Nietzsche's collapse

I think Nietzsche suffered a deep identification with the collective unconscious to the point of losing his persona completely by the end of his intellectual life. This can explain the richness of primordial images and symbols in all his writings, as well as his convoluted pathos. Also, such loss within the collective unconscious can explain the instinctive and irrational truths of his philosophy, so difficult to understand when we do not try to access it through our intuition but through our rational capacities, as well as the psychotic consequences that this implied to his own mind. In short, he is a magnificent case study of the Western collective unconscious as I understand it from Jung's system.

In his autobiography Ecce Homo (1888) Nietzsche portrays himself as an extremely elevated mind, wise as no other philosopher has ever been. Through Zarathustra, his alter ego, Nietzsche speaks of himself as a prophet and as a diciple of the Greek god Dionysus. Jung says that minds that collapse into the collective unconscious have the propensity to inflate themselves, as if some kind of superhuman enlightenment, or "godlikeness" in Adler's vocabulary, has set them above the rest of his peers, even humanity (Jung, 1975, p. 83-103). But one of the characteristics of the collective unconscious are its irrational contents, the reason of why Nietzsche's philosophy might seem so unphilosophical at times. No wonder why Nietzsche himself denies philosophy as a moralizing quest and denial of the world. He became the conscious rebirth of ancient and pagan symbols repressed by Christianity for centuries, and recently by rationalism.

Nietzsche is no doubt a very strange philosopher. Instead of a quest for truth and knowledge of the world and the mind, he explored the depths of the human instincts, and discovered in them a strength that put into question all the quests for "high ideals" on one side, and salvation on the other. His discovery of philosophy and religion as ideological elements of repression of the instincts made him reaffirm the human as it is given by nature. In this sense Nietzsche is an early psycologist. He saw in Christianity a war against nature, falsifying life and making it miserable, and in philosophy almost as mere fiction. (It is very important that, if we acknowledge that Nietzsche has a theory of ideology, it is far from the Marxist notion. For Nietzsche ideology is the will to power of base and weak minds, not of dominant social classes, consisting in a will to repress aspects of the human instincts that are falsely believed to be evil; hence, keeping under control strong and vigorous individuals with irrational and aristocratic tendencies. Marxism is included within these ideologies, and with good reason).

But what remains remarkable is that his discovery of human instincts was of such a depth that Jung's notion of inflation is clearly seen in his writings. His method of speaking through parables and metaphors is more akin to prophets than philosophers, and he even saw himself in that way. The fact that Nietzsche decided to title his autobiography as "ecce homo", the words Pontius Pilate supposedly said to the Jewish crown when presenting Jesus in John 19:5, is the first and direct signal that he is styling himself after Christ (more precisely as the Antichrist).

But don't get me wrong. The obvious deliriums of his late writings are no reason to discard him as a mere psychotic of no consequence. The difference between him and vulgar madmen are his ginius and his capacity to write. In this sense by styding himself in this state of collapse into the collective unconscious he is saying things about all of us, especially Westerns. This is the reason why he is still considered one of the most important and enlightened philosophers of our era. Definitively not because if his analytical capacities, but because of his acuteness in unmasking our instincts. The symbolic contents of his writings are another reason to believe Jung's system of human psyche; that deep within our unconscious there are collective symbols or archetypes that regulate basic psychical functions. Instead of believing with Freud in a purely biologically determined psyche, the favorite generalization of some neuro scientists, Jung's system explains these shared psychic functions not on cells, neurons or libido, but on contents of purely psychic nature.
Nietzsche, by collapsing on the collective unconscious with the respective psychotic consequences, demonstrates why in the search for our selves we need to pay heed to those symbolic images in religion that he wished to destroy so much.

Progress and Pessimism in Tolstoy's words

After two years since their last meeting, Prince Andrey Bolkonsky and Pierre, now Count Bezukhov, good friends from childhood, meet again in Andrey's estate. Both are very wealthy and noble. But a lot has changed since their casual encounter at Anna Pavlovna's soiree two years before, that takes place at the opening of War and Peace.

Prince Andrey's 1805 war experience, especially at Austerlitz, left a deep scar in his soul, not only by the realization of his self-delusions regarding his personal battle against Napoleon Bonaparte, and his quest for worldly glory, but by the lost of a loved one when he returned home; an event that touched him deeply. Whereas Pierre, after the inheriting his father's immense fortune, went through a living of excessive luxury that made his life boring and without meaning. Profoundly depressed he led a failed marriage that ended in a duel. In a crisis of faith and values he found in Freemasonry a new start, and the foundations for the moral quest he was seeking from the novel's very beginning. Both experiences are radically different, but both face the same challenge: Nihilism. The ambitions of the Great Revolution that began in France was already creating chaos and confusion in the souls of learned men as far a Russia. This is one of the main topics of Tolstoy's masterwork.

Two years have passed; many things occurred to both of them. The conversation between the two friends, cold and distant at first, eventually becomes warmer and confident. The contrast between their ideas and world outlooks is the main ideological struggle opened by the Revolution, and that the society of Europeans would have to face. It all begins by Andrey's claim "Nothing's for ever... Killing a vicious dog is a good thing," a claim that rather shocks Pierre who answers "Killing is wrong. It's bad... Anything that harms someone else is wrong." Maybe without being conscious of it (after all Pierre is not a philosopher), Pierre is defending first a Kantian reasoning in the form of a categorical imperative, and after being pushed harder by Andrey, he reaches Mill's harm principle. Andrey is unconvinced. His argument is that "what's right and what's wrong is something we can't decide. People keep making mistakes and they always will, especially when it comes to right and wrong... remorse and illness. There is never any good unless these two things are absent. Living for myself and avoiding these two evils - that's my philosophy now." Andrey, who sounds depressed, found in self-centered egoism the only warranted ethics, because of its simple minimalism. Relativism spreads beyond that main assumption and makes him skeptic of any other kind of normative claim. By assuming this posture, he renounced reason and progress.

