neo-nihilizmin makalesinin tam metni.
introduction
all cultures operate with ideology, so ubiquitous as to be invisible by those within, but blatant to those without. this is apparent when one looks upon the seemingly absurd virtues and vices of past ages and far places. what is also, however, seemingly apparent is that one's present ideology, ultimately one's morality, is somehow correct, others' being incorrect. in the west, we think we have 'progressed' morally from former, less moral times. but this is false; we have simply changed: moral progress and retrogress are illusions. in this sense, morality is more akin to fashion than to technology.
it is most often the case that setting faith in the ethics of one's culture serves one's interests.
therefore this text will not be of service to that majority; the information herein is too potent for that character. if such a conformer sets his sight upon the light here offered he will only be capable of reaction rather than assimilation, as is purpose – the same sun can be both enlightening and carcinogenic. the author asks you to set aside as much you can current ideologies held, only in order to advance yourself, to understand your surrounding influences.
nihilism, in the sense in which it is used here, means that there exist no objective morals, no absolute good nor evil. this idea goes far and transcends modern cultural relativism, to depths and darknesses only visited hitherto by a brave few adventurers. without the characteristic of courage you will not understand, you will not want to understand.
as prolegomena to the three chapters following, let us begin with the first: morality as illusion. we know in the modern world that religion is illusion, power structures presented as divine truths with omnipotent and transcendent sanctions. morality is likewise such an illusion, presented as fact but in fact another such power structure. as the sanction of morality can no longer be god, we assume there must be a secular replacement – in vain.
there is no sanction. there is no god.
there is no prescriptive morality. morality exists like religion exists, neither contains truths.
moreover morality is not even useful in many cases, it is a hindrance. the sooner one absorbs this truth the sooner one's liberty awakens.
secondly, we are born into an old hierarchy of laws, and taught that obedience thereto is not only to our benefit but that transgression will be met with physical force, which is also in our interest.
we do not debate law, we debate laws; as if our subservience to external authority was without question, a default position. in europe physical force is the prerogative of the state, not of the individual. as there is no morality, there is no basis for law, and thus all law is one unit of people ruling over others by force. we humans are still animals, our intellect merely provides greater expedients to that same brute nature. it is in the interest of rulers to disguise their rule as common sense, a leviathan that cannot be challenged – much as the rule of the church in medieval times.
thirdly, if law be based on morality, and morality on power, then power is the bedrock of human affairs. life is the will to power. this later concept, wille zur macht, blooms in the works of friedrich nietzsche, but buds in schopenhauer. in the latter, all life, and all matter, is the representation of will or force in varying degrees of complexity. only in ourselves is this will not only a representation but known in-itself as our desire. for schopenhauer this constant striving of desire causes only suffering: need, disappointment and boredom. for nietzsche this drive may cause pain but he does not consider pain to be inimical to life. conversely he considers pain to be a catalyst to life: 'what does not kill you makes you stronger', as he famously exclaimed. this drive, this will, this force, is a drive to grow, develop, expand, advance – in sum to gain power, 'the will to power'. in most individuals this is performed at the subconscious level. to claim that power seeking is immoral is to seek power. when we accept that life is will to power, our consciousness will align itself with our subconscious, thereby providing a tonic harmony.
nihilism is the key to liberty and power.
-----morality is illusıon-----
there are innumerable collections of texts devoted to the issue of morality, the majority of which are unfounded sentimentalist ramblings. most of it enquires as to the foundation of morality; not much enquires as to whether such a foundation exists. we do not ask what the evidence for god's existence is; we ask whether god's existence has such evidence at all. we do not ask what the meaning of life is but whether such a meaning exists. we must extend this foundational questioning to ethics.
the great mass of error with regard to moral theory is caused by the conflation of descriptive and prescriptive morality. no one doubts that moralities, like religions, exist. we can describe those moralities in terms of behaviour, belief, biological and cultural origination etc. for example, in viking-age scandinavia it was believed that a cold, compassion-free heart was a virtue and that heaven, valhalla, was only available to those who died in battle. in ancient sparta, lacedaemon, theft was only immoral if one was caught. slavery was accepted, as was wife-exchange.
infanticide of the disabled was considered a moral imperative; weakness, a vice. we can seek to explain these ethical standards by appealing to the tribalistic culture in which they operated and the biological inheritance of aggression, intelligence, etc. such a historical, global, scientific and cultural overview of the moralities that have existed and do exist is descriptive morality and morality as such is logically legitimate.
however, the logic falters when moral imperatives – oughts, shoulds, duties – are derived from moral descriptions or facts. because one acts in a certain way due to certain dispositions does not logically imply that one, or others, ought to act in that way. a person may have a disposition to aggression (a characteristic), but this does not imply that he ought to be aggressive. likewise, a person may have a disposition to humility and compassion, but this too does not imply that he or others ought to be humble and compassionate. as the great scot david hume made clear, one cannot derive an ought from an is, a value from a fact, a prescription from a description. this is known as the is-ought gap, or hume's guillotine. many such decapitations have resulted since his death in 1776, though hidden from the eyes of the many.
as a means logically implies an end, so an ought can only logically come from an if-clause: for instance, "i ought to exercise if i want to build my strength." often the if-clause is omitted in ink or sound, but it is always implied: "she ought to diet (if she wants to lose weight)." the if-clause is essentially the purpose of an act (strengthening, thinning). but, as the existentialists realised, without god there is no objective purpose for a human. the purpose of a knife is to cut, therefore it ought to be sharp. a knife has a purpose as it was designed by man with the purpose in mind.
but man himself was not designed, his complexity is explained not by creation but by evolution, as was argued by empedocles in the iron age. thus, without a god, man has no purpose, there is no absolute meaning to life. but with no purpose, there is no objective, universal if-clause and consequently no objective, universal ought-clause – no absolute morality. all oughts are conditioned by an if, because all means necessarily imply an end. the bones of morality lie within god's tomb.
despite this indubitable logic, atheist christians, as it were, try to argue that mankind does have an objective purpose from which values, oughts, can be issued. often one hears that we have evolved to be social and friendly animals, and thus we ought to be amicable. there are two main errors in this. firstly is the fact that we have also evolved aggression and tribalism from which contrary oughts can be derived. secondly, even if virtually every person had the same amicable nature, one still could not derive a value from this supposed fact, an ought from an is, a prescription from a description – due to hume's guillotine. a person, a lone wolf, who acted contrary to the generally desired will for amicability could not be said to be wrong, only unusual.
