Monday 19 July 2010
Nietzsche Nihilism and sensitivity.
Nietzsche, more than most, feels that pity all too easily slides into nausea at the human condition; and large parts of his work betray his explicit awareness that most people don't share his susceptibility to these corrosive affects. This is true from the earliest works until the latest, though the later works are, at times, more agitated and shrill. What are some of the essential connecting threads between nihilism, pity, nausea, and the increasing praise of 'hardness' from TSZ onwards?
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As regards nihilism, although Nietzsche uses the term in a variety of ways there are two related meanings of the term that are dominant. The first relates to a denial of our actual nature (e.g. its cosmic insignificance, its narcissism and will to power) and an affirmation of an utterly fictitious nature. The second relates to our desiderata with regard to end-states and social relations (e.g. heaven as passivity, nirvana, socialism/anarchism etc). It is an affirmation of states which either cannot or (in Nietzsche's view) should not exist! I offer the following to give a sense of what's at stake in the term.
ReplyDeleteWhat follows is a heavily edited quotation(s) from Nietzsche's unpublished notebooks, and thus should not be taken as his only and settled perspective on this subject. It isn't. Nevertheless, the following remarks will illuminate his confrontation with this issue in some important ways and should ensure certain common misunderstandings are avoided.
Nietzsche: "Nihilism stands at the door: whence comes this most uncanniest of all guests? Point of departure- it is an error to consider "distress" or "physiological degeneration", or worse, "corruption" as the cause of nihilism. Distress cannot of itself give birth to nihilism (ie the radical repudiation of value, meaning, and desirability). Such distress always permits a variety of interpretations. Rather, it is in one particular interpretation, the religious/metaphysical/moral one, that nihilism is rooted.
The sense of truthfulness, developed highly by Christianity (and philosophy), is nauseated by the falseness and mendaciousness of all moral interpretations of the world and history. Skepticism regarding morality is what is decisive. The end of the moral interpretation of the world. "Everything lacks meaning" -since Copernicus man has been rolling from the centre towards an X.
What does nihilism mean? That the highest values [God, truth, love, justice] devalue themselves. The aim is lacking; "Why?" finds no answer. Nihilism is the conviction of the absolute untenability of existence when it comes to the highest values one recognizes. This realisation is a consequence of the cultivation of "truthfulness" - thus itself a consequence of the faith in morality.
What were the advantages of the moral hypothesis? It granted man an absolute value, as opposed to his smallness and accidental occurrence in the flux of becoming and passing away. It conceded to the world, in spite of suffering and evil, the character of perfection- including "freedom": evil appeared full of significance and meaning. For it is not suffering, as such, that is our problem, but the meaninglessness of suffering. It posited that man had a knowledge of absolute values and thus adequate knowledge precisely regarding what is most important. It prevented man from despising himself, from taking sides against life, from despairing of knowledge: it was a means of preservation. In sum: morality was the great antidote against practical and theoretical nihilism.
ReplyDeleteBut among the forces cultivated by morality was truthfulness: this eventually turned against morality, discovered its teleology, its partial perspective. And now we discover in ourselves needs implanted by centuries of moral interpretation - needs that now appear to us as needs for untruths; on the other hand, the value for which we endure life seems to hinge on these needs. And this antagonism- not to esteem what we know and not to be allowed any longer to esteem the lies we should like to tell ourselves - this results in a process of dissolution.
For now the shabby origin of these values is becoming clear, and the universe seems to have lost value, seems "meaningless". One discovers of what material one has built this "better world": and now all one has left is our repudiated world.
Everything egotistic has come to disgust us (even though we realise the impossibility of the un-egotistic); what is necessary has come to disgust us. We see that we cannot reach the sphere in which we have placed our values, dignity, and worth. We are weary because we have lost the main stimulus.
The faith in the categories of reason and morality is the cause of nihilism. For we have measured the value of the world according to categories that refer to a purely fictitious world. All the values by means of which we have tried to render the world estimable for ourselves and which then proved inapplicable and therefore devalued the world- all these values are, psychologically considered, the results of certain perspectives of utility, designed to maintain and increase human constructs of domination- and they have been falsely projected into the essence of the actual world. What we find here is still the hyperbolic naiveté of man: positing himself as the meaning and measure of the value of things.