Pierre stands on the opposite and fervently claims: "What about loving your neighbour, and sacrificing yourself? No I can't agree with you! Living your life with the sole object of avoiding evil just so you won't regret anything afterwards - it's not enough." Pierre is very demanding. He trusts man's rational capacities, and the commitment to improve man's conditions in a profoundly Christian way. We know this stance very well. It is the fundamental principle from which any kind of progressive thinking emerges. Later on, when talking with the old Prince Bolkonsky he would argue "that a time would come where there would be no more wars." Pierre is a Kantian, a son of the Enlightenment. On the contrary, Andrey is a pessimist. He challenges Pierre with one of the most uncomfortable arguments for any progressive: "You talk about schools, education and all that. In other words, you want to bring him' (he pointed to a passing peasant who was doffing his cap) 'out of his animal condition and give him spiritual needs. Well, as I see it, the only form of happiness is animal happiness, and you want to take that away from him. I envy him, while you're trying to turn him into me, but without giving him my mind, my feelings and my money."

Andrey's position is not to be discarded lightly. Pierre finds himself against the wall, and claiming categorically that his friend is simply wrong. One of the faults of rationalists is that once they face the irrationalist challenge, they have few arguments left. Andrey's claim is that happiness is relative to your consciousness; i.e. the more you have it, the more the requirements of happiness become unreachable. Money becomes a problem, and the self-conscious poor is even more miserable by virtue of his self-consciousness, out of which he develops envy. Rationalized envy creates highly comprehensive doctrines of society that call for revolution. Sound familiar? On the contrary, simple life, the life of the ignorant peasant, has the virtue of modest and reachable happiness. However pessimist, there is something truly Christian in Andrey's thought. And Pierre's ideas have something self-defeating; the pride of the ambition to change the world.

To Pierre's invitation to join the Freemasonry organization Andrey answers: "You say, come into our brotherhood and we'll shows you the meaning of life and the destiny of man, and the laws that govern the universe. But who are we? Just people. How do you come to know it all? Why am I the only one who can't see what you see? You see the earth as a kingdom of goodness and truth. I don't." Andrey unmasks Pierre's unconscious and naive pride (the pride typical of self-righteous progressives). The type of pride that says we know better than you do, because we have thought it through and we have seen the truth while you remain in shadows. What Andrey sees that Pierre cannot is that such a vantage point, such self-righteousness, is already ideology and shadows disguised as light, wisdom and good. This is the ideological malady of all progressive thinking from Liberalism to Marxism.

But Pierre, who is as smart as his friend reaches a very interesting synthesis: "Here on earth, this earth here' (Pierre pointed to the open country) 'there is no righteousness - it's all false and wicked. But in the universe, the whole vast universe, there is a kingdom of truth, and we are two things - children of earth here and now, and children of the universe in eternity." Interestingly from being a Kantian, Pierre becomes a Hegelian. In order to defeat Andrey's challenge, he realizes that some type of denial of the world is required, and a truth beyond it must be acknowledged. The history of men becomes, then, a quest to fulfill this truth. Men as an animal, subject to the animal happiness Andrey speaks about, has the capacity to elevate his existence to a higher truth. He grants that the animal happiness is the here and now, but he denies it as false and wicked. This denial of the world and its conditions lies in the heart of all type of progressive thinking.

Pierre concludes in totally Hegelian terms: "If there is a God and an after-life, then there is truth and there is goodness; and man's greatest happiness lies in struggling to achieve them. We must live, love and believe, believe that our life is not only here and now on this little patch of earth, but we have lived before and shall live for ever out there in the wholeness of things." I agree with him so far as that from God's presence in the universe it follows absolute truth and goodness, and that man's happiness has something to do with it. I disagree with Pierre's optimist in our capacities to understand fully the wholeness of things, the reason of why I have rejected progressive thinking.

Andrey concludes in totally Nietzschean terms: "My point is - you might be persuaded there is an afterlife not by arguments, but by going through life hand-in-hand with somebody, and all at once that somebody vanishes there, into nowhere, and you are left standing over the abyss, staring down into it. And I have stared down into it..." The abyss presented by nihilism, which becomes so overwhelming when acknowledging death, becomes the urgent problem once we open the Pandora box of rationalism by casting doubt on the simple happiness of the ignorant peasant living by colorful traditions. On this I must agree with him.

(The texts were extracted from Tolstoy, War and Peace, volume II, part II, chapters 11 and 12)

Beyond Good and Evil: Aphorism 14

Returning to old debates (but on the opposite side of the isle) rereading Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil I cannot but to quote in its entirety the 14th aphorism of the book. This I dedicate to all my friends and acquaintances that still believe in progress and in the inglorious and pitiful virtues of our times. This was published in 1886, which shows unsurprisingly the almost sibylline nature of Nietzsche's thought.