one could not logically say to that person that he ought to do this or that, because that ought would be conditioned by an if-clause, a purpose that the wolf did not share. again, there is no absolute, universal, objective if-clause – no absolute purpose to life. there are only subjective, personal purposes.
as a side-note against those who would claim that there exist certain shared values amongst all peoples, one firstly points out that this is not descriptively true. secondly, and more importantly, even were it true, one could not derive a prescriptive morality from this because if everyone shared the same values, then prescriptive morality would be pointless: one would not need to tell people how to behave if they already did so. prescriptive morality is only necessary when other people act contrary to the way that one would desire them to behave.
ultimately all oughts are based on desire or sentiment, not on reason. the if-clause is based on desire, which is not objective, true for all. therefore all prescriptive, or normative, morality is the sought imposition of one person or group's desire over another. morality is a power structure.
even if the desire is harmony and peace, this is not a purpose shared by all. the heroic societies of ages past offer themselves as examples of those whose purpose differs from the modern world. glory in battle, valour, honour were frequently preferred as purpose than the perceived decadence and decrepitude of peace and harmony. today these cultures are often viewed through a glass darkly as 'immoral'. but that is only because the purpose of life is considered to be something different from theirs, and moreover more 'correct' than theirs. but the mistake here lies in the belief that a desire can be correct or incorrect – a desire is a state of mind and body; only a proposition, or an action or form according to a purpose, can be correct or not. it is not contrary to reason to prefer, to have a subjective desire for, violence rather than peace, chaos to order. it is a psychological rather than logical matter. the if-clause, the purpose, cannot be incorrect, wrong, no matter how unusual or unpopular. for precisely this reason does hume state that ''tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.'
an ought can only come from an if; an ought can never come from an is. the if-clause is the purpose of an action; the ought-clause reveals the means to attain that purpose; the attainment of the purpose is called 'good'; the failure of attainment is called 'bad'. the etymology of these words reveal differing uses, but the logic remains the same. a good knife is one that attains its purpose of cutting well; a bad knife fails to achieve this purpose – through bluntness, etc. so a 'good' action is one that attains its purpose well. a 'good person' is one who attains his purpose well. but as mankind has no purpose, there is no such thing as 'a good person'. this term only refers to a person whose beliefs and actions conform to another person's desired purpose for mankind. thus, as people's desires differ here, the same individual will be considered good by one person and bad by another. neither of the two opinions are correct or incorrect, it is only a matter of perspective without any objective standard. 'there is nothing either good or bad - but thinking makes it so,' as the bard of avon recognised.
it must be understood that this understanding is not, and cannot lead to, 'cultural relativism': the view that all cultures are equally valid and so criticism of them ought not occur. this view is quite prevalent today in the west by those wishing themselves to be peering from the moral pedestal.
the fallacy here is contradiction: 'there are no objective oughts, therefore one ought not criticise another culture or creed.' the second ought contradicts the first. as there are no objective oughts, to claim one ought not criticise another culture cannot be objectively true. this imperative is actually based on the desire to curtail other people's expressed desires – desire against desire, nothing more. although another culture's values may not be objectively incorrect, they can transgress one's own desires and so can be disparaged as undesirable rather than incorrect, to serve oneself.
this understanding, nihilism, also undermines another very popular moral theory: utilitarianism: the view that what is good is that which yields the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
utilitarianism has two presuppositions that it cannot justify, viz. that all people ought to be treated as equals (when weighing pleasure or pain) and, that happiness is good. the first presupposition has a redundant theistic if- clause: if we want to follow god's commands via jesus' golden rule.
god's fall brings down the absolute sanction of this egalitarian rule. the golden rule, 'all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them', not originating from christianity but mostly proliferated therefrom, is very helpful to those who are in an inferior position as its command would increase their standing, their power. but from someone in a superior position, this rule would decrease their relative standing. for such a reason does nietzsche call christianity a slave morality. ındeed nietzsche saw christianity as a power structure emanating from the weak as a system that conforms to their type's subjective desire.
the extent of this desire overwhelmed the romans, causing their downfall. so victorious was this hostile takeover that such a subjective sentiment was ingrained as objective fact and 'common sense'. this religious takeover set its roots so deeply into man's consciousness that today morality is considered only to be christian morality, even if one is not consciously a christian.
thus the need for this very text to worm out those rotten talons. there have existed on earth many moralities, history emancipates us from 'common sense' and prejudice, if that be desired.
the second presupposition, that happiness is good, is also not an objective fact unless considered a tautology, and if so it is merely the analysis of a given definition, a definition that can be changed without contradiction of course. 'happiness is bad' is not necessarily a contradiction.
as written previously, happiness as end has not always been considered good but quite the opposite, as a sign of decadence and decay. logically, 'good' means the attainment of a purpose.
so 'happiness is good' if it attains a purpose. but the purpose is subjective, personal. therefore to state that happiness is good can never be an objective fact. furthermore, happiness can involve the unhappiness of others, as expressed by the german word schadenfreude, in which case claiming happiness to be good, something to be attained, would contradict the first presupposition that one ought to treat others as equals. utilitarianism cannot justify its foundational principle, despite mill's attempt to do so via the use of the conscience. an absurd attempt as the conscience's pronouncements are considered good which merely postpones the error: why is it good? what purpose does it seek to attain? ıs that purpose objective? no, farewell.
utilitarianism is in essence a form of christian morality that suffers identity crisis. kant's moral theory, deontology, also suffers this ailment. ıt will suffice to say against kant, generally genius in his thought, that he presupposes an aristotelian teleology: that everything has a purpose, and that the purpose of reason, a good will, presupposes what 'good' is as a foundation for arguing what goodness is – thereby begging the question. a 'good will' for kant is indistinguishable from a christian subjective preference. furthermore, the great prussian simply assumes that morality must be prescriptive and thereafter seeks to find postulates that would maintain this view – namely free will, immortality of the soul and god. one merely denies the first assumption as being without reason or evidence to deny the three consequent conditions. though a post-kantian generally, schopenhauer rejected kant's moral theory in likewise fashion: 'kant's first false statement lies in his concept of ethics itself, a concept which we find articulated most clearly [in the metaphysics of morals]: "ın a practical philosophy it is not a concern to indicate reasons for what happens, but laws for what ought to happen, even if it never happens." – this is already a decided petitio principii [question begging]. who told you that there are laws to which we ought to subject our actions? who told you that something ought to happen that never happens? – what justifies your assuming this beforehand and thereupon immediately to press upon us an ethics in a legislative-imperative form as the only possible sort?' ( on the basis of morals, p.4.)
