Make Sense of Feelings

On the Third essay, section 17, to On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche proposes to live life by feeling all of the emotions which is contrary to religion.

According to the great religions, such as Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism the ultimate goal to strive for in life is ‘salvation.’ Salvation from whom and from what?  Nietzsche writes, “we want to pay due respect to ‘salvation.’ ” (p. 101) Salvation is possible when one reaches “absence of suffering.” Therefore, one becomes saved, with the help of the ascetic priests, by becoming numb to all feelings including those that cause pain. The cause of the pain and suffering is sin and guilt.  The ascetic priests provide the antidote by way of “total hypnosis and silence” until there is complete nothingness. They numb or narcotize the feelings to remove anything “that arouses the emotions and heighten the ‘blood.’ ” (p. 97)

The ascetic priests pose as doctors. They claim to be ‘saviors.’ In their struggle to alleviate the discomfort of suffering they do not attack the cause from its root. They treat it only from the surface by numbing the feelings. Nietzsche writes, “these people so weary of life that they are too weary even to dream,” (p. 101) they are sleepy and drowsy themselves. The priests have also been anesthetized to having any feelings including those that cause pain. Even the priest fear life so much that they do not dream of the possibility that they can be saved and attain “entry to Brahma, as a union mystical with God achieved,” (p. 101) so they go through life as zombies in deep sleep.   

Suffering is caused by being aware of life’s pleasures and desires. Nietzsche states, “it is a little difficult for us to remain serious, in view of the value placed on deep sleep.” How can we take the priest serious when they preach severe abstinence from feeling all of our emotions; when they themselves are numb to feeling anything, especially pain. They place a high value on hypnosis and for us to become their puppet. They preach that we should go through life without having our own thoughts and feelings.  It is hard to listen to them when they themselves are numb and narcotized to a pain they do not know how to cure. In that way they reduce their feelings and awareness of life. It is as if they are walking zombies, a living death, that is they are numb to all feelings and desires that give life. To be saved is to go without, to lose self and in that way become blessed in Nietzsche’s word to reach a level of ‘sanctification’. To be sanctified for religion is to be pure of any and all thoughts and feelings. 

  Nietzsche sees religion as a way of numbing and blocking all feelings of life; rather than to be active and exist in the world by enjoying its pleasures. What the priests do is to ‘narcotize’ to sooth the consciousness from any awareness of itself. This Nietzsche calls a “physiological feeling of obstruction.”  (p. 96) They numb the feelings and bury them deeper into the self instead of allowing them to surface into awareness. What happens after being numb is the ‘loss of self’ what he calls “religion” by “hypnotization.”  (p. 96) Nietzsche suggests going deep into consciousness where the “treasure trove” will be found. Deep underneath the pain will be the value of self.

According to Nietzsche ‘salvation’ is not reached by way of narcotizing feelings of pain. He suggests we feel all the feelings including pain to become painfully aware of them and of ourselves in an attempt to make sense and find our own meanings.

What would happen if priests would advise, not to abstain for salvation; but, to feed our heart’s desires and live life with passion allowing feelings to guide us?

Priests and life

“So what do ascetic ideals mean?” With this question Nietzsche begins to develop his third essay, and, through this question, he begins to delineate and build up to what ascetic ideals mean in reference to philosophers and ascetic priests.
To begin with, Nietzsche contrasts, with complete thoroughness, how philosophers and ascetic priests hold opposing views to the valuation of life. In the beginning of section 9 Nietzsche says that “a hard and hearty renunciation with a good will, belongs among the most favourable conditions for the highest spirituality…” (81). This, apparently, is referring to the philosophers who go about into the “desert.” This positive renunciation is healthy in Nietzsche’s account because these strong individuals are built for the affirmation of existence in all its forms. In a very simplified way, Nietzsche holds the philosophers to this highest spirituality because they “are thinking of themselves…” (77). This, perhaps, is in relation to what he states in the preface: that “we are unknown to ourselves…” (3);
As for the ascetic priests, in Nietzsche’s view, they hold the ideals of the weaker part of humanity—and for several reasons; the main one being their rejection of this world and of themselves (85). In articulating their apparent negation of life, Nietzsche also says that within this notion of the ascetic priest lies an inherent contradiction. This contradiction is that, in negating the life of this world—because of their inborn weakness?—they are affirming life, they are giving a “yes” to life (88).
But the question comes back to itself, “what do ascetic ideals mean?” Nietzsche states it very clearly on page 88 that the ascetic ideal is used as a form of comfort in regards to the problem of existence. The ascetic priests, because they belong to the weaker part of humanity, and also because of the deprived situation that they are born into—their weak nature—give yes to life through their negation of life; in other words, it is a way of coming to terms with their weak natures.
All in all, all this talk of ascetic ideals ties into his talk of noble and slave morality. There is a change in interpretation of what ascetic ideals mean when viewed through the scope of the strong and spirited natures and what they mean for those of the weaker nature. Ascetic ideals, for the strong and spirited natures, is a way of coming to know themselves, whereas for the weaker ones it is used as a cover because they harbor a “deep disgust for themselves…” (85).