All who wish to cling to the dignity of man, have the faith that moral values are cardinal values. For often those who have abandoned God cling that more firmly to faith in morality (the more emancipated one is from theology, the more imperativistic morality becomes).
The most powerful desires of life have been hitherto the most slandered, so that a curse weighs on life. For we comprehend that these selfsame instincts are inseparable from life, and one therefore turns against life. Whereas the mass, which has no feeling at all for this conflict, flourishes, while the conflicted type miscarries and, as a product of degeneration, invites antipathy- that the mediocre, on the other hand, when they pose as the goal and meaning of existence, arouse nausea and indignation. And the individual, faced with this tremendous machinery, loses courage and submits. The herd, the mass, "society", unlearns modesty and blows up its needs into cosmic and metaphysical values. In this way the whole of existence is vulgarised; and in so far as the mass is dominant it bullies the exceptions, so that they lose faith in themselves and become nihilists.
ReplyDeleteThe question "for what?", after a painful struggle, even victory. That something is a hundred times more important than the question of whether we feel well or not- and consequently whether others feel well or not. The predominance of suffering over pleasure, or its opposite (hedonism) are already signposts to nihilism. For in both cases no ultimate meaning is posited except the appearance of pleasure or pain. But for any worthy man, the value of life is certainly not measured by the standard of these trifles. A suffering might predominate, and in spite of this, a powerful will might exist, a Yes to life, a need and acceptance of this predominance".
End quotes.
David,
ReplyDeleteDo you plan on adding more quotes to this post?
Why is man, unlike other animals (as it seems), preoccupied with "an absolute value, as opposed to his smallness and accidental occurrence in the flux of becoming and passing away"?
Edarlitrix,
ReplyDeleteYes, like almost all the threads on this blog, it is woefully incomplete. I started the blog as a forum for Nietzsche enthusiasts, where various topics (as I see it) could be more honestly discussed. Alas, that never really happened, "there were no fish"!
Consequently, rather than continue posting in an ad hoc basis, if and when the mood takes me, in order to provoke discussion, i've now decided to "complete" things before I post them. I'm currently working on the "Politics" and the "Caesar" threads, but much editing and tidying up needs to be done before I actually post them. It's very time consuming and I want them to be good, to accurately summarise how I and Nietzsche relate to these subjects. So yes, many more additions will be added to this thread, but, alas, not for some time.
In future, anyone who wants to discus things with me prior to my completion of the relevant thread, will be shunted to the "Suggested Topics to Discuss" thread. It's all very untidy, but i'll get there in the end . . .
The short answer to your question is that becoming and passing away render every moment of joy, peace, happiness, and victory liable to extinction, sooner or later. Everything passes away, nothing lasts, except the process of becoming itself. Every person, every event, every present configuration of things, is unstable, is liable to transform every present tense into a past tense.
This often wounds us, because it denies us any absolute and unconditional possession of any desired state or object. And unwanted separation from any desired state or object betrays our impotence and our vulnerability to forces greater than our own will. This can easily produce despair, hatred, spite, sadness, desolation, anxiety and rage in us.
One way out of this humiliating powerlessness is to posit a transcendent world where transience does not hold sway, and where the unconditional and eternal apply to all sublime things, beyond the (mortal) reach of becoming. Here, for the elect, whether Platonic or Christian, the best will dwell in a realm where the best things will never pass away. Those that advocate this approach tend to be moderate or ascetic in their relations with earthly things, because, as Augustine and earlier Stoics noted, to love the things of the earth is to love things that can be lost against your will. Better to treat the earth, where becoming and passing away reign, as merely an unfortunate temporary abode and place your highest hopes in a transcendent after-life.
To renounce transcendence, and devote yourself to the earth is to render yourself susceptible to the suspicion that the universe doesn't particularly care for your well-being, because it will, in its relentless becoming, render everything earthly you value, transient and unstable.
Augustine say that to love the things of this world amounts to "fornication against God". Nietzsche's whole project is intended to overturn this (nihilistic) perspective.
p.s. If you still want to discus related matters, can I ask you to submit any future post in the "Suggested Topics to Discuss" thread, because at some future time, I will delete these posts when I get around to finishing off this thread?
Thanks.