contractarianism is another false idol worshipped by the masses that is easily refuted. this moral theory claims that values derive from actions that instil peace and stability in society such as altruism, charity, law-abidance, etc., as it is in everyone's interest. we all sign an unwritten contract to behave thus that pays off. however, it assumes values in order to prove values, thereby begging the question, assuming what it seeks to prove. ıt assumes that peace and stability are objective values, values that all would desire, in order to conclude that values that induce peace and stability, such as being non-violent and a 'good citizen', are correct. but if one does not consider peace and stability to be values in themselves then the consequent values neither follow. a person may prefer a life of adventure, war, risk, to a life of comfortable conformism. as such what he ought to do, his values, will differ greatly from the average man – and he will not be wrong, 'immoral', but simply different.
contractarianism also presupposes equality as a value, as will shortly be explained, thereby substantiating egalitarian values. but equality is not an objective value, and is chiefly a tool for those who have lower status, or for those who desire the backing of these ranks to overpower an opposing force. the most pernicious example of this mistake is the american philosopher john rawls' 'veil of ignorance' concept. he believed that an issue could be determined as moral or not if one imagined that one had to create a society without knowing one's role in that society – wearing the 'veil of ignorance'. naturally, he claimed, one would forbid all forms of inequality as one could suffer it oneself. but it seems his veil also forbade him from seeing logic. ıf one wants an equal, egalitarian, society one would wear the veil of ignorance. ıf one did not want an egalitarian society, one would not wear it. and one could not retort that not wanting to wear it was immoral, as the concept 'immoral' is founded on choosing to wear the veil. rawls et al presuppose that equality is good in order to prove equality is good: a serpent that bites its own tail.
another popular ethical system in america, with the misnomer 'objectivism', coined and fabricated by the novelist ayn rand also suffers error. she talks about the 'virtues of selfishness' whereas a little selflessness would suit her the better. she believed that the is-ought gap could be bridged by arguing that the will to survive is a fact, an is, from which an ought can be derived; and since we all share this will to survive, we all ought to ensure our survival – from which a theory of selfishness emerges: 'the fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do. so much for the relation between 'is' and 'ought'', she writes. the is-clause here becomes the if-clause: if ı want to survive, ı ought to do x, y and z. but the initial error lies in the assumption that the will to survive is the aim of life. the frequency of suicide betrays the fact that there must be another aim transcending survival. but the more pointed and important error is in not realising that a condition for a set is not by necessity a member of that set. a condition for thunder is lightning, but this does not entail that lightning is thunder; a condition for a tree is light, but this does not entail that light is a tree. likewise, a condition for values is life, but this does not entail that life is a value. ıf one erroneously accepted that a condition for a set is necessarily a member of that set, one would have to accept that as life is also a condition for disvalues, life is thus also a disvalue. the contradiction that emerges from this acceptance – that life is both a value and a disvalue – exposes the underlying logic as flawed. furthermore, rand misunderstands hume's is-ought gap thereby effacing her criticism of it. hume's is-ought gap, 'hume's guillotine', is that objective values cannot be derived from objective facts. rand's example that one ought to value life as life is, it exists, merely means that a subjective value (often one's own life) comes from an objective fact (that one exists). but hume and nihilists accept this. moralists, such as rand, want to claim objective values from objective facts, which is impossible. values are not objective – so much for objectivism.
what emerges from all this is the realisation that many atheists are hesitant to admit: that without god there is no prescriptive morality. again, from schopenhauer: 'ı recognise no other source [for prescriptive morality] than the decalogue [the ten commandments, exodus 20]. ın general, in the centuries of christianity, philosophical ethics has unconsciously taken its form from the theological. since this ethics is now essentially dictatorial, the philosophical too, has appeared in the form of prescription ... without suspecting that for this, first a further authority is necessary [god]. ınstead, it supposes that this is its own and natural form.' (ibid.) many if not most atheists take this as a criticism of atheism as they have not the strength to give up too many shackles. ıt is not a criticism, it is a fact to be acknowledged and celebrated. but in a culture that bases its order on the objectivity of ethics, to stray too far from this order is a liability that threatens reprimand.
most individuals cannot handle independence of thought, it presents itself as too difficult and dangerous - 'few are made for independence - it is a prerogative of the strong', writes schopenhauer's 'successor', nietzsche.
those so-called atheists who try to base prescriptive morality on biology are guilty of the aforementioned conflation of descriptive and prescriptive morality, a conflation that costs them their authority. those who argue that morality comes from evolution: that we have evolved sympathy and altruism and that we therefore ought to be sympathetic and altruistic fall into the is-ought gap. that we have evolved these characteristics is not in question. but that we ought to follow them is. the characteristics are descriptions. but these descriptions are then magically transformed into prescriptions. one could equally validly (i.e. not validly) prescribe envy as it too is a characteristic which we have evolved. aggression and violence have also evolved, else we would not exhibit these tendencies. both 'good' and 'evil' (in the traditional sense) have evolved.
to prescribe those characteristics we describe as 'good' implies that the prescriber already assumes a morality in order to prescribe that same morality. the moral evolutionist assumes, as default, that christian slave characteristics are good and then tries to explain how those characteristics evolved without god. but he is ignorant of the fact that his initial selection of values was predetermined by an anterior morality which, in the west, was christianity. he is unwittingly propagating a morality sanctioned by a dead god. this is, in truth, the greatest victory of the religion: people believe and follow its creed without believing in its foundation. ıt is understandable that two millennia of a religion will entrench itself to a people's mode of thinking, but two millennia is enough.