Overcomming Forgetting

In the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morals, one of Nietzsche's problems is with promises and the issue of forgetting. There is no doubt that forgetfulness or claiming to have forgotten something is a big issue amongst everyone in society. Every day, someone makes a promise or a commitment: I will get my homework done for tomorrow's class; I will pay my cell phone bill by the 30th of the month. And the next day in class or on the 30th of the month our excuse for not having it done is always "I forgot." Nietzsche addresses this by setting up two requirements for making a promise: we must have memory--or the ability to keep ourselves from forgetting a particular event--and the ability to keep that promise in the future. But to have the ability to remember, we must overcome our instincts in forgetting, so how do we get over this problem? The answer is simply through punishment.

The case Nietzsche uses as an example is the creditor/debtor relationship. The creditor gives the debtor money after receiving a promise that the money will be paid back in x amount of time. When that promise is not kept, the creditor is able to punish the debtor in anyway. According to Nietzsche this is done so the debtor does not forget to fulfill his promise of repayment. But does this make sense? Would punishment inspire remembering in the one being punished? In this instance it seems it can work in that way. To get a better picture, lets use the government/citizen relationship. The government creates a set of laws that must be followed to live in a peaceful society. The citizen must make a promise to follow these laws in order to be protected by them. If a citizen were to break the law, it would not be a case of forgetting the law or forgetting the promise made, it would just be a case of taking a bad action and they would be punished and it would be a public event. The rest of the citizens seeing this punishment, will remember to make sure they follow each law given. The public display of punishment is just an informal way of saying “this could be you.” When the viewing citizens remember this punishment, they will remember not to take the same action. Forgetfulness, in a sense, has been overcome.

When thinking about it in a more modern sense, it works. Professors, bosses, and even parents all have their way of getting over the “I forgot” excuse. When you forget to turn the lights out before going to bed, your parents may punish you by forcing you to chip in every month. After that first payment, you remember to turn off the light. When you show up to class ten minutes late, your professor calls you out. You remember to be on time. When you forget to tuck your shirt in before starting your shift, your boss will write you up. The next day you remember to be properly dressed for work.

But I still can’t help but feel there is more to overcoming forgetting than simply punishment. Isn’t the creditor just as much capable of making a mistake as is the debtor? How do they overcome that? In the case where a debtor was wrongly punished because the creditor forgot about a deadline extension previously discussed? How would this forgetfulness be addressed?

Genealogy - Preface

Most of us have certain moral inclinations that we hold onto very dearly, and most of the time the things which we speak of in passionate terms are spoken in moral language. In our most heated conversations on topics such as politics, many of us stand strongly behind our opinions because we believe them to be morally right. Most people believe that murder is absolutely wrong and very few will try to justify unwarranted murder, but what are we talking about when we talk about what is good/bad and right/wrong? What is truth? We like to believe that there is an absolute Truth somewhere out there in the world that can back up our moral feelings – people argue that such and such is wrong because people are sentient beings capable of suffering and causing unnecessary suffering is wrong, because of some God who is the origin of all essential values and God declared that killing is wrong, etc. Whatever the rationale is, often we speak as if there is an absolute truth to what we say. Some even argue that moral language can be translated and applied to a distant culture and/or time, and many insist on holding onto this notion of an absolute truth because they fear that to suggest that truth as something that varies in accordance to a particular set of values/language of a particular time and culture is to reduce that which we hold on to as having moral weight to nothingness. But are the ones who insist on the existence of some absolute truth trying to assert dominance of power? In Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche is addressing the easy attitude some people take towards truth, as if truth lies in some essence in the world and can be guaranteed. Nietzsche shakes the reader out of her comfort zone by suggesting that values are invented under certain conditions (5) so it does not have some absolute origin/Truth it can fall back on. It appears that many of our moral language, or just language in general which we use to describe the world around us, evolves over time. How we understand the world today is very different from our cultural predecessor in history, yet if look backwards in time we see a gradual evolution of language and values, so morality is something like Darwinian evolution; it is a historical process, yet it does not have a rational end/goal because there is no origin/purpose, and its direction is as random as the particular events that shapes them. Nietzsche notes that the language/values which we use to look outward into the world and by which we judge the world has not been examined. As Nietzsche said, we need a “critique of moral values” (7) as “people have taken the value of these 'values' as given, as factual, as beyond all questioning”. To Nietzsche, this critique is important because he sees the system of morality during his time as one that is ultimately detrimental to society.

