Huh? More compararive reading needed for me!

Date:   4/23/2005 11:25:41 AM ( 19 y ago)

Varieties of Moral Aestheticism

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The works that are being peddled about nowadays as the philosophy of National Socialism but have nothing whatever to do with the inner truth and greatness of this movement (namely the encounter between global technology and modern man) -- have all been written by men fishing in the troubled waters of "values" and "totalities."
Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 166, Anchor Books, 1961. Boldface added.

Considerate la vostra semenza:
fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza. Consider your origin:
you were not made to live as brutes,
but to pursue virtue and knowledge.


Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, XXVI:118-120 [Charles S. Singleton, Princeton, Bollingen, 1989, p.279]


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While moral aestheticism essentially discards the value and independence of morality, there are in practice degrees to which this is done. Morality can be subordinated to the aesthetic, but still discussed (Rorty, Grassian), or removed as a matter of discourse as well (Taoism, Zen, Pirsig), before it is removed altogether (Nietzsche). Or it can be removed altogether but more or less be observed in practice (Nietzsche, Suzuki), or one can practice immorality as well as talking about it (Heidegger, Herrigel).



A) Victor Grassian (in the ethics textbook Moral Reasoning):
Grassian says that morality is a matter of choosing a "way of life," so that morality depends on one's "ideals." This is generally a morally aesthetistic and relativistic view of things.
But, he seems to have a strong moral sense, makes moral judgments, and believes in a rational discipline of morality -- he has actually written a book about it.

B) Robert Pirsig (in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance):
Pirsig has a strong moral sense and makes moral judgments.
But, he rejects rational moral principles or a rational discipline of morality. He likes the relativistic Sophists better than Socrates or Plato. Quality cannot be Truth.
He is consistent with the morally aesthetic stand of Zen Buddhism, which borrows its principles in this area from the Chinese philosophical school of Taoism. In Taoism, "He who knows, does not speak; and he who speaks, does not know": anyone who talks about something, or intentionally tries to do something, ruins it. The principle is "not-doing," which means not to think, try, intend, or will. Things left alone will work out of themselves, even our own actions. Morality, therefore, is maintained precisely by ignoring any kind of moral discourse or claims. Pirsig says, "Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions...." [p. 267]. Right thoughts and moral action thus follow directly from the proper meditative calmness, not from any kind of inquiry into the truth.
Pirsig, Zen, and Taoism thus believe there is morality, but it is best served by acting as though there isn't. The outcome of this for Taoism in China was that Confucianism picked up the slack and handled the discourse about ethics and politics, while Taoism mostly concerned itself with art, nature, and beauty. Where these Taoist principles were seriously adopted for a system of morality, as in the code of the Samurai (called bushido) in Japan, the result was an aesthetic glorification of violence ("martial arts") and death, with great historical consequences (kamikaze pilots, etc.), which would have been appalling both to Confucius and to old Taoism -- and to Pirsig. Nevertheless, all that Pirsig could say to someone who does not engage in "right actions" would be that they do not have the requisite "peace of mind." To dispute ad rem the merits of the case would be to admit that there is discursive truth in the matter.

C) Friedrich Nietzsche (e.g. in Thus Spoke Zarathustra):
Nietzsche, the self-described "Immoralist" and "Anti-Christ," rejects moral discourse, rational moral principles, and indeed morality altogether. Morality is for "slaves" who are unable or unwilling to seize the power that they want. The (aesthetic) ideal is the Übermensch (Superman or Overman), who is beyond good and evil, who acts on his Will to Power, and who is completely indifferent to the needs, rights, and claims, or existence, of other persons. Grassian presents this as a disagreement over the nature of morality, but it is really a disagreement over whether morality, in any recognizable sense, even exists. An imaginative conception of beings who are morally rather like Nietzsche's Übermenschen may be found in the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft:

The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. ["The Call of Cthulhu," boldface added]
Since Lovecraft believed in an amoral universe, and knew Nietzsche, it is not hard to see where this came from. Although "The Call of Cthulhu" was written in 1926, and Lovecraft's use of "holocaust" is in its etymological sense of burning, his use of the term does frighteningly foreshadow the true later Holocaust, a genuine event of killing, "beyond good and evil," with "laws and morals thrown aside."