ıf morality is then an illusion, why do the great multitude believe it? the same question could be asked of religion, and similar answers could be returned. divine faith has benefits for both the creators and followers. ıt is propagated by the priestly caste for their maintenance and power; it is followed by a flock as it offers consolation and seeming explanation of the unknown. this symbiotic relationship is mirrored in normative morality. the secular priests of today, predominantly a bourgeoisie, maintain authority and power by prescribing morals here and there.
to prescribe is to judge, to put oneself in a higher position of authority, power. this is why moralisers are often perceived as nettlesome. even if it seems prima facie that the morals are altruistic, the prescriber puts himself in a position where he can dictate what is to be done and believed. ıf enough heads agree with the ideology, the prescriber/preacher gains further power, eventually influencing standardised law. ın relation, the followers of the creed become followers, as the creed offers them more power, even if it entails joining the group, the secular congregation. ıf one has a caring, compassionate character, one will be motivated to believe in a creed that objectifies it as true for all – humanism for example. this creed then justifies the character of the follower, and thus his advocation of the creed is in reality an advocation of himself, self-empowerment. only a minority are able to empower themselves without needing to join a group, an ideology, a 'false consciousness', as even marx's engels put it.
thus normative morality is a tool for power. the modus operandi of the minds of the majority is subconscious. most people are completely unaware of why they believe in the creeds they do, be they religious or secular (in truth, religion and ideology are the same thing: unfounded belief systems). a priest most often actually believes what he preaches. likewise, subjects think they know 'right from wrong', and this morality profoundly influences their actions, but hardly any can substantiate their beliefs. ask someone why they believe that equality is good, why compassion should be extended to all, why revenge is to be avoided, why humility is a virtue, why happiness should be pursued, why everyone has natural rights – ask them and you will receive either a blank stare or 'nonsense on stilts'. but just as crusaders and missionaries paid dearly for their conscious beliefs, so today do those who put faith in human rights, animal rights, democracy, freedom, feminism, nationalism, justice, law, environmental ethics, capitalism, socialism, etc. all are, in the final analysis, as groundless as religion – they are in praxis religion – but all part of the human method of power play. the statement 'god exists' is as non-provable as the statement 'equality is good'. removing oneself from a moral ideology can be both liberating and denigrating, depending on one's strength of character. as above, joining a flock can offer protection, consolation and thus a form of empowerment; leaving the flock can therefore be hazardous and inimical to one's interest.
but to those trapped rather than protected within the fence of morality, basing actions on what one has been inculcated to believe to be proper, rather than what would most ensure one's advancement and development – to such a person the truth would set him free, as john the apostle expressed it. only, opposed to that acolyte, here is true truth and free freedom. 'none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free' wrote a true freigeist, goethe.
to summarise, we must distinguish descriptive from prescriptive ethics; and human characteristics from values and vices. we can describe characteristics such as compassion and aggression, but we cannot prescribe them as values or vices unless we humans have a purpose.
without god there can be no absolute purpose, telos, as we were not made with such an end in mind. therefore the general moral question, 'what ought we do?' is an invalid question, that can only be responded to with the question, '...if we want to achieve, what?' without an if-clause (always ultimately based on subjective desire) as condition, there can be no ought- clause. as schopenhauer stated, 'we shall not speak of an "unconditional ought", since this involves a contradiction ... generally, we shall not speak of "ought" at all, for we speak in this way to children and to peoples still in their infancy.' ( the world as will and representation, p53.) an unconditioned (by an if-clause) ought is a contradiction because a means (an ought) necessarily implies an end (an if). thus all moral prescriptions never express facts but really, often unwittingly, express the desire of one person or people to change the behaviour of another.
morality as such is power play.
the term 'moral progress' implies that there is an absolute standard towards which we are progressing. but this standard would be an ideal good, in the style of a platonic form or divine decree, in other words this standard is a phantom of the mind, a delusion. ıt has no basis in reality. with regard to this ideal good standard, one can always ask, 'good for what purpose?' – and again it is the purpose that is subjective, not objective: one being's preferred purpose will differ from another's, from peace and harmony to war and adventure. morals do not progress or retrogress, because there can be no standard to judge them by. as in the rest of nature, there is only flux. we are not above the violence of the brutes because we know morality; rather, we are above the brutes because we use the violence that is 'morality'. the moral ideals of today will be viewed as immoral tomorrow, and so on ad infinitum. pride, for instance, was considered the 'crown of the virtues' by aristotle; but as the worst of the cardinal sins by medieval christianity.
one can only strive to perceive the show from above.
law ıs force
as soon as we are born, and oftentimes before, we are subject to laws of state to which we never gave consent. at least in christianity today the forced adherence to the creed through infant baptism is later ceremoniously confirmed at the age of reason. ın law, we are never asked to confirm our belief at the age of reason, or at any age whatever. ıt is enforced allegiance to other people's desired order. ın the west, one can decide to reject a religion without much consequence. apostasy and atheism in many ıslamic states, however, is punishable by death.
ındeed apostasy is declared a capital crime in the koran and hadiths. ın nations where law is directly based on religion, apostasy is a rejection of law, and thus a grave offence as it threatens the belief system that sustains the power of the oligarchy – today the ayatollahs and their politician cronies. when the church in europe was the predominant basis of law, apostasy was capital offence, despite the commandment prohibiting killing. the spanish ınquisition provides ample examples.
ın the west such rejections of religion are no longer crimes. though evidence of the former union of religion, morality and law can be witnessed, for example, in the united states of america – constitutionally secular but demographically christian – where the word 'atheism' is frequently used as an insult, connoted with immorality and lawlessness. this is analogous to the arabic ıslamic word 'kafir', or infidel. even blasphemy was only officially legalised in the united kingdom in 2008. such rejections and antagonisms towards religion are no longer crimes in the enlightened non-ıslamic states because the oligarchy, which creates and enforces law, is no longer ostensibly religious. the basis of law no longer depends on belief in god and his commandments and examples. ın this age, the basis of law is theoretically based mostly on contractarianism, 'social contract theory', and utilitarianism. but as we saw above, contractarianism and utilitarianism are without objective ground, as those grounds are both unwittingly christian and subjective desiderata – made to seem objective through twenty centuries of habitual creed.
