03.08.09

Don’t let Nietzsche’s fate be yours

Posted in 1848+, atheism, Evolution, Philosophy at 1:44 pm by nemo

7.3.4 Nietzsche among the Sans-culottes

One of the characteristic traps of so-called ‘modernism’ is the way in which Nietzsche, so strangely, is taken to represent it, and this as grounds for anti-modernism in many religious critics in the postmodern vein. This reaction is evident, for example, in the ID folks with their anti-modern gambits: cf. Dembski in his book Intelligent Design with its rejections of modernity.

Nietzsche is hardly a representative of modernity, if his general tenor is so anti-liberal, anti-democratic, the whole nine yards.
Looking at the dynamics of the eonic effect brings this home with a vengeance: the modern transition is long over by Nietzsche’s time, and he, as he clearly said, has chosen to become its enemy and to foment subversion against it. It is a quixotic, yet very dangerous project, one that, but for the influence of Darwin, so cleverly concealed behind critique, might have struck someone as intelligent as Nietzsche as doomed to fail.

Nietzsche is so strangely extreme. It is not hard to be a critic of Christianity, but the foaming wrath and pickiun quibbles against even the most minute Christian influence is almost bizarre in Nietzsche.
But more generally the influence of scientism/Darwinism has thrown Nietzsche off the mark, with his rejection of progress, and much else, along with the, once again rendered extreme, intimations of eugenics, to the point of genocide, all nicely wrapped up in the anti-ethics latent in the nihilism of scientism and hatred of Kant. Why such hatred of Kant? It is hard to be original after Kant, but many have finally managed it. Nietzsche cannot stand such a genius and must indulge in an adolescent second rate wrecker ball spree disguised as genius in order to assure his ‘originality’. That is visible in the seemingly deliberate trashing of the idea of ‘will’ with his ‘will to power’ lowball strategy. It is analogous in many ways to the magical gestures of the black magicians, the ‘black mass’ nonsense taken seriously, the reversal of symbolic archetypes.
You have to wonder, why?
And why does it strike so many as profundity?
The influence of Darwinism is one factor: this theory makes Social Darwinism a latent reality, ready to explode in the face of those in the very process of denying Darwin’s connection to it.
With all of this Nietzsche has become a fetish of the postmodernists, and, while one can certainly see two sides in Nietzsche and welcome scholarly efforts to correct many distortions of the record, it is very hard at this point to really rescue him from his own statements, in print and on the record.

He is one of the great casualties of Darwinism, a wasted genius in that regard, and a warning to those Darwinists like P.Z. Myers at al now current who find themselve such sugar-coated liberals that when the chips are down the thugs will execute this theory, in the same way that the Leninists suddenly took over the idealistic socialists of the left.

A word for the wise on Nietzsche. One can recommend a good dose of Schopenhauer (if not Kant!), the philosopher Nietzsche set out to undo, to see the beautiful and elegant system that Nietzsche wished so irrationally to destroy.
Strange world.
I don’t agree with the current resurgence of religious traditionalism, but if you look at the real influence of Nietzsche, so out of proportion, and so totally misunderstood by his liberal fans, you see why the ‘world system’ like a nervous nelly starts to hedge its culture bets to be wary of any more Nietzschean fiascos coming down the pike, just the kind of the thing Nietzsche said, at least, that he wished to foment to totally destroy modernity and replace it with his ubermensch sadists and eugenic squads of exterminators.

One of the pitfalls of twentieth century thought is the confusing influence of Nietzsche, evident in the references to the ‘last man’ in Fukuyama’s title. With Lange’s History of Materialism and in a play on the noumenal in Schopenhauer, Nietzsche proceeds to a Kantian decadence in an externalization of the will that is a poor continuation of a basic breakthrough. We can see already that Nietzsche’s views on history are wildly off the mark. If there is no direction to history, that is one thing. If we find there is, Nietzsche is plainly wrong, and might simply be a reactionary, the onset of the Rightist Terror, quite terrifying indeed, wherein he is a bit player, rapidly changing gears as his suspicions arise. Nietzsche is the first Darwin casualty, and strangely blind in his failure to see the place of equalization in world history. Nietzsche’s views are, of course, very complex, and it is also true he was a cogent critic of Darwinian natural selection. His challenge to Kantian foundationalism is ambiguous, and he triggers an immense subsequent confusion.

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