Nietzsche’s Spontaneous Nobles and Clever Slaves

In his first essay: ‘Good and Evil’, ‘Good and Bad’ in On the Genealogy of Morality, Friedrich Nietzsche discusses mankind’s development of morality. The development of morality contained two distinct but related accounts; slave and noble. Slave morality can be easily understood if associated with Judeo-Christian ethics of selfless-ness and utilitarianism. Within slave morality, the weak are seen as ‘good’, and the violent and powerful are seen as ‘evil’. The slave morality was intellectually formulated.

However, the original account of morality was that of the nobles’. Noble morality did not create value-judgments based on what was useful. “Instead it has been ‘the good’ themselves, meaning the noble, the mighty, the high-placed and the high-minded, who saw and judged themselves and their actions as ‘good’” (11). The Noble’s morality was spontaneously created and was used only to form a pathos of distance between the powerful (the nobles) and the weak (the slaves) (11). Pathos of distance refers to the value laden distance created to distinguish between two groups. The noble was only concerned with being active and happy (21).

The slave on the other hand was more passive, clever and docile. Slave morality developed in opposition to the nobles and their morality. The slaves, who repeatedly suffered at the hands of the powerful nobles, convinced themselves that being weak was their own choice. Slave morality emerged as the slaves labeled the nobles and their actions as ‘evil’. The slave turned their natural condition of suffering at the hands of others into a condition which should be desired. Humility and selfless-ness were raised as the highest values by the slave. Weakness became ‘good’, and power became ‘evil’. The slaves’ natural passivity forced them to be cleverer than the nobles (21). The slave had to think of a justification for the suffering inherent in their existence. The slave account of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is dialectically opposed to that of the nobles’. The nobles’ account of ‘bad’ is all that the slave embodies; the nobles’ account of ‘good’ is the slaves’ account of ‘evil’. Would a proper morality form as the outcome of a Hegelian dialectic between these two accounts of morality?

Nietzsche’s discussion of noble morality reminds me of the character Alex from A Clockwork Orange (both film and book). In A Clockwork Orange, Alex leads a group of young boys around his city, raping, killing, fighting, and doing as they please. Alex refers to this as “the ultraviolent”. Alex also has an appreciation for aesthetics as he enjoys Ludwig Van Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony, especially the 4^th movement, commonly known as the Ode to Joy. Alex only has an account of ‘good’. His actions seem to be highly spontaneous. He rarely seems to have a plan of what he will do, he only acts. The closest he gets to forming an idea of what is ‘bad’ is when he discusses how he despises the weakness of a homeless old man. Is Alex a good example of what Nietzsche would consider a noble?

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Keith Pearson, and Carol Diethe. On the genealogy of morality. Rev. student ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Print.

Desire for Recognition (old blog)

blog post 1.

mastery and servitude, Desire for recognition.

In this portion of the phenomenology, Hegel writes about the desire for recognition of others. He begins by saying that the consciousness of one is only able to know itself through others. I believe that he means this, that if you can only know yourself through the struggle of two people between mastery and servitude. To be understood better this should be broken down into two parts; the first part about the actual recognition, and the second part about the struggle between master and slave between dominant and submissive. To support the idea that one can only know oneself through others it is easier to think of one person by him or herself. What kind of person would that be? Hegel believes that the person would lose his identity in that he wouldn't know who he is. And that the only way that he could know himself is through the recognition of others. It is like saying that if I found a heavy bat, however how do you know that the bat is the heaviest in the world unless one can compare it with others. Another way of thinking about it is to say that if there is a small island and on this island there are people and on this island there is one man who is the tallest man on the island. Now let us say that the average height of these people is 3 feet. Now let us imagine that a lost ship crashes on the island, and this ship is from another island where the average size of the people is 5 feet tall. Now let us say that they are all killed upon impact and that the smallest man survives and that the smallest man is 4 feet tall. This man would now be the tallest and the man who was the tallest no longer is. Of course to take this metaphor one step further would be to say that there was only one man on an island. How would he know if he was strong, weak, smart, or dumb? In fact Hegel would say that the man has no idea of himself and no concept of who he is.
The next part of this piece is the desire for recognition. Hegel says when any two people meet there is a struggle that takes place for recognition. Lacking a better comparison, I'd say that the two people struggle for dominance. Hegel says that this is always what happens when two people interact for the first time. Recognition can only occur when one submits to the other's dominance. What I am confused is why must this be so? Can't there be some sort of sharing of recognition, or would it only work if it was like flipping a coin each day to see which is the dominant and which is the submissive one. Hegel would say that this cannot happen ever. The idea of a flip of a coin determining type of personality is impossible because people are not like that. Something tells me that there must be a way that there can be shared dominance or a mutual cooperation.