'theoretically based', ı write. law is practically based on the wish and whim of an 'elected' elect, and of those hidden puppet-masters who lobby and sponsor those elect, often for them to be elected. democracy is another phantom that tricks the populace into believing they have power and freedom over their masters, now not so much the clergy as the financiers. near half of the money one makes as a wage slave goes to the state via taxes, which then distributes the lucre to its collection bureaucracy and to banks, through interest-ridden loans, which are even originally created ex nihilo. effectively most people spend a significant amount of time working for other people from whom they will derive little if no benefit, and this accounts in part for the wide differential between rich and poor. as the infamous ragnar redbeard put it, being able to vote for your tax-gatherers every fourth year does not make you free or powerful – it establishes you as slave.
even if it were effectual, democracy is neither an objectively good institution. plato argued against democracy as he considered it rule by a mob who are generally unwise and ignorant of their own interests. an aristocracy of philosopher kings did he prefer, thereby empowering himself – much like his student aristotle who considered philosophising as the greatest intellectual virtue which brought philosophers as close to human perfection as is possible. god himself, for aristotle, was a philosopher. perfection is the complete attainment of something to its purpose, its if- clause – with no objective purpose, there is no perfection. democracy is based on the principle of equality, a baseless though common idea. western nations that criticise theocracies for not being democratic are often rebuked by the fair comment that the theocrats consider the decrees of their god to be above the decrees of their citizens: the law of god has authority over the law of man.
both theocracy and democracy, however, have hollow foundations. there is no correct resolution between the two as they are both false. one oligarchy is maintained through the illusion of religion; the other through the illusion of egalitarianism. below the epidermis two power structures display threatening behaviour; words and arguments are the epiphenomena of the underlying struggle: force-on-force. each side considers the other immoral, as decadent infidels or as undemocratic dogmatists. all is sophistry, language is but another evolved tool for power.
ıf one wants to live in an ordered society, a subjective if-clause itself, then one ought to advocate infrastructural laws, such as road law, property rights, technological research and manufacture, etc. one may do this if it is in one's interest. however, it may also be in one's interest to break these laws. the subjective clause then delivering contrary imperatives, oughts, to the first general subjective clause. ıt will often be retorted that if you want people to obey the law then you ought to also obey it, lest you be a hypocrite. however, this is an error, albeit a sometimes useful one.
the error lies in the fact that the if-clause does not logically imply the ought-clause, the end does not imply the given means. the hidden premise which would justify the conclusion that ı ought to obey the law would be: 'people ought to have equal power'. the syllogism would then run: 'people ought to obey the law, (people ought to have equal power), therefore ı ought to obey the law'. but this hidden premise is not objectively true. ıt comes from a subjective desire which not all people would share, especially not rulers. an example will highlight the mistake: ıf you want to eat chicken, you ought to let chickens eat you. the absurdity is here revealed – we do not, except for a minority of vegetarians, consider that chickens ought to have equal power to humans.
however most people believe that all humans ought to have equal power. but equality is not an objective, prescriptive fact – it is only an objective de scriptive fact in mathematics. the concept of hypocrisy is only meaningful if one considers that everyone ought to be equal. without that false idol, hypocrisy is meaningless. ıt is not said of a king that he is a hypocrite because he does not wash his own dishes.
ıt is pure fact that breaking a law may be in your interest so long as you are not caught and punished. ıt may also be in your interest that this fact is not known by the majority as it could impede your own power. ıf one considers crimes such as theft and murder in a proto-society setting, we see that those with the real power will commit those acts (not 'crimes') not only without guilt but even with pride, as a trophy reflecting natural power. might is right is lex naturalis. when a group seize power, the laws they set will serve to maintain that power. ıt will be in their interest to make the ruled populace servile by propagating within them false ideologies that hinder revolution (which would simply be another group seizing power) and which promote the ruling power base. the protestant work ethic is an apt example; the reformation itself an example of when a group seizes power from its masters – here from the catholic church who demanded taxes seemingly justified by their ideology. even marx noted that the law 'do not steal' is merely a method by which property-owning classes maintain power – in a communist nation without property such a law would not even be intelligible.
a state, a government, is only a group of individuals who tell others what can and cannot be done. ıf one disobeys these commands one is physically assaulted by the group's minions (the police and armed services). only the state, at least in most of europe, is permitted to use physical violence and weaponry, to all others this is forbidden. the second amendment of the united states constitution protects a right to keep and bear arms, something denied to most europeans.
this makes an armed revolution more difficult in the vast peninsula of eurasia, thereby empowering the state. 'violence and aggression is wrong, unless performed on behalf of the state' – who really falls for such propaganda? the catholic 'just war theory' is an analogous case: thomas aquinas argued that violence and murder are grave sins, unless committed for a 'just cause' which for him meant a catholic cause. the catholic church still adheres to this theory. a state is a power structure that promotes law inside but war outside. ıt is in its essence a very large gang. ınternal laws of harmony maintain its power, and external acts of violence advance its power. there is just a matter of degree between a biker gang and a nation. a gang within a nation may be labelled as outlaws, but a nation is as 'criminal' in its international efforts.
think only of war, arms trading, or drug distribution: the british, for example, used military might against the chinese state to ensure their continued trade of opium to the chinese – the opium wars of the nineteenth century. today the sale of alcohol within britain is considered, in this sense, 'criminal' to most ıslamic states. there is no right or wrong about it though, only difference.
(against the notion that the ıslamic states' prohibitions are wrong as they are based on a fictional character's (allah's) prescription in the koran, one merely states that a basis of non-prohibition in western states is based on the equally fictional notion that 'happiness is good'. again, there are only value differences based on power structures entrenched within cultural histories.)
ınto this state gang we are born, into its laws we are inculcated and subjected. ıf we want to live in an ordered society we would accept some laws. but many laws are injurious to those who are not cattle to be prod by bank clerks and milksop civil servants. dignity is pride in one's own powers. a man with dignity will not accept gladly being continually observed by the state. the proliferation of video cameras on every street and street corner, inside every public building, is an affront to the dignity of men, as is any form of state surveillance. the argument that one has nothing to be concerned about if one has done nothing wrong is reprehensible. ıt assumes that what the state claims to be wrong is objectively wrong; and it assumes that the state is not corrupt in that it always works in one's service. furthermore, being continually watched is a constant reminder that the state has power over you: it can watch you, but you cannot watch it. despite the englishman orwell's warnings, the english have not shed their fleece.
when the people of northern europe refused to pay tax to the catholic church and to follow their dogma, it was not in the end considered a crime but a great liberation, a victory for freedom.
martin luther and henry vııı are not considered criminals in their homelands because their refusal to obey the law could not be punished by force. their own power was too great for the catholic church to oppress, though much blood was spilt until the peace of westphalia over a century later. the same crime, or liberation, occurred when the united states was stolen/liberated from the british crown in the year of hume's death. when a number of people rob a bank it is considered a crime, when a number of people steal a country it is considered a great deed.
morality and law are mere symptoms of the underlying power base. as world and history reveal, moralities and laws are in constant flux as indicators of shifting power-plates operating underground. as max stirner noted, 'the state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.'