"14. It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that physics too is only an interpretation and arrangement of the world (according to our own requirements, if I may say so!) and not an explanation of the world; but in so far as it is founded on belief in the senses it passes for more than that and must continue to do so for a long time to come. It has the eyes and the hands on its side, it has ocular evidence and palpability on its side: and this has the effect of fascinating, persuading, convincing an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes — for it instinctively follows the canon of eternal, popular sensualism. What is obvious, what has been 'explained'? Only that which can be seen and felt — thus far has every problem to be scrutinized. Obversely: it was precisely in opposition to palpability that the charm of the Platonic mode of thinking, which was a noble [aristocratic] mode of thinking, consisted — on the part of men who perhaps rejoiced in even stronger and more exacting senses than our contemporaries possess, but who knew how to experience a greater triumph in mastering them: which they did by means of pale, cold, grey conceptual nets thrown over the motley whirl of the senses — the mob of the senses as Plato called them. This overcoming and interpretation of the world in the manner of Plato involved a kind of enjoyment different from that which the physicists of today offer us, or from that offered us by the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among the labourers in physiology, with their principle of the 'smallest possible effort' and the greatest possible stupidity. 'Where man has nothing more to see or grasp he has nothing more to do' — that is certainly a different imperative from the Platonic, but for an uncouth industrious race of machinists and bridge-builders of the future, which has nothing but course work to get through, it may well be the right one."

This is pretty much a complete statement of the industrial and post-industrial world and all its obsession with technology, the economy, its heroes and its geniuses; the result of which is nothing but crude mediocrity. When are our liberals (and conservatives) in the academia of today going to start reading Nietzsche?

Faith, Knowledge and Ideology

This was written as a note in my Blackberry phone in a lonely and long travel inside the New York subway; they are only sketchy ideas based on reflections caused by a recent argument I had with a professor in class. As such not much can be demanded from them.

The problem of ideology is urgent in social sciences. What we take to be ideological will set the limits and boundaries for the possibility of truthful knowledge. We assume that "ideological knowledge" is contrary to our idea of what knowledge is. Knowledge aims at truth while ideology is the mask of falsehood. But, is this true? Hasn't recent philosophy challenged the assumption that links knowledge with truth? I think us to be deceived if we don't agree with Nietzsche in his rejection of modern rationalist philosophy's pretensions. This leads us straight the dead end of yielding to the pessimist conclusion that any kind of knowledge must be ideological. But hasn't modern sciences proved many facts of the natural and social worlds to be true? So, there must be a connection between scientific knowledge and facts known to be true. These facts cannot vanish as fantastic representations just because we become skeptics of man's rational capacities.

What I conclude from this (which is, by no means, a novel conclusion at all) is that scientific knowledge only deals with truthful facts; that can only be its object. This calls for a statement of humility, because it implies that knowledge cannot grasp the Truth in its universal significance. Such thing as the Truth cannot be fully rationally apprehended. Because a thing like the Truth demands full knowledge of the totality of the object, and this cannot be reached, then we have to adjust to concrete and limited truthful facts. Ideology becomes the boundary of knowledge when we recognize that any rational knowledge that aims or pretends in reaching a final and absolute truth must be ideological and must be betraying the initial quest for truthful knowledge. This have been the pervasive spirit of many modern theories, particularly in social sciences; however not infrequently natural scientist fall in the same error.

Here faith comes into our problem. The object of faith is the Truth in its whole meaning. Whatever aims at reaching a discourse that deals with the totality of the whole truth must be an act of faith. Here we must attempt the next set of boundaries: the difference between faith and ideology, or if there is no difference at all.

The problem with faith is that it cannot be rationally explained without losing the inherent meaning of what it is, i.e. rational knowledge cannot know faith. One of the problems of many intelligent men that lack any sense of faith is that they cannot understand it without attaching to it an ideological origin. This was the problems men like Voltaire, Feuerbach, Marx, Einstein, Russell (however not Nietzsche) were condemn to have. Because the object and content of faith is the absolute Truth, whatever it might be, and because knowledge cannot reach that level of understanding under any circumstance, they use different rational explanations to give content and reason to what really is an abyss of in-comprehension and ignorance on their part. The knowledgeable atheist man doesn't have the experience of faith (I will later explain how I think they do but under ideological forms); ergo for them it is as hard and insufferable to give it credit just as it is hard and insufferable for the brutish and ignorant man to understand knowledge and coherent reason, or for the born blind the concept of color.

The relation between faith and knowledge is analogous to the relation between knowledge and ideology. Faith sets boundaries for knowledge, as knowledge sets boundaries for faith. In this sense it is naïve, or awkward to have a faith that challenges well known truthful facts, just as it is naïve and arrogant to deny the human experience of faith in a universal Truth using limited, concrete and short-sided truthful facts. This division was already exposed by St. Paul in theology and explored by Kant in philosophy. In this sense faith and knowledge can be both allies, or at least respectful opponents in man's heart and mind. By understanding that factual knowledge is limited, however truthful, and that faith does not have to disclaim factual knowledge but give meaning and sense to human life, a man can both have faith and respect reason's discoveries, as the 17th century European scientists and philosophers seem to have done.

However we cannot be over optimistic; faith, just as knowledge, has a relation to ideology, and in the past it has been the source for a lot of ideology. But the boundaries between these two cannot be clearly seen. To what extend faith in an omnipotent God does not derive in submission to an absolute monarch, or in a vicious devotion to a priestly caste? The problem is not easy to solve, because at first sight it appears to give knowledge the upper hand in claiming that faith is ideological by necessity. A first good approximation to such a complex subject might be through St. Paul in Hebrews 11. There, a radical schism is posed between things of God and things of this world, because everything that pertains to God is not seen (that is, never perceived through the body senses); hence it can never fit as a truthful fact, nor subject to knowledge. But the many examples of prophets given by St. Paul show one thing: trust. Man's capacity to trust, to accept something without proofs of it (as when a man accepts a promise from a friend) lies in the heart of the matter. If we take our relation to God to be a friendly relation (even more, the ultimate friendly relation), then we trust in his promise, and because of this we have faith, i.e. without knowledge. We take this promise to be the supreme Truth, without which the truthful facts would seem like ghosts and shades in a world without purpose. In this particular sense faith gives food for knowledge, as it makes the absolute Truth the spring of all other factual truths. So that when Pilate asked Jesus "What is truth?" (John 18:38), Jesus silence makes sense out of the impossibility of proving with rational speech what can only be grasped by faith. Jesus had already given the answer before Pilate asked him: "Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice" (John 18:37); Jesus is the truthful fact of the universal Truth, and only faith can grasp that apparently incoherent notion. This explains Jesus' silence. Pilate's business was administering justice according to the Roman law; that is, according to the most rationally codified legal system of the times in the Mediterranean. Precisely because Jesus truth was a universal statement, it did not deal with the truthful facts that a judge like Pilate can accept in a court; the reason of why he says to the Jews "I find no guilt in him" (John 18:38).

