whip; she is well aware of his sexist remarks but puts them into the context of when he was writing, and looks closely at the women who he influenced and who thought he was wonderful, ignoring the misogynistic remarks and concentrating on the liberating effect his work has had on their lives.
Hollingdale agrees that Nietzsche's life and works cause problems for people, he says: "Nietzsche certainly is destructive; he can always show your opinion is wrong. He shakes people's beliefs in the righteous of their views. He says that what is right is right because it's right for you. And of course if you argue, as he does, that reason doesn't deliver truth, then the floor of ethics begins to shake".
Beyond Good and Evil reads as a long, sustained, sometimes rambling and disorganised; often scathing, humourous and ironic, but ultimately coherent monologue. Towards the end of the book Nietzsche looks to the philosophers of the future, and sees them being predominantly characterised by, what are now seen as postmodern ideas. That life has no absolute meaning, and is therefore open to any interpretation. Nietzsche writes: "today, being noble, wanting to be different, independence and the need for self-responsibility pertains to the concept 'greatness'; and the philosopher will betray something of his ideal when he asserts: 'He shall be the greatest who can be the most solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent, the man beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, the superabundant of will; this shall be called greatness: the ability to be as manifold as whole, as vast as full'. And; to ask it again: is greatness - possible today?".
At times, Nietzsche lapses into false idealism, and liberally employs the use of "the rhetorician's art" to make his points, he argues against Plato: "Wellbeing as you understand it - that is no goal, that seems to us an end! ...The discipline of suffering, of great suffering - do you not know that it is this discipline alone which has created every elevation of mankind hitherto? That tension of the soul in misfortune which cultivates its strength". Nietzsche makes far too many sweeping statements, even if they are persuasive and eloquently put. And employs many devices to make his point, for instance he uses leading language devices, that is, he talks of us and them. And makes great use of repetition to emphasise his point. He also uses too much ambiguity and irony in his work, mixed with his heavy cynicism, for one to completely trust his good sense. Nonethless, his incisive tongue and cutting humour makes for a very interesting and entertaining read.
I recall with relish the titbit that Nietzsche draws our attention to: "I know nothing that has led me to reflect more on Plato's concealment and sphinx nature than that happily preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his death-bed there was discovered no 'Bible', nothing Egyptian, Pythagorean, Platonic - but Aristophanes. How could even a Plato have endured a life - a Greek life which he had denied - without an Aristophanes!".
However, Nietzsche argues in favour of a relativist approach to morals in a dogmatic style; which means that our judgements are only relative to our own needs and experiences. Nietzsche calls towards the philosophers of the future and predicts that they will not only question the worth of morality, but even that there is a morality at all: "We modern men are, thanks to the complicated mechanism of our 'starry firmament', determined by differing moralities". Foucault argues that the philosophy of Plato is only accessible to a small elite, which seems a bit rich, but he says: "I think, that the principal aim, the principal target of this kind of ethics was an aesthetic one. First, this kind was only a problem of personal choice. Second, it was reserved for a few people in the population;... The reason for making this choice was the will to live a beautiful life, and to leave to others memories of a beautiful life".
Foucault is not ignorant of the fact that Plato and others like him were not overly concerned with religious problems. They were much more concerned with their moral conduct, their ethics, and their relations to themselves and others. Foucault writes: "My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my positivism leads not to apathy but to a hyper- and pessimistic activism. I think that the ethico-political choice we have to make everyday is to determine which is the main danger".
I think it is interesting to note that Foucault recognised that Plato's idea that the contemplation of oneself would lead to the dissipation of one's illusions, was an ontological rather than a psychological form of contemplation. He contends: "Plato asks, "How can the eye see itself?" The answer is apparently very simple, but in fact it is very complicated. For Plato, one cannot simply look at oneself in the mirror. One has to look into another eye, that is, one in oneself, however in oneself in the shape of the eye of the other. And there, in the other pupil, one will see oneself: the pupil serves as a mirror. And, in the same manner, the soul contemplating itself in another soul (or in the divine element of the other soul), which is like its pupil, will recognise its divine element". Plato asks us to seek detachment from our self in order that we see ourselves as we truly are, and in doing so we can more effectively procure the well-being of our souls, rather than being blindly driven by our desires and impulses.
But, both Plato and Nietzsche are fundamentally concerned with the potential meaninglessness of their lives, and their philosophies are an attempt to provide meaning and substance to an otherwise meaningless existence. For Savater (1996) a fundamental feature of life is to combine a consideration and acceptance of desire, with the idea that we share the world with other desiring beings. And that it is only through the recognition of this that one can ever hope to achieve the fulfillment of one's desires. Savater tells us: "I want to identify myself with an object that is infinite, that is to say, I want to recognize you so that you may recognize me. Thus the theme of recognition turns out to have a profoundly ethical content, namely this: that I cannot receive from other people more than I myself am prepared freely and generously to give to them. The more I keep back from them, the more of my own human reality I will turn out to lose". One's main concern then is not with the repressing of one's desires but with a consideration of a more open and honest way of securing one's own happiness. A view not too different from Plato, and perhaps even Nietzsche himself.
References:
Nietzsche, F., Beyond Good and Evil (Penguin Books Ltd, London : 1990).
Plato, Gorgias (Penguin Books Ltd, Middlesex: 1960).
04/01/2012
Memoirs of an Idyll
Memoirs of an Idyll
Grieving now.
Quarter of a Century gone.
Can transport myself.
Evoke a past idyll.
Invoke the best stuff.
I lost my Dad.
And can now allow myself
To feel.
To feel sad.
The last in line am I.
Of my paternity.
Died the age I am now.
A tragedy.
S. Camplin
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