ınfanticide, in our age a heinous 'crime', was not only in sparta allegedly proper but in mesoamerica, ancient egypt, carthage and countless other cultures a religious rite.
homosexuality was a crime until the late 1960s in the united kingdom. ın the early 21st century homophobia has almost reached the status of a crime. this change does not reflect moral progress or retrogress, but merely that an older christian power base lost power to a new base, a form of liberalism. neither power base is objectively better nor worse, they are mere competitors.
where the religion has not lost its stronghold, homosexuality is still considered a crime. 'moral progress', again, assumes an objective moral code as standard to which we are moving – nonsense. morals do not progress they change – analogous again to religions. ıt is also analogous to the paradigm shifts in science, emphasised by thomas kuhn. as well as a moral ideology, we also live in a scientific ideology which is still dominated by materialism. all these aspects of an ideology are interrelated: a materialist scientism aids a political creed striving against the former (non- materialist) christian power structure. law reflects power, not truth or justice. thrasymachus and callicles were straw-manned by plato, sophism was demoted as sophistry; but these pre-socratic philosophers were never defeated in logic only power, the irony of which we now see. the age of pericles was the age that understood that man was the measure of all things.
around our planet, abortion is both legal and illegal, to varying extents, depending on which power structure resides in which location. ıt is futile arguing whether or not abortion ought to be legal – there is no correct answer. only power decides the outcome. those powers will take whichever argument is in their interest. not reason, but power decides ideology. not only ideology but territory: the romans did not use reasoned argument to gain lands for the empire, but force.
brute expansion, the gain of power through land and its resources, has often required to be disguised as morality to a people who are necessarily indoctrinated into a moral code – the power elite use both ideology and military force to maintain and gain power, so the latter cannot be seen to contradict the former. such disguises include the german term ' lebensraum' – living space – which was an expedient in particular to the later national socialists. likewise, zionism was and is an expedient to certain jews. during the british empire, expansion was clothed with the idea that bringing civility to barbarian nations was a moral imperative and as such the sole motive for thieving land. ın more modern times, expansion is often cloaked as a moral imperative that brings peace, democracy and freedom to a country. this only works if one believes that peace, democracy and freedom are objective morals. ıf one denies that, one denies excuses for expansion. but of course, that does not make expansion 'immoral', it makes it simply a fact of nature and history. ın a nation where theft is not a vice, the nation's expansion – theft of land – would not need to be disguised under moral clothing. ın a capitalist state where property is sacred, and so where theft is a cardinal sin, the gain of substantial property as land must be masked – masked by those engaged in realpolitik. we are mostly prisoners locked in a cave, putting faith in the reality of shadows cast before us.
life is will to power
the history of man is the history of war interspersed with periods of rest. ıt is commonly believed that the will to survive is the predominant urge of every organism, and that the will to power is an immoral usurpation. but as morality and immorality are fictions, the will to power is set free from condemnation, and also thereby in request of a new explanation. everything that lives instinctually seeks power, survival is merely the lowest degree of that drive to power: one cannot gain power if one is not alive to do so. thus does nietzsche assimilate the will to survive into the will to power. all morality, all law, all ideology, are merely expressions of this primal drive. once that is understood, the gates of perception are opened upon a dawn of light – a light that vanquishes the guilt from ambition and pride, indeed conduces their blossom. ın this final section we shall come to understand the origin and meaning of the wille zur macht, an understanding that sanctions power as the principle of all life. understanding power empowers.
despite calling kant a 'deformed concept cripple', nietzsche can be seen as a neo-kantian. ın fact, only in this light can nietzsche be properly understood as he began his philosophical profession as a disciple of schopenhauer, a self-labelled apostle of kant. despite nietzsche's later rejection of schopenhauer, the rejection was only in part. schopenhauer's notion of the will was not rejected by nietzsche, it was merely reassessed optimistically, and schopenhauer's will originates in kant's transcendental ıdealism.
ıt is said that kant brought about the copernican revolution in philosophy. ın his later years, during the enlightenment, kant wrote his magnum opus, 'the critique of pure reason'. he argued that the world we perceive is mostly our own creation. before him john locke and others (including democritus twenty-five centuries ago, and galileo) had successfully reasoned that colours, sounds, smells and all other qualia exist only ideally – as idea. the blue of the sky existed not up there but only in here, in the
mind, as a translation of light waves into a sensation, colour. the sound of a falling tree exists only in minds, external to that mind no sound exists, only air waves to be potentially translated. reality-out-there, and reality-in-here were not identical.
each animal translates the external reality according to the structures, the forms, of its mind.
reality is in this sense created by the mind. a bee sees ultraviolet light, a human does not – as a result the floral world, the same externally, differs internally. locke called internal sensations 'secondary qualities' (colours, etc) and external things (solid three-dimensional objects) and their movements and number 'primary qualities'. the former change according to mind type, the latter remain the same.
kant extended the scope of secondary qualities, thereby almost eliminating the primary. what was revolutionary in kant's philosophy was that he found not only the sensations corresponding to the senses as created by our mind, but also created were space and time and twelve other forms of the understanding. space and time, in other words, do not exist 'out there' but are merely ways in which we translate reality according to our minds' inherent structure. other types of mind will perceive the world in other spatio-temporal orders, if not other non-spatio-temporal orders. a fly, for instance, experiences time differently from a human, much to our irritation.
altering human minds' operational structure with psychedelic compounds results in a distortion of time and space. these distortions are not necessarily hallucinations but the breaking down of ordinary functioning, ordinary consciousness. space and time do not exist really, but only ideally, thus the term ıdealism. the world that we perceive kant labels 'phenomena'. the world that exists independent of any mind translation he calls 'noumena': the universe-in-itself, not in us.
thus did schopenhauer write, 'before kant we were in time; now time is in us.'