But the answer of the Jews headed by the priests is also enlightening; their religion did not allow them to crucify or execute Jesus, but they found a loop in their beliefs by pressing the Roman law to kill him. Jesus had been preaching against some prominent "interests groups" in Judea, and they wanted to eliminate him from the scene, however unjust. The Jews were being subject to ideology. So what can be the difference between ideology and faith if the Jews' actions were moved by religious devotion? The truth is that religious devotion can turn into ideology when it is used to back particular worldly interests of powerful groups. Faith is the authentic and deeply personal experience of a metaphysical connection with God. This escapes reason, but it cannot be considered ideology because it also escapes ideological worldly purposes.

Just as faith can become the base for ideology, so the same with knowledge. Philosophical and scientific systems that aim at explaining the totality of the human condition are very well used for repressive reasons when it is taken to be the Truth, of which the Marxist ideology seems the most prominent recent case (but also the European divine right of the kings), as well as when it tries to erase man's inclination for faith. The boundaries between the three are never well fixed, because knowledge is always unstable and fallible, faith cannot be apprehended by the pure mind, and ideology hides in its most obscure and mendacious forms.

But what also seems to be true is that men, as long as they live in this world, cannot depart from any of them, because on ideology social and political stability is built, from knowledge every technique and technology is constructed, and only through faith men can have the hope they need to bear the miseries of worldly existence.

A note on Internal Relations

Writing a paper for my class of dialectics, I've come up with this quick explanation of what the philosophy of internal relations mean. It is extremely short, but I offer it to my readers, especially to those closer to philosophy, to know their position regarding this controversial school of thought initiated by Hegel. Let it be known that many of the things said following I consider them correct, contrary to what analytical philosophy claims. It says:

Internal relations cannot see the world as a sum of objects. The word “object” implies that there is a finished unit that is separable from the rest. This is not the case. Internal relations assume that any object is not an object proper, but a thing that is determined by all the relations this thing has with the things that it is not; that is, with its environment. For example: a chair is not in itself a unit, because a chair needs space to exists; however space is not a part of what the chair is, but is an indispensable environmental condition without which the chair cannot exist. In this sense the chair’s actual existence is determined by the space in which it is. It means that in the real existence of the chair by necessity there must be the existence of space. This relation of the chair with space (that the chair cannot be understood without the space in which it remains, but acknowledging that the space does not form part of the chair itself) is an internal relation. Basically no-thing stands by itself without the use of abstraction. That a thing exists implies everything that that thing is not, but without which it cannot exist. The thing is by virtue of everything that it is not. Because every thing has a relation to all the rest that it is not, then its determination in the real world takes the form of relations and not of objects. An object would imply that the thing can be taken outside all its external determinations without ceasing to exist.

The relation is internal because things and facts are not seen as objects but as relations. A chair stands in opposition to everything the chair is not. This that the chair is not forces the chair to have boundaries, and hence the chair is intelligible and can exist. If the chair is not related to everything it is not, then it would have no boundaries because it stands in isolation from the rest (it would be a thing by itself without needing anything else), and the chair would become universal; that is everything, which is, of course, nonsense. It is implicit in the bodily existence of the chair everything that the chair negates by virtue of not being it.

As an external relation we take the chair as given in its objective condition, and then relating itself to other things in a mechanic-like structure, like crashing or forcing themselves. This is the path of physics. The chair does not need the rest to be understood, and the rest only plays a role of modifying the chair by having contact with it. External relations are those that take place between finished objects in their physical contacts. In the philosophy of internal relations what the chair is not is part of the structure of being of the chair itself. The chair cannot be understood without its environment. Its environment also determines what the chair is.

A coarse example: A chair is a chair as long as it is used as a chair. Why? Because what makes a chair what it is is its relation to its environment by virtue of having a particular use. If we take the chair and use it to beat someone, the relation with its environment has completely changed. Now it is not being used as a chair but as a blunt weapon. Dialectically it means that the thing in question is no longer a chair but a chair-shaped blunt weapon. The thing changed in being by virtue of a change in its relations to the environment without any actual change in its physical shape. What make a thing what it is, then, is the sum of its relations to its environment. Because of this reason, nothing can be taken as an object in itself, because nothing stands objectively in itself, but in relation to what it is not (its environment).

An elegant example: if we take the Latin alphabet, we have certain units we call letters. If we take A, we can say that in itself it stands as an A: that is A=A, which is a basic proposition of formal logic. However if we want to see A as an internal relation we can also say that: A=-B,-C,-D…-Z. This is saying exactly the same thing but not from the vantage point of A as an object and finished unit in contrast with the rest, but A being part of an environment of letters as the structure of its being. The other letters, by virtue of their negative value, set the boundaries for each positive unit. So if we take a set of letter in this way “-B…-Z” the only possible solution is “A”, because the only one thing excluded from the set of negative determination is precisely the positivity of A.

