Active Nihilism

So on one extreme mythos and logos are separated through abstraction - extreme drying up - Modernity,,, and on the other extreme - everything is mythos or everything is equally logos - extreme fluidification - Postmodernity.

There's been a lapse into two extremes.

And this is what makes the schizophrenia of modernity a way of coping, without going insane, and without having to take a stand.

The modern can deny both sides because both participate in him, at one time or another.
He remains cynical because nothing touches him. He is safe within the social, which allows him to remain as schizophrenic as possible, if he pays the price for this "privilege", now called a "right".

His madness has no real-world consequences, beyond what can be corrected with the appropriate effort/work/commitment.
The system shelters him so as to allow him to remain as confused and internally fragmented as he wishes, gaining control over him through this internal absence of cohesion ...the only rule is that you do not disrupt, disturb, the internal fragmentation of others.

The disappearance of the Tragic culture relates to modern Nihilism...

Quote :

"The crucial question for those concerned with nihilism thus becomes: Is there still left in our practices some remnant of the nonobjectifying practices that were presumably extant in fifth-century Athens before the cultural collapse that is expressed and furthered by Socrates and Plato?” [Dreyfus]                                                                                            

One way to grasp this notion of nonobjectifying practices is through the image of the forms of life expressed specifically in great participatory cultural founding works of art. Following Heidegger’s lead, Dreyfus references the now-famous example of the Greek temple, which opened the world and earth for the ancients when they came to worship at the site of the god, as a paradigmatic work of art the temple

“[f]irst fits together and at the same time gathers around itself the unity of those paths and relations in which birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire the shape of destiny for human being” (Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, 42).

Dreyfus, drawing on Heidegger, also employs an example of Greek tragedy as serving a similar function for the Greeks in the fifth century. For example, in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, as opposed to conceptualizing an objective truth for the Greeks, which was given in terms of a mode of disclosure that gave the spectators actual truth about their existence, showing truth as explicit, as actual, i.e., already worked out in advance, the tragedy revealed implicitly the understanding of the Greeks’ various cultural practices by organizing and capturing them, and through a process of re-presentation, showed them as potential truth, which was communal and dynamically in transition, in the process of developing and evolving. Aeschylus did not want to “state propositions or justify their beliefs,” rather he produced a “drama in which they were participants,” which represented a “paradigm of their way of life,” and thus the tragic poet “helped them focus and preserve the practices of his age” (517). Tragedy served up cogent possibilities for acting in terms of the Greeks’ common experience of life, and this was not scant entertainment as the theater is today, conceived in its most vile and pernicious form as an exercise in rote escapism, rather the tragedies of the Greeks represented the aesthetic spectacle par excellence wherein

“[t]he battle of the new gods against the old gods is fought. The linguistic work, originating in the speech of the people, does not refer to this battle; it transforms the people’s saying so that now every living word fights the battle and puts up for decision what is holy and what is unholy, what is great and what small, what brave and what cowardly, what lofty and what flighty, what master and what slave” (Heidegger, PLT, 43).

The communal linguistic practices of the Greeks formed a complex mode of dwelling where meaning was furthered and shared without the drive to make it explicit, which would have destroyed their factical and lived cultural value, and this relates to what was stated earlier about Nietzsche and the drive to understand objectivity in terms that are fluid and malleable, which speaks authentically to the ambiguous nature of human existence. Clearly, dwelling in the state of perpetual questioning with respect to the human’s finite and limited access to knowledge presupposes the tragic consciousness. This is what Vernant refers to as “tension and ambiguity” in Greek tragedy and this might be directly related to Dreyfus’ notion of nonobjectifying practices, wherein our philosophical inquires produce more questions than answers. There is, Vernant argues, an essential ambiguity inherent to the extant practices in fifth century Athens, for “man’s relationship to the world was at once social, natural, divine, and ambiguous, rent with contradictions in which no rule appears definitively established, one God fights another, one law against another and in which, even in the contents of the play’s action, justice itself shifts, twists, and is transformed into its contrary” (32). For the most part, meanings in tragedy unfold in such a way that the main player is unaware of what is happening. The tragic reversal and downfall is “unsuspected by even those who initiated them and take responsibility for them, is only revealed when it becomes a part of an order that is beyond man and escapes man” (Ibid., 17)."

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Satyr wrote:

If the absolute is absent then reaffirming this is not nihilism, but a reaffirmation of existence, offering potentials for creativity, for becoming.
If there is no universal moral standard, outside of evolved social behavioural necessities, and no universal meaning, outside the delusions of religious fanatics, and infected, by nihilism, secular humanists seeking comforting, then this positive reaffirmation of the absent is, in fact, not a nullification but a position opening up possibilities: space/time.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] - an example of the above and a proponent for Orthodox Xt.;

Quote :

