Sep
30
Nietzsche on the Opposition
Filed Under nietzsche, philosophy | 1 Comment
Posted elsewhere on the Internet in another guise, but I thought it good enough to repeat here.
“They have got rid of the Christian God, and now feel obliged to cling all the more firmly to Christian morality; that is English consistency….
Christian morality is a command: its origin is transcendental; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticize; it possesses truth only if God is truth - it stands or falls with the belief in God. - If the English really do believe they will know, of their own accord, ‘intuitively,’ what is good and evil; if they consequently think they no longer have need of Christianity as a guarantee of morality; that is merely the consequence of the ascendancy of Christian evaluation and an expression of the strength and depth of this ascendancy…”
- Nietzsche, “Twilight of the Idols”
What is most interesting about this passage is that Nietzsche is indirectly saying that those who are most critical of Christianity but presuppose Judeo-Christian norms are, in a sense, more deeply accepting of Christianity than they would like to admit.
Which raises an interesting question - are those who are proclaimed secularists in actuality agreed on such norms? It would seem that the emphasis on rights, on the freedom to speak and worship, actually has a lot to do with the potential for evangelism for any cause. It would also seem that the crusade for such things as political correctness, or saving the environment, or keeping the rich from getting richer have a lot to do with getting rid of feeling guilty for being “intolerant” or “powerful” merely by virtue of existing. This could be interpreted as a form of guilt for merely being human acting itself out in our society today.
Even those who claim we can explain all physical and moral phenomena via evolution might be acting out something in accordance with this “weak form” of Christianity that might exist. After all, to say that our nature is contingent on how we respond to our environs, environs that are not exactly gentle, is to pretty much say that since the world is fallen, we must be fallen too.
Your thoughts and responses are most welcome. Is this an accurate way of viewing the opponents of the established and traditional?
Sep
28
Wisdom vs. Prudence
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When one puts the problem in the abstract, saying something such as “Are wisdom and prudence the same thing,” one does the problem a massive injustice. It is a very real problem, and it exists in everyday life.
There’s no doubt in my mind that some of my professors are genuinely wise, as they’ve given me insights that make me see the world differently, and see others for who they truly are. I can’t just say “all this crap is book learning,” because book learning goes very, very far, even in terms of practical issues. It was deGaulle’s book on tank warfare that made the German war machine so feared during the Second World War - and remember, “war” in a deep way is the enemy of thought. Emerson and Thoreau, for all their hippie nonsense, are onto something deep. Peace ought to be had through thought, since conversation between those who are like-minded but willing to challenge each other and themselves results in a “conflict” where there is no hostility but rather understanding when all is said and done.
But are my professors prudent? Aristotle says prudence and wisdom can diverge, despite the fact that prudence stems from proper perception, guided by first principles. Such a proper perception, an “intellection,” is one of the intellectual virtues that concerns the unchangeable things. But prudence itself concerns the changeable. The divergence becomes even sharper when one brings about the notion of wisdom, that of comprehensive knowledge of the whole.
Look, in our own lives, when we give good advice, advice we consider wise, we lay out a number of possibilities and discuss which ones are more realistic and which ones not. We prepare for every situation in theory. This is wisdom more than prudence, perhaps - all of us know that we go through this routine, and barely get it right half the time. There’s something about prudence which involves action, and not fully thinking through a problem, maybe.
As I write this, I’m realizing that half-assed theorizing we do might be prudence. After all, drawing up an effective play for a football offense isn’t about prudence as much as it is about cleverness; similarly, imposing one’s will on a battlefield is just about that, imposing one’s will. But the danger still lies in making thoughtful statesmen, no? If one asks them to be prudent, they will be slower to act in a world where action has already slowed to a crawl.
Hmm. Your thoughts are welcome.
Sep
27
Decline & Fall
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Someone asked me about the faculty situation in the University the other day, and I gave my conspiracy theory response, which is as follows.
The big problem with universities is that none of them are hiring new faculty. The market for new PhD’s is terrible; the Chronicle of Higher Education consistently has horror stories where very well-credentialed, intelligent people have put 20-40 job applications to schools across the country and can barely get hired at a community college, if they get hired at all.
I surmise that the failure of academic jobs to exist has nothing to do with a lack of funds on the part of the universities, but rather a congruence of interests. There are two major actors involved in creating positions that need to be filled: the administration of a school, and the current faculty there.