We can go further in proving the negative quality of everything when seen as internally related with its environment. Let us not take any thing in particular but every thing except the thing that we are not taking. By taking everything except the one thing, this one thing is already implicit in everything taken, because is the only thing that remains missing. We can say that B…Z=-A. The letter “A” becomes a negative determination of the whole when seen from the vantage point of the whole minus what we are not taking. This negative value or determination is what we call contradiction in dialectics. And it is because of this reason that dialectics is a logic of contradictions.

The important thing to understand is that a thing never stands in isolation as an object. The mentioning of anything has implicitly everything else that it is not, because the thing itself excludes the rest. So we can see the thing from the vantage point of the rest, from the negation of the rest. Take something as everything that it is not and we will, by necessity, have what the thing is because it is the remaining from everything that a thing is not. Conclusion: everything includes within its structure of being everything that it is not, because its concrete existence depends on negating the concrete existence of everything else. The structure of being of any thing and fact is determined by contradictions between it and the rest.

In this sense a thing can be abstractly divided in infinite parts. If any thing stands in relation to a whole that remains its environment, also the thing stands as a whole in relation to its parts. The conclusion of this analysis is that the most important hypotheses of dialectics is that the development process of every thing consists in the contradictory relations of its internal parts, not external influences. There are no external influences in dialectics because they are taken to be also part of a bigger whole. This is the inevitable result of an analysis that insists in taking things not as objects but as relations. This is probably the most important aspect of dialectics, and I am going to explain it further ahead. Now I move to explain what dialectics means by the word contradiction.

Pessimist Aphorisms of an Industrial Mind

Dialectics: incessant move. Result: eventual depletion. Fulfillment: Self-consciousness? On the contrary, eventual loss of creativity. Progress to: the end of history? On the contrary, toward death. Nothing lasts forever in a world determined by matter. Change in matter is both birth and death of life. Civilization is also made of matter.

The Spirit of our Time: Selfishness? Maybe. Addresses to nations no longer matter. That time is gone; industrial capitalism has eaten it all. The global is the only thing that remains. And the only thing I know about globes is that they are ruled by Caesars. It is only a matter of time. As I said before, everything determined by matter is doomed to die: even freedom. Like Oedipus, we will also take out our eyes. Like Electra, we will also kill our mother(land).

Matter of time is a curious expression. It speaks that matter in the context spoken is time, not matter itself. But time is not matter, is it? Matter is linked through time, because through time matter changes, and changes dialectically (or mechanically, that is irrelevant) so as to reach fulfillment in its current form and pass away. This is not good. This is tragic. Conservatism is the really tragic ideology.

Dialectics is nothing but mechanics integrating life and death. The latter is for physicists, the former is for philosophers. Only through Jesus is this tragedy broken.

The Spirit of our Times is the Decline of the West, because selfishness never stopped being at its core. Existentialism became the prime philosophy, because in modern times, with its pipelines, its underground trains and its smoke pumping into the sky, the death of creativity brought the dominium of that dreadful God called Bore. Its realm’s name: Boredom. Like all of you, I’m also its subject, its slave.

We are slaves; he is the dominus, our master. Is it the Modern Age the dominium of Bore? Is it the spiritual God and Master? The mind, like sleeping, in torpor, looks desperately for Fun, that minor deity. Fun takes us out of Boredom… of the realm of Bore… for a while. Do we go to Fun-dom? As with all minor deities, when Fun ceases to be present, Bore reclaims its dominium. No rest. Seeking fun and thrill without rest: that is the Spirit of our Times.

But the higher mind asks for more. Bore, that dreadful tyrant, like Caesar, must be killed. Is this possible in our times? From Boredom we can escape for a while; but is there a guillotine for this sovereign? Venus is gone, and we are left alone with Eros. Like a servant without his domina, he is the kindred of Fun. Ask yourself these questions, and you’ll realize how tragic our times look like.

Does the realm of Bore looks more dreadful the more conscious of it we are? Is it self-consciousness what makes Boredom so difficult a rule to bear? The need to erase the image of this yoke from our mind; the most desperate quest of the citizen of Cosmopolis. But boredom is not an idea; it is not abstraction, speaking beyond the content of the word.

I see a bridge. It’s massive; it’s the product of modern labor: the alienated product of hundreds of 19^th century workers, all now dead. It bridges all ghettos, it reaches Cosmopolis. It is the Brooklyn Bridge. Like him, like this massive structure whose weigh was so heavy for the hands and backs of those workers, my body is as heavy to my mind. My mind looks at it, relates to it, as a responsibility. Are all High Minds looking for the universal while their bodies force them to remain a thing-for-other, a particular? Who was right on this? Plato or Nietzsche? If my body is the realm for my pain and my mind is the realm for my boredom; between the Philosopher King and the Übermensch, I’m not sure who will give me the answer to this concern. Is there a synthesis between both? That would be a question worth answering.

Is my mind the dominium and realm of Bore, and Bore is its master, its sovereign? Where is Reason left? It seems now gone, like a bad dream. If Reason was the Goddess to which the West looked for a guide, it turned out to be all a lie, a false deity, a charlatan. Bore is more real, more powerful than Reason. That’s why Reason is invoked today to protect nothing else but those two minor shallow deities: Fun and Eros.