On the other hand, Nietzsche personally does not seem morally culpable. He disliked German nationalism and anti-Semitism and so would not have been pleased with the use to which the Nazis (and his own sister, who seems to have told Adolf Hitler that he was the Übermensch) put his ideas. Nietzsche's sympathizers use these facts to defend him and explain how he would never have endorsed the crimes of the Nazis; but is creating a retroactive morality for Nietzsche really something that is conformable with his own thought? Clearly not. Nietzsche would have had nothing but contempt for such a project and for anyone who would think it necessary. Nietzsche probably would not have liked Hitler, and certainly would not have thought of him as an Übermensch, but he could not have made any moral judgments about him.

D) Martin Heidegger (e.g. in An Introduction to Metaphysics):
Heidegger is much like Nietzsche, except that Nietzsche's emphasis on the will and on the individual strikes Heidegger as too "subjective" [now called "metaphysical humanism" by deconstructionists like Jacques Derrida, who has said that he has not said anything that was not already in Heidegger]. For Heidegger, value comes from cosmic dispensations of Being into the Dasein, or manner of existence, experienced by us.
But, Heidegger cannot be defended as Nietzsche can, for he actually joined the Nazi Party, never repented of it, and always despised liberal democracy and modern, commercial society. Heidegger's defenders (e.g. Richard Rorty) must instead claim that his philosophy has nothing to do with his politics. That doesn't work, since Heidegger actually says that man is "terrible" (Gk. deinós) because new "uncoverings" of Being involve a violent "shattering" of "justice" (Gk. díkê). Since that is precisely what the Nazis were doing, and Heidegger could look out his window and see Brown Shirts "shattering justice" by beating and murdering Jews and others, it is not surprising that he found what he was looking for in them.
Note the coincidence of German and Japanese moral aestheticism in Eugen Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery, a classic of Zen and martial arts by a philosophy professor who would shortly return to Germany and become a supporter of Hitler. Thus, R.J. Zwi Werblowsky points out:

And the man who wrote one of the best-sellers on Zen (Zen in the Art of Archery) which was eagerly gobbled up all Zen-enthusiasts, Eugen Herrigel, was a convinced Nazi and follower of Hitler. Can you be a genuine Zen disciple, or claim to have experienced enlightenment, and at the same time follow a "leader" who murdered millions of human beings in gas chambers? [The Center Magazine, March/April 1975]
The answer to Werblowsky's question is definitely "yes," as D.T. Suzuki himself wrote in 1938:


Zen has no special doctrine or philosophy, no set of concepts or intellectual formulas, except that it tries to release one from the bondage of birth and death, by means of certain intuitive modes of understanding peculiar to itself. It is, therefore, extremely flexible in adapting itself to almost any philosophy and moral doctrine as long as its intuitive teaching is not interfered with. It may be found wedded to anarchism or fascism, communism or democracy, atheism or idealism, or any political or economic dogmatism. It is, however, generally animated with a certain revolutionary spirit, and when things come to a deadlock -- as they do when we are overloaded with conventionalism, formalism, or other cognate isms -- Zen asserts itself and proves to be a destructive force. [Zen and Japanese Culture, Princeton, 1973, p. 63]
In this description, Heidegger's moral aestheticism meets that of bushido, and there is absolutely nothing to suggest that Eugen Herrigel should not find an approrpriate "destructive force" in the "revolutionary spirit" of Hitler's National Socialism..

9th-Huh? I'm off to the Cold Water to do my morning meditation in the sun-No organized Yoga or religion! I'm a free agent today-It is my gift to myself! I think I'll conjur up my big Seal for a little water excitment!



 

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