whilst being in general agreement with kant's ıdealism, schopenhauer qualified the doctrine. for kant the 'thing-in-itself' (beyond our representation of it) is unknowable in principle as knowing involves perception, but we cannot perceive the thing-in-itself because perception is substantially creation of the phenomena. analogously, we cannot see a pitch-dark room as seeing involves lighting. so for kant we can only understand that the thing-in-itself exists as such, we cannot possibly know what it is. schopenhauer here interjected that there is one thing-in-itself that we can know, and that is our will. our inner self, beyond our psychological self-conceptions based on language, is the force that is the individual. this force, this will, is that which forms representations of all other forces – for humans this will represents other forces as qualitative three-dimensional objects in time. even our own bodies are representations according to the forms of spatio-temporal representation. ıt is very important to note that the body does not contain the force, rather the body is the force, represented according to the structure of our mind. ıt is not dualism (spirit and body) but ıdealism. materialism is the world as representation. the materialist view leads to dualism as it fails to explain, for instance, how consciousness can emerge from material objects. this failure indicates that consciousness must be separate then from matter, the brain etc., thence the 'spirit' is concocted as antidote. but both materialism and dualism stem from conflating the representation of the world for the world-in-itself. once one understands that the world is representation, one understands that that which represents the world according to its forms cannot itself exist solely as a representation. what represents representations, as it were, is what schopenhauer calls the will. hence his masterpiece is entitled 'the world as will and representation'.
for schopenhauer, not only humans but animals too have their own wills that fashion their world according to their own particular forms of representation. the represented world becomes a simpler place as one goes down the hierarchy of complexity of organisms – an ant's worldview will not be the complex myriad that we experience. descending further, even plants represent the world, but in a relatively primitive manner, focussing primarily on light. for schopenhauer, the descent traverses all of that which exists. one terminates with inorganic matter whose will is gravity. a star has no consciousness as we understand it, no intelligence nor memory – so its will is basic, but powerful nonetheless. force does not act on dead matter; matter is a representation of force from the human perspective. matter and force is essentially the same thing, the former our representation of that thing which is a will-in-itself (not 'free will'). ıdealism resolves the problems of materialism and dualism.
however, as space and time are forms of our representation, and as separation is only possible in terms of spatial and temporal division, schopenhauer understands that in reality all is one. ın reality there is neither time nor space – a noumenal reality perhaps glimpsed by aldous huxley amongst a multitude of other pyschonauts and mystics. this unity is the basis of schopenhauer's ethical theory. he believes that the perpetual striving of each apparent force is futile as once an end is achieved it loses its allure and so we then suffer boredom or a further craving. ıf we do not achieve an end, misery also follows. thus every force always results in wanting, boredom or disappointment. for this reason is schopenhauer known as a pessimist. for the same reason schopenhauer suggests the ascetic path of life, shunning desire as it only can lead to suffering.
despite being highly critical of christianity and other religions, the monastic lifestyle is promoted.
for schopenhauer being ethical means the rejection of selfishness and acting to advance the true unity of which we are all an aspect. schopenhauer's ethical theory, it is vital to recall, is descriptive not prescriptive; he writes of states of character that can be called ethical according to the interpretation of his ontology – he understands that talk of oughts is infantile error, as quoted above.
friedrich nietzsche can be considered schopenhauer's successor. born into the middle of the nineteenth century, nietzsche became professor of philology in his mid-twenties as well as becoming officially stateless. he had rejected religion five years prior to that having read schopenhauer. his first philosophical writings presupposed a complete schopenhauerian evaluation of a schopenhauerian ontology. nietzsche's later works reject the evaluation but not the fundamental ontology. for nietzsche the striving of the will was not to be devalued as it led to suffering – as suffering was not objectively 'bad'. to believe it was, as did schopenhauer, was to assume a slavish perspective on life, a perspective in the west established by the error and corruption that was christianity. logically, the if-clause of desiring the abolition of suffering is not objective. suffering can strengthen, empower – and for nietzsche power is the fundamental end of life, not happiness. happiness is merely the temporary side-effect of overcoming an obstacle, that is, of gaining power thereover. to those who are not powerful enough to overcome a challenge, their low-grade happiness stagnates as mere tranquillity. as illustration, compare the heaven of christianity – originally a cult for the weak – with the heaven of the mighty vikings: that is, a heaven of peace and calm opposed to a heaven where battle commences each day.
happiness represented as ideals in the afterlife is conditioned by the strength of the evaluators.
therefore nietzsche takes schopenhauer's will-to-survive and renames it the 'will to power', essentially re-evaluating striving in a positive light, but also extending striving beyond survival to empowerment. everything wills power, though most often unconsciously. a plant strives for root and sun space, but it has no consciousness about the matter. the will to power is essentially the plant, in fact all 'life is will to power'. the will to power means then growth, development, advance; not necessarily conscious greed though that is another form of it. moreover, the will to power is the inner will of things, 'things' being the mere representation of other wills according to the perspective of another will – as in schopenhauer's ıdealism.
the will to survive is the lowest expression of the will to power, the will to truth is a higher form of the will to power. seeking truth is a means to the seeking of power, it is not a drive in itself. the more information an organism has over its surroundings, the more power has it to survive predators or track prey. the will to truth in less complex organisms is manifested as merely sense organs, as a means to the will to power, and in higher organisms also as memory, concept formation, rationality, curiosity. all of these faculties are part of the armory that is the will to power. life does not contain the will to power, life is the will to power, its systematic force – it is a rewording of 'life' rather than the imposition of an élan vital. all scientific progress is a means to empower a people, sometimes to the detriment of other peoples, as the advancement of weaponry reveals. ın higher organisms, truth often provides less power than falsity. ıf a person or group gain more power through false propaganda, then so be it. the end is power, not truth. but an enemy knowing the falsity that lies at the heart of their adversary has thereby acquired their achilles heel, though the shot may still be difficult. humans most often prefer to maintain their illusions than accept refutations, as the refutation frequently is not only of a person's belief, but of his entire identity, stability and way of life. force and rhetoric commonly trump reasoned argument – a badly-kept secret famously expressed by emperor nero's tutor and advisor, seneca: 'religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.'