Goddess Reason was nothing but a madman’s dream: Robespierre’s dream. That Goddess never conquered anything in humanity, but the outer worldliness for humanity. That Goddess is claimed by those that call themselves liberals, in their idealist quest for that other Goddess, so much praised but so much unknown, Lady Justice: a Goddess that takes biased forms everywhere, deformed. Those liberals that desperately look for her, only find her partially, and those above, in their skyscrapers, are the ones that monopolize her. Hence, she only defends the product of the God Money, profit. Jesus is not their God. Justice is like a gendarme, with her sword driven by Money. The poor veteran, he who is asking for money in the train, Justice does not work for him. And she never will. For him only the God of Faith, Hope and Charity works; Jesus is his only God.

Goddess Justice and her sister Reason; both servants of this sovereign God of worldliness Money. Money allied with Fun and Eros to fight the inner tyrants Bore and Hunger. No my friends, Reason is a charlatan, and Justice is unknown! Bore and Hunger are the true masters of this world!

God, Jesus and Logic

It is common to hear atheists defend their unbelief in God by bringing logic or reason, and similar vaguely used terms brought up in a conversation. It happened to me recently and I tried to explain what I usually think about this use of logic rules to try to unprove God. I'm aware that such conversations and use of logic is a thing of amateurs, because the notion of logic itself breaks the head of the most prominent philosophers. That is, not even the great names in the subject agree on everything. However I don't want to make this note on a debate of logic, but on certain remarks on the possible understanding of God. For this reason I'm going to use logical thinking to demonstrate why logic cannot be used to test God.

God is broadly believed to be the Creator of the world. Plenty of metaphors are used to describe this role He plays in the existence of all things, by portraying Him as the Architect of the Universe, the Consciousness of the World, the Universal Legislator, etc. The prime element is that, if we admit that he is the Creator, then he drafted the rules of the world he created and which existence comes only after His act. This argument goes for the atheists, so follow me closely. Independently of your faith or lack of it, if we reasonable accept as an intellectual experiment, that something like God is the only thing from which the Universe could have spring from, then He is previous to the rules that determine the world He created. These rules are a posteriori in existence. They didn't play any role in God's presence itself. This, my friends, includes logic. The order of the Universe is determined by many laws, and some of them are formal rules of logic. Because we are beings necessarily bound to the rules of this world in which we live in, it is impossible for us to think outside the most basic notions that structure it. That which transcends the world, that lies beyond its rules, that's precisely God. Then how can we even conceive an explanation of the nature of that that is totally outside our sphere of reference? Thinking otherwise is the biggest of illusions brought about by that callous sin called pride.

God as a concept cannot be debated. It is a naive discussion. However, the experience of Jesus Christ can. Why? Because he walked this Earth and his life was bound to its rules... to a certain extend. There are only two assumptions that we have to use in discussing Jesus Christ. Or we acknowledge that he is the son of God, or we don't. If we don't, then we can legitimately debate Jesus Christ on strictly historical and rational terms. But if we do, then we have before us a dilemma. Jesus is both a man, so we can judge him as such, but he also shares with God in His universal nature, so there is something that runs away from our limited understanding. So in Jesus the limitations of the particular man are overcome by the universality of God. As human beings all of us are particulars, fragments of the universe, and we cannot but see the universe from our fragmented peace of the world, whereas God is universal and eternal. Put it from this perspective human beings as particulars are totally alienated from the eternal. But if we acknowledge Jesus divine background, then God as a universal an eternal being becomes part of the human experience. Human beings and God's being become united, linked, in the body of Jesus Christ, and that's the whole point of his mission: the final union between men and the Lord. And last but not less important, if Jesus as a man shares also the nature of the eternal in his same body, then as such, as God-made-man, there is nothing that he could not have done. The only way of debating Jesus' miracles, and Jesus infinite love for humanity, is by stating a priori a totally human nature, and putting aside any divine background.

Jesus Christ is a synthesis between the universal and eternal of God, that embodies and fills the whole universe and beyond (because He is previous to the existence of the universe itself), and the particular condition of human beings in their subjective experience. Only as such he can be our savior. Only as such his message can be understood. If we deny this, Jesus' mission and teachings become blurred and historically inconsistent. It is up to you, as a person, to choose which side of the story you believe in.

Some notes on Aristotle, Hobbes and Locke

There seems to be a radical antagonism between the ideas of men and society of Aristotle and Hobbes. Both seem to represent two contradictory interpretations of why men gather in society and constitute government. This difference springs from their radical opposite conceptions of what the nature of man is. However I find interesting that Locke in his Second Treatise of Government seems to be in a middle point between the two.

This is nothing but a mere sketch of an idea I developed some months ago reading Locke. It might be read as a temporary hypotheses. The premises are:

i. While Hobbes interprets man's nature from his strictly emotional self-centered condition, he underlines an antisocial tendency of man's individuality that is deduced from the apparently constant competitive behavior between, among and of each other. Because all men praise their safety above all else, there is a natural tendency to distrust and fear others as potential threats to his life and welfare. So man's first goal in life is security.

ii. Aristotle on the other hand interprets man's nature from his ethical inclination towards happiness and friendliness, which he deduces from the fact that all men live in society and none is known to be born and raised in solitude. Because all men seem to aim at happiness as the goal of life, and friendship is among the most praised goods from where happiness springs, men cultivate friendship, which in the aggregate forms society.

iii. However Locke agrees with Aristotle that there is a natural tendency given by God in man's nature which makes him sociable. But contrary to Aristotle and in agreement with Hobbes (and all Modern tradition in this sense), he considers that government is a rationally created institution for the preservation of all against each, as if the possibility of aggression is enough to distrust each other, but no so much as to render society impossible.

