Nietzsche/Wolfe-Another Perspective

Okay, first of all I have not blogged for a while been busy but also wanted to make sure my reasoning was ok on this one. This is another view that spun off the blog by Chris Horrie , one of the tutors at westmin uni Journalism. The blog was concerned with Tom Wolfe and his views on Nietzsche and can be found at Changing Journalism.

This was my view:

But you will fail, he warned, because you cannot believe in moral codes without simultaneously believing in a god who points at you with his fearsome forefinger and says "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not."

Is this necessarily the case? Just because Nietzsche is one of the more modern political thinkers does not mean he sweeps over old philosophical traditions like new research into science would.

Firstly from the ancient Greek philosophers we learned that what is centrally important to human existence is our ability to reason. This is not logical steps or even rationality as we can sometimes behave in neither manner, but our ability to use our sometimes fallible logic and rational ability to reason in the abstract, i.e. imagine a world without moral codes and thus reason that moral codes are necessary regardless of an existence of a god.

This leads on to social contract theory and also leans on liberal thinkers such as John Stuart Mill. For example one of his arguments can be summed up thus. The right for me to throw my fist ends at your face. This is because my liberty should not infringe on your liberty. If one adds in the principle of utility we can draw a social contract of morals without the need for a god. This would go like this:

I cannot go round randomly killing people. Why? This would be wrong? Why? Because other people will also be free to kill me! Do I want this? No! Why? As I would not be able to live my life and fulfil whatever potential I have.

Having reasoned that killing people is not a good idea I have to convince others of this. Supposedly if my persuasion is good enough and they are reasonable enough they would agree with my idea. Together these others would sign a social contract to enable us to walk around and freely live our lives. The reason why we don’t kill each other is because living is a more preferable situation than being dead. Thus the utility of everyone living supersedes the liberty of people to freely kill each other.

Show me the god in that argument. Also show me somebody who would not see that as a reasonable argument for do not kill. However we can still shorten this using Orwell’s principle of to the point language back to the original You Shall not Kill. Just the reason is different!

As for the “barbaric brotherhoods of Nazism and Communism” both of these were borne out of flawed and downright malicious interpretations of philosophical works principally Marx and ironically Nietzsche himself. I shall avoid paradoxical arguments about if Nietzsche had not written about the Ubermensch and the Will to Power whether the Nazis would have been able to exploit and twist them for now. Clearly though these brotherhoods were not simply a creation of destiny but malignant human beings.

Nationalism, which the Nazis also perverted in their nasty time in power, is in itself not necessarily a bad phenomenon. Without nationalism it is harder to justify democracy for example-rule by ones peers. Well surely those peers have to be defined somehow and usually it is as citizens. Citizens of what? Well, a nation. That does not necessarily mean Britain, which is a state. A nation is a people with a common language, history, culture etc. However at no point is nationalism necessarily advocating demolishing other nations. That there is expansionist nationalism returns us again to the machinations of the human mind.

However, nationalism can be creative not destructive. For example the desire to preserve customs and traditions against an aggressor, like the free Tibetan movement in the face of Chinese occupation.

Because of man's track record, I should think.

Precisely, there in lies the enigma and answer to the problem. Once we thought the Sun revolved around the Earth. Until we stop making excuses for ourselves and have another paradigm shift-that we are at the centre of our thoughts, actions, beliefs-than we will continue to have wars.

Yes wars were bloodier in the twentieth century. But then the technology of war was also bloodier.

Religion too has had its bad days, atheism is not the only killer.

The Crusades, surely a religious fight if ever there was one was hardly less bloody in context of the era, technological or otherwise.

The Spanish armada, although a failure, also had a religious motive as well as a political one.

There were the wars of religion in France from 1562-1598.

Today, one can argue against Nietzsche’s assertion that God is Dead, as he seems to be making something of a comeback, perhaps Nietzsche missed a trick by not patenting cycles of religious belief followed by belief in non-religious rationality. The disillusionment with one reinvigorates the other.

In the present day religion can also be “blamed” for some atrocities. Have not Islamic fundamentalists created their own “barbaric brotherhoods” with which they terrorise others. “Infidels” are basically anyone that do not conform to the fundamentalists violent expansionist version of Islam be they atheist, Christian, Jew, Buddhist and even Muslims. This terrorism has fuel dumped on the fire by the religious right in America, where the priincipal battle ground is Iraq

Yet the Bible or the Koran does not kill people. Human beings who interpret scripture strictly, or more likely bring their own twisted strict interpretation to scripture kill people. This can be applied to Christianity as much as Islam. Back to thou shalt not kill again in the ten commandments. There are no ifs for aggressive wars, no buts for capital punishment just a full stop at the end of thou shalt not kill.

Thus like an atomic wind through the neurones there seems a recurring theme. At the centre of the chaos, the death, the crumbling edifices of “gods”, be they religious or psychological, past, present or future ones like genetics and neuroscience, remain humans.

Perhaps that is the truth to which Dawkins refers and of which we should not be afraid.

But perhaps the truth hurts the most of all and that IS why we run, and we erect barriers and “gods” as excuses. The New God never dies as we create new ones like neuroscience to excuse our actions “I’m wired wrong!” or “My Genes made me do it!”

Remove these excuses and we have to take a long hard cold look in the mirror and into our own eyes and see whether we do have souls and what souls they are. Ultimately, who we as a species want to be and perhaps that’s the revaluation, of which Nietzsche referred, we need.

If we are Hobbesian bastards we WILL fail but then perhaps we deserve to. If on the other hand we are not, using reason we CAN create moral codes out of respect and empathy for our fellow man, and maybe then we can Will to Power in the more creative manner, which Nietzsche envisaged, possibly using our will power to realise it is us that control our actions and their consequences rather than some “gods” we create.

Ultimately, you can believe what you want to believe, that is the beauty of life and your own will to choose your beliefs.

Just don’t close your mind; it’s the only sound worse than a closing door.