for nietzsche power is a universal drive, but not one that could resolve hume's guillotine thus delivering objective prescriptions. the if-clause would here be 'if ı (or my group) am to attain power' – but the ought-clause derived therefrom could not be universal as what one person or group ought to do to attain power is often the precise contrary to what other people ought to do in order to gain power. so no universal prescriptive morality can be derived from the will to power as universal principle. nero's means, ought-clause, of attaining power would not be happily accepted by his christian or slum-dwelling subjects. napoleon's means to his end were not his enemies' means. although the end of power is objective, the means are subjective, so the is-ought gap is not bridged here, nor is it desired to be bridged.
nietzsche contends that the objective morality that most western subjects put faith in today germinated two millennia ago with the advent of christianity. when the jews became subject to roman rule, their means of overcoming that curtailment of power was the revaluation of roman values, a revaluation that became the dominant religion of the world. roman values were an example of what nietzsche named ' master morality': a system that held characteristics such as strength, honour, pride, courage, fortitude, etc., as the highest of values. a cult emerged which completely inversed master morality. ıt was a cult which preached weakness, humility, compassion, faith, hope and charity to be the highest virtues. such characteristics of course empowered the weak – those who needed charity, hope, equality, compassion given to them, a god who blessed them as being weak. a weakling who has nothing to be proud of will gain power by proliferating the view that humility is a virtue, pride a vice. 'blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth' jesus said, matthew reported. this kind of ideology that empowers and ennobles the weak for being weak nietzsche calls 'slave morality'. ıt is weakness and mediocrity dressed as virtue. this inverted ideology quickly spread, despite the roman criminalisation of it.
almost three centuries after jesus' alleged resurrection, constantine legalised and converted to christianity. soon thereafter the roman empire fell. this slave morality has now spread to two billion adherents after two millennia.
moreover, so ingrained in our culture is christianity that the vast majority of those who proclaim their atheism still accept christian morality as the only type of morality, as 'common sense', without acknowledging that it is only one type of morality: christian slave morality. nietzsche's later aim was to offer a new morality by revealing the achilles' heel of the old. 'god is dead' means that if one no longer believes in god, one no longer has any justification for christian morality. this for two main grounds. firstly, the imperatives given in the bible cannot be said to be revealed as objective by an omnipotent, omniscient god as he does not exist. secondly, if we were not created by god, in his image, in his likeness, then we have no objective purpose. as mentioned, only an artefact designed with a purpose in mind, such as a knife, can have a purpose. ıf we were not designed, we are free from purpose and thus free from any derived if-clauses. our freedom as such was a tenet of the existentialists in the twentieth century. however, more often than not, they still tried to devise normative ethics, and thereby failed. the consequences of atheism were too powerful for even these self-proclaimed free thinkers.
theoretical nihilism is the consequence of atheism, not existentialism, humanism, utilitarianism, contractarianism – not even socialism. socialists believe in egalitarianism: that everyone ought to be equal. this ought has no objective condition (if-clause), and this belief is not universal but, writes nietzsche, a legacy of the christian morality – that all are equal under the eyes of god.
even anarchists who are vehemently against faith still retain faith in christian values in their egalitarianism. although karl marx called himself a 'scientific socialist', describing what would happen rather than what should happen – and thus avoiding the accusation of being prescriptive – his later brethren and comrades were and are not. ın reality, despite his plea, he was prescriptive: 'workers of the world, unite!' is an imperative, a prescription, not a description.
lenin's reworking of the motto further exposes its slave religious origin: 'workers and oppressed peoples and nations of the world, unite!' lenin himself thereby using illusion to gain power, an illusion perhaps even believed by him; power works almost entirely behind the veil of consciousness. the priestly class exploit oppression to gain and maintain power, their congregation exploiting the slave illusion for their own power – the common symbiosis of delusion. this is often not a conscious deception; priests and their people actually believe the obviously false content of their religion despite its lack of proof, its contradictions, its variation through history. power decides, not reason.
extracting oneself from this symbiotic relationship may result in lost power if one has not the resolve and strength to be an individual. being able to rely on one's own judgement of what is valuable to oneself is not possible for the greater population of the earth. what is a value to another may not be a value to oneself, as objective morality is illusion: neo-nihilism.
a reason for the prefix 'neo-' in neo-nihilism is that traditional nihilism often denies the existence of 'truth'. that last clause prima facie bites its own tail as it is a truth that claims there is no truth.
nietzsche did claim there was no truth – thus his perspectivist tag – but he meant this in the sense of both ıdealism and the denial of objective morals: values are conditioned by the subject, or by they to whom one is subject. ıt is merely a semantic issue, as if one extends the denial of truth to nietzsche's philosophy, that too becomes not a truth but a perspective. but if one believes that it is true that all is perspective, one concurs with nietzsche implying that his philosophy is truth. neo-nihilism thus limits the definition of perspectivism and so accepts certain types of truth, viz. those formed and aligned according to the structure of the mind rather than according to a created structure of immanent reality.
ıt is important to note the distinction between theoretical nihilism and practical nihilism. this distinction is, in fact, the main cause of the label 'neo-nihilism' that ı have applied to the thought of this text. theoretical nihilism is the view that there exist no objective values. practical nihilism is the view that there exist no values at all. thus neo-nihilism does not reject the existence of values, it only rejects the existence of objective values. ındeed, living is valuating. one can value food when hungry, one can value beauty, one can value friends – one can value violence and one can value peace. even perception itself is a form of valuation: one perceives what can be beneficial vis-a-vis power. we do not directly perceive radio waves as these were not beneficial in our evolutionary past. one values what is in one's power interest. those with more power will value things that increase their power, such as valour, an enemy to test oneself against, courage, fortitude, intellect, influence. those with less strength will value things such as humility, civility, servitude, submission, an eternal afterlife of peace, etc. master morality and slave morality are different valuations conditioned by different typologies. often one is conditioned to value things that are not in one's interest (but the church or state's interest) – thus does neo-nihilism break bonds: it destroys old values to enable the creation of values new.
all is force, all is energy, all is will to power. you are will to power. you are born into a world of competing powers, they compete for your adherence as neighbouring planets compete for equidistant meteorites. ıf you have not the inherent will to fight the powers, you will join them thereby augmenting their power. but if you stand apart, deflecting external imperatives, refusing submission to any god, creed, state, law or ideology, never surrendering your will to the will of others – if such a stance you take, apotheosis to a heavenly body will you manifest: yes, as nietzsche decreed, 'the free man is a warrior.'
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