Kierkegaard's Paradox of Faith

In Problem I of Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard addresses a biblical, paradoxical dilemma: why does Abraham abandon his ethical duty to his son and choose to kill him? More specifically, Kierkegaard explores Abraham’s “teleological suspension of the ethical.” Drawing upon the traditional notions of ethics from Hegel and Kant, Kierkegaard establishes that the ethical is the universal, in which the individual has a telos (end or purpose) in the universal (46). The ethical describes the rational and normative aspects of morality that all people should abide by, for example, how Kant’s Categorical Imperative sets up rational, universal maxims. Under this traditional notion, all actions should strive towards the universal as their end or purpose. Kierkegaard uses Abraham’s conflict between his duty to his son (his ethical duty) and to God (his duty to his faith) to underline the paradox of faith. By critiquing the objectivism of the ethical and through the paradox of faith, Kierkegaard attempts to reestablish the value of faith – faith being outside of reason.

In order to explain the paradox of faith, Kierkegaard highlights Abraham’s conflict. In the story of Abraham, Isaac represents Abraham’s ethical duty – that a father should love his son more than himself (49). Why does Abraham suspend his ethical duty? Abraham wishes to express his duty to God in order to prove his faith. Since Abraham’s telos lies in the universal, he must conform to it (and thus save his son) in order to act morally. However, if he wishes to prove his faith and to act as an individual, he is guilty of acting immorally (53-54). Abraham’s dilemma is a paradox of faith – his telos (which lies in the universal) and faith (which is outside of the universal) are in opposition. Kierkegaard describes that faith is a paradox because “the single individual is higher than the universal.” In other words, Abraham is placing his single individual relationship with the divine above his ethical duty to his son.

This paradox, Kierkegaard argues, cannot be mediated and is “inexplicable” (58). Unlike Hegel’s notion of faith, which is part of reason and knowledge, Kierkegaard’s notion of faith is not reducible to rational or conceptual ideas. Abraham’s duty to God cannot be mediated on ethical grounds because he is acting as a single individual rather than in the realm of universals. Abraham is acting outside rationality. Kierkegaard puts Abraham’s actions into perspective: Abraham is “either a murder or we are at the paradox that is higher than all mediations” (54). If Hegel is correct and the ethical is the universal, Abraham becomes lost because he remains guilty of violating his ethical duty and transforms into a murderer (58). Kierkegaard might be suggesting that we must conceive of an ultimate human goal or telos that is beyond the universal or what is rational, stressing the value of singular purposes each single individual may have.

Kierkegaard concludes that we can only understand Abraham’s dilemma as a paradox. Kierkegaard is emphasizing that faith cannot be merely an expression of the ethical as Hegel would argue. In order to acknowledge Abraham as the “father of faith,” we must have a notion that is above the ethical and that emphasizes the individual (58). However, how can we think of a non-rational (quite absurd notion) existing beyond what is rational? Although Kierkegaard is showing his readers the value of faith, Abraham’s actions still remain questionable. It seems that Kierkegaard believes that Abraham’s actions are not punishable because they are beyond rationality. Should a person's duty to God, the one-on-one relationship between a person and the divine, become his or her telos? This idea Kierkegaard may be proposing in this section is quite radical. Abraham must believe that his faith to God is stronger or more important than his duty to his son – not only a paradoxical statement, but peculiar and selfish.

This point becomes more vivid when Kierkegaard’s paradox of faith is applied to the Doomsday Killer in the Showtime series Dexter. The Doomsday Killer is carrying out his duty to God to signal the end of the world by reenacting biblical stories of the second coming, which leads to the murder of several innocent people. His accomplice is convinced that he must assist in these murderous reenactments to prove his faith to God. However, by carrying out their duty to God, they are suspending themselves from the ethical – the universal responsibility for citizens to obey society's laws against murder. Are these actions justified since they are what lie in faith, what is beyond the rational? Although sensational fiction, the Doomsday Killer highlights that there is perspectivism in religion (and the single individual) that can lead to radicalism if there is no rationalizing force present to judge our actions.

Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, ed. C. Stephen Walsh and Sylvia Walsh (Cambridge): Cambridge University Press, ISBN: 0521612691.