Conclusions: For Aristotle government springs naturally from the human condition of sociability. Man as the political animal lives under government in his natural self, whereas for Hobbes government and society are rationally established by individuals by their natural tendency to fear and distrust each other, but for the purpose of permitting civil life in tranquility. In Hobbes, society and government is built against nature, whilst in Aristotle it springs from human nature itself. For Locke society springs from human nature, but not government. Locke's State of Nature is a society without government. It is implicit in Locke that men can live without the need of government. The emergence of it is a rationally deduced mutual conclusion based on the utility of its existence. Therefore, the Minimal State is really justified by this idea that men can actually live in society without the help of government.

Secondary conclusions: in Antiquity, political man interpreted as natural, the vision of politics is somehow seen in an organic form. Government and politics, all its changes and eventualities are by nature, and hence by necessity. Liberty cannot be conceived in this way as the capacity of man to take control of his actions. In Christian and Western thought the notion is different. Human rational capacities are seen as superior to nature. So man makes himself the master of his nature and not his product. Therefore unless he is the rational author of government and his political condition, no notion of liberty can be imagined. This is the most profound and radical difference between all Ancient and Modern thought regarding politics and the human condition. The brilliant mind of Hanna Arendt traces the birth of this difference in St. Paul's discovery of the human will.

Live as Seasons in Spengler's words

One of the most beautiful, and also real metaphors that explain all living experiences, from the most basic unit which is the individual life, to the broadest bodies of civilizations, was given to us by the German philosopher Oswald Spengler. A man today forgotten by contemporary thinking and academics, and relegated to the field of history of philosophy as a tangent thinker. I think nothing could be more unfair. The metaphor consist in interpreting every living phenomena with the four calendar seasons. There is in everything that has to do with living things a spring, a summer, an autumn and a winter, that embodies all life since its birth till its death. This metaphor is explicitly in thought as old Goethe (as far as I know. I might be wrong), but the first, and apparently until now the only philosopher that has taken it seriously is Spengler.

The Spring signals everything that comes after birth. Even a human person, when it is born, its first three decades (more or less) are dedicated to learning. And the form and content of this learning determines the shape of the entire life. Whether a person dedicates to sciences, to arts, to business, to politics, to humanities, or whatever; these first years are the moment when all the creative production takes place. It also happens to cultures and civilizations, when a new principle of collective self-consciousness appears in a body of pre-cultured people (what is more commonly, and usually contemptibly called barbarians or savages). What I also called the heroic moment: the stage of culture where polities are still primitive, but a new ethic and aesthetic standard is raised, and a caste of warriors is actively pursuing honor, glory and adventure (the times of the War of Troy for ancient Greece and Rome, the time of Moses and King David for Jews and Semites, the time of the Martyrs for Greek Christianity, the times of Mohamed for Islam, the times of the Crusades for Western Europe, etc.). Spring is where the groundwork for individual and cultural life takes place, and honest religious piety.

The Summer is the moment of plenitude, the period where all the wealth grows, spiritually, intellectually and materially. As it is the warmest moment of the year, it is the period of life with more energy, with more heat. Where the individual develops his/her career to his fullest, and the respective culture gives birth to its greatest artists and thinkers, and usually a moment of religious dogma. Victory and defeat can be definitive in this stage, for, contrary to spring which is the moment of trial and error, a mistake can be devastating. But definitively is a moment of much activity and intensity. All the possibilities laid down at the spring are fully developed at the summer. This is so actual, that even in love relationships and marriages it takes place; the moment when passion is more present and sex is more common. Depending on how well the energies of the period are used, the reserve for autumn and winter will make life, creativity and love prevail. If they are depleted, autumn and winter might be a fast and certain death. If they are wasted, all those energies rotten, and autumn and winter are long, sad, cold and foul smelling.

The Autumn is a moment of soft decline. If all energies weren't depleted in summer, autumn might last. Otherwise winter will be longer. This is the period where a person is getting old, and is enjoying the fruits of his/her life, but with little creative energies to continue to grow. Some new things might be worked, but usually are repetitions or footnotes. Happiness might be more identifiable in autumn, for is the moment where all the efforts of youth are clearly visible. The success of a career, or of a political movement, or of a cultural endeavor, or of a marriage, is visible in autumn. But what seems the pinnacle of life is precisely the signal of the decline. The philosophy of Aristotle for Antiquity or of Kant for Modernity show the ultimate effort of a culture to grow, but it only leads to decay, for all creativity is gone, and only systematic and humdrum thinking is left (Stoicism, Marxism, Positivism, etc.). Not a Plato, but an Archimedes, not a Newton but an Einstein. Autumn, as it signals old age, it also means a lose of faith and hope.

The Winter is nothing more than cold and sour old age. If life was vastly productive, old age might be livable. But in itself, is a lack of life, for it is a lack for energy and productivity. Is nothing but a waiting time for death. Like waiting by the fireplace, not venturing outside, winter is nothing but wait. And it that process we feel lost, because we don't know what to do; because actually there is nothing else to do. Cultures that reach winter are stroke by skepticism. Religion and great ideas no longer convince nobody. And those that still believe do it with a glimpse of fear, not of God, but of the lack of God. Cynicism, crude realism or simply giving up are the typical behaviors of cultures in winter. Marriage or love relationships, when they reach winter, there is a taste of unpleasantness but conformity. Those famous couples that are to used to themselves and don't risk a break up, even though they don't love themselves anymore. That is winter. Those civilizations that indulge in nihilism, because pleasures or suicide are the only things left. That is winter. And for those that want to remain alive, nothing but power and money substitute vaguely the vacuum of the absence of faith, hope and love leave.

