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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26783 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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You and Lewis are basically arguing against the weakest possible version of the anti-egalitarian position. No one thinks we should beat old men because they can't cross the street fast enough. That's just silly.

Wouldn't it be a lot more interesting and enlightening to argue against the strongest version of the position you disagree with? If you're going to critique anarchism, wouldn't you rather go after Bakunin and Kropotkin, instead of teenagers who just like to light shit on fire?

No one thinks we should beat old men because they can't cross the street fast enough. That's just silly.

That's slave morality right there, friend. The old and weak should know when to yield to the young and strong; if they're social inferiors, they should always be aware that they must defer to the squire and get out of his way, or better yet not get in the way in the first place. If they're equals or superiors, they should graciously yield (or, depending how far back we want to get, be slain in combat by the new, virile, younger challenger who ascends to the top of the dungheap over the corpse of the previous alpha).

That's slave morality right there, friend.

See my post elsewhere in the thread on the nature of slave morality, and read essay I of Genealogy of Morality if you want a deeper elaboration. Or just read the whole book. It's unbelievably beautiful.

It's unbelievably beautiful.

I've never found that in previous attempts to read Nietzsche, just ever-more "I really would like to slap this guy hard" reactions.

Respect for the wisdom and status of the elderly is a feature of many societies including those that Nietzscheans would not consider to practice slave morality.

Based on status, though; the old widow gets shoved to the edge of the village to beg or starve, the old male former chief is a respected elder with a voice still in the councils of the village. The old peasant male who gets in the way of the young noble gets shoved out of the way or is supposed to be aware of his surroundings enough to get out of the way.

You and Lewis are basically arguing against the weakest possible version of the anti-egalitarian position. No one thinks we should beat old men because they can't cross the street fast enough. That's just silly.

It's Chesterton, not Lewis, and the argument explicitly is not that people should beat old men because they don't cross the street fast enough. The argument addressed is:

Discipline for the whole society is surely more important than justice to an individual.

and

you must allow for a certain high spirit and haughtiness in the superior type.

and

Just as the sight of sin offends God, so does the sight of ugliness offend Apollo. The beautiful and princely must, of necessity, be impatient with the squalid and...

For this particular brand of argument, it doesn't get more sophisticated than that. There is no stronger version. That's the position, one can either accept it or reject it. @BurdensomeCount wrote quite a lengthy and well-argued post hammering on this exact thesis not too long ago. It's the point of view people argue from here when they cite Nietzche and start throughing around terms like "slave morality". It's the steeliest man of this particular viewpoint that there is.

It's Chesterton, not Lewis

Sorry, I was typing on autopilot, I had AhhhTheFrench's posts on the brain.

Anyway, with regards to Nietzsche's perspective on these points:

Discipline for the whole society is surely more important than justice to an individual.

Nietzsche was, above all else, a meta-philosopher. Despite appearances to the contrary, the ultimate object of his critique and analysis was always, in the last instance, philosophy itself.

His aim was not to give a theory of justice (justice has much too long a history for that - "Today it is impossible to say precisely why people are actually punished: all concepts in which an entire process is semiotically concentrated defy definition; only something which has no history can be defined." - Genealogy of Morality II.13), nor was it even to explain the historical processes by which people might arrive at an incorrect conception of justice. Rather the properly Nietzschean question is to examine the phenomenon of inquiry into justice (or other philosophical concepts) itself - what exactly are you doing when you ask what is justice, or what is beauty, or what is truth? What is the nature of this practice we are engaged in, where we adopt "positions" and give "arguments" to support these positions? What is the origin of this practice, to what uses has it been put, where did it come from and where is it going? (See On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, and also the chapters "The Problem of Socrates" and "Reason in Philosophy" from Twilight of the Idols)

He certainly does spend a great deal of time outlining what appear to be straightforward first-order positions on ethical questions, but these are frequently subject to qualification, revision, and contradiction at various points in his corpus, because his ultimate concern is with the dyanmical unfolding of thought itself rather than with any fixed static position. Less "you believe X" and more "how did you come to hold X? What type of person holds X? What are the conditions of possibility of holding X?"

All that being said as a necessary disclaimer, to show that determining "Nietzsche's conception of justice" is a very fraught question; I'm not sure where in his work you're pulling the claim "Discipline for the whole society is surely more important than justice to an individual" from. To the extent that he ever says anything about the purpose of society as a whole (he is far far more interested in the analysis of individual archetypes, their psychological properties and motivations, etc), he basically thinks that the best thing society can do is to create the conditions for the highest types of individuals to flourish. Society being subordinated to the (or a particular) individual, not the other way around. I can't recall any instance where he talks about a relationship between "discipline" and society. There are innumerable passages where he talks about the opposition between "the herd" and the higher individuals. Gay Science I.3 comes to mind.

you must allow for a certain high spirit and haughtiness in the superior type.

Sure. You can get away with being haughty if people already think you're cool. Trump gets away with antics that most normal people couldn't get away with. A lot of people are fine with this. So I don't think this is a particularly controversial statement, nor does it need a philosophical defense.

Just as the sight of sin offends God, so does the sight of ugliness offend Apollo. The beautiful and princely must, of necessity, be impatient with the squalid and...