The administration of any given school usually has business types in it, people who “know” from business that the way a cost-effective unit is run is that production is maximized and labor hours are kept to a minimum. You would think faculty are up in arms about this, but the same logic which leads one to want more power - and faculty, as we all know, are tyrannical by nature - also leads one to be paranoid about their standing. The safest position a faculty member can be in is that of being necessary to the existence of the University. The fewer in a department, the more indispensible - and there will be, of course, more opportunities for serving on committees, etc. - those faculty members will be. Also, to create a top notch academic department in a given field means a faculty member has to put aside his own ego, and admit someone is better, and try to pay that someone more than he is being paid. So why not eliminate the problem of having bright, thoughtful colleagues from the start, and just have fewer colleagues to begin with?
This congruence of interest is why I think the University, as an institution, is finished. We are expert at churning out mediocre academics that can barely even manage to be trendy nowadays; the most boring blogs I’ve read have been created by academics (my blog is boring, too, so I guess I’m not exempt from this). As always, the question of what needs to happen now, or whether I drew this picture correctly, is for you to consider.
Sep
25
Hmm.
Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
I’m pissed at her.
I don’t really know why.
I want to forgive, but I can only forget.
Sep
21
“The harsh Helot condition to which the tremendous extent of science has condemned every single person today is one of the main reasons why education and educators appropriate to fuller, richer, deeper natures are no longer forthcoming. Our culture suffers from nothing more than it suffers from the superabundance of presumptuous journeymen and fragments of humanity; our universities are, against their will, the actual forcing-houses for this kind of spiritual instinct-atrophy. And all Europe already has an idea of this - grand politics deceives no one… Germany counts more and more as Europe’s flatland. - I am still looking for a German with whom I could be serious after my fashion - how much more for one with whom I might be cheerful! - Twilight of the Idols: ah, who today could grasp from how profound a seriousness a hermit is here relaxing! - The most incomprehensible thing about us is our cheerfulness…”
- Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
Like all Nietzsche, this passage starts out in a way that I think I actually know what he’s talking about, and then he moves to more ambiguous territory. I understand the part about science taking away from our students that which can fulfill and empower: instead of being taught to make thoughtful choices or to build beautifully or even - gasp - to sacrifice, they are taught to “achieve,” where medals and pieces of paper confirm that yes, they are cogs in a machine.
What I do not understand begins with the second sentence quoted. What are the “presumptuous journeymen” and “fragments of humanity?” And what is the “will” of a university?
In today’s university, we have scholars that get hired for a price, and students that are enrolled because their tuition pays the university’s bills. I suppose “fragments of humanity” could refer to our using of textbooks and readers, that give fragments of the past’s voices, as opposed to the full say of a past thinker. But the university thrives on this sort of idiocy, as it makes money and creates trends and problems so as to assert its relevance among the populace, which could care less for the “deeper” natures. And I don’t think the German universities of Nietzsche’s time, while they might have been nationalist, and not terribly capitalist, can be exempted from this critique. They wanted cogs in a machine ultimately.
So Nietzsche must mean that the University has a higher purpose than any particular university can conceive. But if I say that, then what do I do with “all of Europe knows this?” Do we in America really know what we’re missing when we’ve turned colleges into just another way of getting more sports on TV? It would seem Nietzsche thinks the University’s higher purpose is knowable by the populace, and that the populace is sufficiently ironic and sarcastic as to not give a damn about that higher purpose.
There is another way to interpret these lines - we could say that German universities had a different purpose than ours, and that the German people knew they were diluting nationalism with a push towards the utility of the sciences. The problem with that reading is that it is too narrow. In a lot of ways, we’re Prussia/Germany in the late 19th century. Our university system comes from there primarily. While we’re not as imperial, we blindly follow political correctness the way they indulged in Anti-Semitism. And we can be bloodthristy and anarchic - as if we were never taught to behave, or never respected law as a good - when given the chance. The question is not the particular politics of the times, but rather the fact that the same forces are driving their politics and ours. It doesn’t matter if we blindly adhere to liberal democracy and they were consumed with nationalism. It’s all stupid, just to varying degrees, because the key force is our irrationality.
It is with all that in mind we come to the last lines of this passage. The idols are in retreat because of modern science, and whatever the pieties of the people are, they are dependent on the illusion that secularism actually exists, that if they do not designate a holy they are beyond worshipping anything blindly. The hermit - he who in previous ages would be most spiritual - now can play, can be free to think fully and with an intensity once reserved only for saintliness. Society’s loss of goals means, ironically enough, the ability for a newly empowered individual to arise. This need not be a turn to tyranny, as the reevaluation of all values, which only the greatest of men can perform, presupposes a sentiment which only the greatest of men have. The counter to empire in politics, empire being manifest in our desire for science to produce technology, need not be defined by simple piety anymore, but rather by a genuine love of freedom that characterizes the searching for the divine, the mark of the most spiritual.