I find Spengler's philosophy absolutely compelling, and empirically demonstrable by actual historical and contemporary facts. The problem is that his philosophy is too strong to bear, and even though its exposition seems so reasonable, people usually are too afraid to face the facts. Westerns are too focused on making things work, when actually there is nothing less to work on. Spengler told them that, and they stand in negation. Naive ideas of progress and absolute happiness or freedom are nothing but a long for immortality. In the end life and history is but pure tragedy, and destiny is something that cannot be stopped.

Modern thinking or Eternal Return?

"In the State of Nature we are free animals but enslaved human beings; in the State of Society we are enslaved animals but free human beings. Christianity has conquered freedom for Mankind; and now Mankind uses that freedom to destroy Christianity." (Winter-Spring 2008).

I wrote this phrases some years ago, and in retrospective I find them very interesting. I was reading Hegel at that moment, who I think inspired me to reach this conclusion. But now I discover that the first part of the statement is absolutely modern in principle. The idea that nature is previous and contrary to human enterprise and that our reason is our spiritual endowment to conquer beastly nature is so a modern idea that we can find it widespread from Descartes to Marx and beyond. There is implicitly a progressive approach of human nature. On the contrary, for ancient thinkers, and especially for Aristotle, nature is not contrary to human industry, but is the foundation of it. We use our rational endowments like language and labor by nature and not contrary to it, as if to conquer it.

But then, to understand the first part of the statement; that humanity and its reason is somehow superior to the State of Nature; we must pay heed to the second part. That the conquest of nature by our human endowments was facilitated by Christianity in particular, and by our Jude moral backgrounds in general, is an idea that I drew from Hegel's historical philosophy, and that is determinant to understand Modern political and ethical thinking. Nietzsche might be the genius in discovering the injustice underlying the Christian struggle against our bodily nature, and the motive why he rises against all Modern thinking. But I think that he might have committed and injustice against Ancient philosophy, and especially against Aristotle if he includes, as I think he actually does, Ancient thought with Christian and Modern thought. His statement in the The Will to Power that Plato is the first Christian might sound plausible, but I think he is wrong. In order to prove this, I would need more than a blog article, but an academic thesis, which is not proper here.

The interesting thing to point out is that it was historically impossible, if not absolutely absurd, for Ancient thought to reach the conclusion that human reason and its endowments were contrary to nature and bound to conquer it, as Modern thinking does. Christianity was missing. Hence, we find no progressive thinking in the Ancients, but cyclical accounts of history. Isn't it the Eternal Return of Nietzsche a very Ancient idea contrary to Modern thought? I think it is. Nietzsche gives us the clue to understand the departure of Modern and Ancient thought that we can trace back to Christianity. Now my question goes: Can we, contemporary minds find a synthesis between Ancient cyclical thought and Christian morality? That, I think, is the challenge posted by today's Postmodernism.

On Justice as Patriotism

"To have family or a city that is one's own implies the distinction between insiders and outsiders; and the outsiders are the potential enemies. Justice as helping friends and harming enemies is a peculiarly political definition of justice, and its dignity stands or falls with the dignity of political life. Every nation has wars and must defend itself; it can only do so if it has citizens who care for it and are willing to kill the citizens of the other nations. If the distinction between friends and enemies, and the inclination to help the former and harm the latter, were obliterated from the heart and mind of man, political life would be impossible" (Bloom, "Interpretive Essay" in The Republic of Plato, p. 318).

Reading Plato will never be out of date. What makes him a classic is the fact that in his work, particularly in his Republic, he tackles most of the issues regarding the problematical nature of politics. The first book of this work opens with a dialogue between Socrates and three other interlocutors discussing the notion of Justice, which will be the object that the entire work will aim at. For Justice seems, at least in Ancient times, the political good par excellence. The three other main characters of this first book are Cephalus, his son Polemarchus and the irate Thrasymachus.

The quoted text refers to Polemarchus argument on what justice means. He arrives at the conclusion (no without being insistently questioned by Socrates) that Justice as the virtue of making good to your friends, and doing wrong to your enemies. Now, independently of Socrates final arguments, I would like to wonder around this notion, because it seems to be the central argument of patriotism. Starting, this concept may strike us as irrational and cruel, because our Western christianized culture of universal peace and fraternity completely contradict such statement. But let us not be misguided by our liberal illusions of how the would ought to be from our moral view, and lets pay attention to what it says about the nature of politics.

It came to my mind that the contemporary political thinker that defend such an argument in similar language is the German jurist Carl Schmitt. He argues that the relation that determines political phenomena is the friend and enemy relationship. That to presume sovereignty from a political community, it must be capable to delimit who are their friends, either by referring by friends the citizens that form the political body or the external allies, and separates them from a common enemy, which for sure refers to other threatening political communities or internal sentiment of treachery. When a polity is unable to define by itself from any other compelling polity, perhaps would that means that the former enjoys no freedom at all and cannot be really called sovereign state. This ideas, summed with the accidental condition that Schmitt belonged to the Nazi Party in Germany, is viewed today with much precaution or skepticism. Apart from all of that, I do think there is something to be concluded from Schmitt's account of the political, as from Polemarchus' argument on Justice. There is something here that is real, and that all ways has been.

The interesting thing about the entire debate of Justice in Plato is that it appears to be totally detached from the notion of Freedom. A feature that today we Westerns consider quintessential, that Freedom is a necessary precondition for any kind of substantive Justice. Justice, in the Classical tradition, doesn't seems to come by the side of Freedom. Maybe because the state of freedom and slavery for the Ancients was more of an accidental condition than the Modern concept of inherent rights.

In any case, a profound lecture of Plato is all ways a good start to think about our conceptions and ideas from a critical perspective; specially when it appears that all that seems to be debatable about politics was already treated somehow by the Ancient Greeks.