There is a passage strikingly similar to this in Genealogy of Morality III.14:

Away with this disgraceful mollycoddling of feeling! That the sick should not make the healthy sick – and this would be that kind of mollycoddling – ought to be the chief concern on earth: – but for that, it is essential that the healthy should remain separated from the sick, should even be spared the sight of the sick so that they do not confuse themselves with the sick. Or would it be their task, perhaps, to be nurses and doctors? . . . But they could not be more mistaken and deceived about their task, – the higher ought not to abase itself as the tool of the lower, the pathos of distance ought to ensure that their tasks are kept separate for all eternity! Their right to be there, the priority of the bell with a clear ring over the discordant and cracked one, is clearly a thousand times greater: they alone are guarantors of the future, they alone have a bounden duty to man’s future. What they can do, what they should do, is something the sick must never do: but so that they can do what only they should, why should they still be free to play doctor, comforter and ‘saviour’ to the sick? . . . And so we need good air! good air! At all events, well away from all madhouses and hospitals of culture! And so we need good company, our company! Or solitude, if need be! But at all events, keep away from the evil fumes of inner corruption and the secret, worm-eaten rottenness of disease! . . . So that we, my friends, can actually defend ourselves, at least for a while yet, against the two worst epidemics that could possibly have been set aside just for us – against great nausea at man! Against deep compassion for man! . . .

But it's worth examining the language closely here (as well as the context of the surrounding passages) to see exactly why Nietzsche is suggesting that "the healthy" should be kept separate from "the sick". It's not because he just thinks, like, being a dick is awesome and fuck sick people. Rather it's because the higher individuals have a special task ("they alone are guarantors of the future"), and this task could be jeopardized if they get bogged down by an excess of despair over the plight of the suffering masses.

The failure mode that Nietzsche is thinking of here would be something like Effective Altruism - maybe you could be a great artist or philosopher, or maybe you could just have a beautiful wife and five kids and a white picket fence, but instead you run yourself ragged working at a job you hate just so you can send all your money to people on the other side of the world who you don't know and who will frankly never reach the same heights of culture and civilization as yourself. Nietzsche doesn't think that's right. Lucky people shouldn't destroy themselves to bring themselves down to the same level as the unlucky.

(It's also crucial to point out that Nietzsche was desperately ill due to a chronic neurological condition for much of his life and frequently bedridden, in addition to just being kind of a loser in his own lifetime who got no personal or professional recognition, so whenever he refers to "the sick", you have to assume that he's at least considering that he could be included in that category as well - and it is precisely this intrusion of the philosopher into his own work, the way the speaker deforms our reception of what is spoken, that is one of the primary meta-philosophical points that he wants us to keep in mind as we read.)

In general Nietzsche is just way too nuanced of a thinker to boil his positions down to a few sentences. There's no substitute for actually reading his original works in their entirety. Just one more example, most people assume that he thinks "the strong" are just straight up better in every way and "the weak" can go get fucked, but look what he says about strength and weakness in All Too Human V.224:

ENNOBLEMENT THROUGH DEGENERATION .— History teaches that a race of people is best preserved where the greater number hold one common spirit in consequence of the similarity of their accustomed and indisputable principles: in consequence, therefore, of their common faith. Thus strength is afforded by good and thorough customs, thus is learnt the subjection of the individual, and strenuousness of character becomes a birth gift and afterwards is fostered as a habit. The danger to these communities founded on individuals of strong and similar character is that gradually increasing stupidity through transmission, which follows all stability like its shadow. It is on the more unrestricted, more uncertain and morally weaker individuals that depends the intellectual progress of such communities, it is they who attempt all that is new and manifold. Numbers of these perish on account of their weakness, without having achieved any specially visible effect; but generally, particularly when they have descendants, they flare up and from time to time inflict a wound on the stable element of the community. Precisely in this sore and weakened place the community is inoculated with something new; but its general strength must be great enough to absorb and assimilate this new thing into its blood. Deviating natures are of the utmost importance wherever there is to be progress. Every wholesale progress must be preceded by a partial weakening. The strongest natures retain the type, the weaker ones help it to develop. Something similar happens in the case of individuals; a deterioration, a mutilation, even a vice and, above all, a physical or moral loss is seldom without its advantage. For instance, a sickly man in the midst of a warlike and restless race will perhaps have more chance of being alone and thereby growing quieter and wiser, the one-eyed man will possess a stronger eye, the blind man will have a deeper inward sight and will certainly have a keener sense of hearing. In so far it appears to me that the famous Struggle for Existence is not the only point of view from which an explanation can be given of the progress or strengthening of an individual or a race. Rather must two different things converge: firstly, the multiplying of stable strength through mental binding in faith and common feeling; secondly, the possibility of attaining to higher aims, through the fact that there are deviating natures and, in consequence, partial weakening and wounding of the stable strength; it is precisely the weaker nature, as the more delicate and free, that makes all progress at all possible. A people that is crumbling and weak in any one part, but as a whole still strong and healthy, is able to absorb the infection of what is new and incorporate it to its advantage. The task of education in a single individual is this: to plant him so firmly and surely that, as a whole, he can no longer be diverted from his path. Then, however, the educator must wound him, or else make use of the wounds which fate inflicts, and when pain and need have thus arisen, something new and noble can be inoculated into the wounded places. With regard to the State, Machiavelli says that, “the form of Government is of very small importance, although half-educated people think otherwise. The great aim of State-craft should be duration, which outweighs all else, inasmuch as it is more valuable than liberty.” It is only with securely founded and guaranteed duration that continual development and ennobling inoculation are at all possible. As a rule, however, authority, the dangerous companion of all duration, will rise in opposition to this.

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