"The Liberal, the worldly man, is the man who has lost his faith; and the loss of perfect faith is the beginning of the end of the order erected upon that faith. Those who seek to preserve the prestige of truth without believing in it offer the most potent weapon to all their enemies; a merely metaphorical faith is suicidal.
Liberalism is the first stage of the Nihilist dialectic, both because its own faith is empty, and because this emptiness calls into being a yet more Nihilist reaction--a reaction that, ironically, proclaims even more loudly than Liberalism its "love of truth," while carrying mankind one step farther on the path of error. This reaction is the second stage of the Nihilist dialectic: Realism.
The Realism of which we speak--a generic term which we understand as inclusive of the various forms of "naturalism" and "positivism"--is in its simplest form, the doctrine that was popularized precisely under the name of "Nihilism" by Turgenev in Fathers and Sons. The figure of Bazarov in that novel is the type of the "new man" of the C sixties' in Russia, simple-minded materialists and determinists, who seriously thought (like D. Pisarev) to find the salvation of mankind in the dissection of the frog, or thought they had proved the non-existence of the human soul by failing to find it in the course of an autopsy.
As opposed to Liberal vagueness, the Realist world-view seems perfectly clear and straightforward. In place of agnosticism or an evasive deism, there is open atheism; in place of vague "higher values," naked materialism and self-interest. All is clarity in the Realist universe--except what is most important and most requires clarity: its beginning and end. Where the Liberal is vague about ultimate things, the Realist is childishly naive: they simply do not exist for him; nothing exists but what is most obvious.

Up to this point, however, we have failed properly to distinguish the second stage of Nihilism from its first. Most Liberals, too, accept science as exclusive truth; wherein does the Realist differ from them? The difference is not so much one of doctrine--Realism is in a sense merely disillusioned and systematized Liberalism--as one of emphasis and motivation. The Liberal is indifferent to absolute truth, an attitude resulting from excessive attachment to this world; with the Realist, on the other hand, indifference to truth becomes hostility, and mere attachment to the world becomes fanatical devotion to it. Those extreme consequences must have a more acute cause.

Both Christian and Realist are possessed of a love of truth, a will not to be deceived, a passion for getting to the root of things and finding their ultimate cause; both reject as unsatisfying any argument that does not refer to some absolute that itself needs no justification; both are the passionate enemies of the frivolity of a Liberalism that refuses to take ultimate things seriously and will not see human life as the solemn undertaking that it is. It is precisely this love of truth that will frustrate the attempt of Liberals to preserve ideas and institutions in which they do not fully believe, and which have no foundation in absolute truth. What is truth?--to the person for whom this is a vital, burning question, the compromise of Liberalism and humanism becomes impossible; he who once and with his whole being has asked this question can never again be satisfied with what the world is content to take in place of truth."

...contd.

Quote :

"Dostoevsky’s literary depiction of the nihilists in Demons is no less damning than his various comments on them in his corre- spondence. These comments reveal that, for Dostoevsky, the essence of nihilism lies (as it will for Heidegger in the 1930s) in unrootedness, a detachment from the homeland, the ‘native soil’. Furthermore, in his correspondence of the 1860s and 1870s, Dostoevsky makes no distinction between nihilists and socialists, and in this he anticipates right-wing appropriations of the term in Western Europe in the post-First World War period. In a letter of 25 April 1866 to M. N. Katkov, for instance, Dostoevsky declares:

The doctrine that ‘everything should be shaken up par les quatre coins de la nappe, so that at least there may be a tabula rasa for action’ – such a doctrine needs no roots. All nihilists are socialists. Socialism (especially in its Russian variety) specifically requires that all links should be cut. Why, they are absolutely convinced that, given a tabula rasa, they could at once build a paradise on it. (Dostoevsky 1987: 229)

In a letter of 25 March–6 April 1870 to A. N. Maikov, he writes:

Nihilism isn’t even worth talking about. Wait until the upper layer, which has cut itself loose from the Russian soil, rots through and through. And you know, it seems to me sometimes that many of those young scoundrels, those decaying youths, eventually will become real, solid poch- venniki, true Russians deeply attached to their native soil. As to the rest, let them rot away. They will be struck dumb by paralysis. Ah, but what a lot of scoundrels they still are! (333)

And, in a letter of 1 March 1874 to V. P. Meshchersky, he refers to ‘the nihilist scum’ (386; Dostoevsky’s emphasis).

It is, however, in a letter of 29 August 1878 to V. F. Putsykovich that Dostoevsky makes a claim that will recur in the later history of the deployment of the term ‘nihilism’ as part of a discourse that goes far beyond even Nechaev’s justification of extermination. We have seen that, already in Jacobi, a connection is made between nihil- ism and the Jews when he identifies Fichte as the king of the ‘Jews of speculative reason’. Dostoevsky goes much further in the letter to Putsykovich:

Incidentally, when will they finally realize how much the Yids (by my own observation) and perhaps the Poles are behind this nihilist busi- ness. There were a bunch of Yids involved in the Kazan Square incident, and then it was Yids in the Odessa incident. Odessa, the city of the Yids, is the center of our militant socialism. In Europe, it’s the same situa- tion: the Yids are terribly active in socialism, and I’m not speaking now about the Lassalles and the Karl Marxes. Understandably so: the Yid has everything to gain from every cataclysm and coup d’état, because it is he himself, status in statu, who constitutes his own community, which is unshakable and only gains from anything that serves to undermine non-Yid society. (461)

It is, then, precisely in what he takes to be the unrootedness of the Jews, their forming a community that is independent of any national homeland, that they are able to incarnate a nihilism directed against the existing socio-political order and its institutions. Dostoevsky’s claim here also returns us to the theological origins of the term in the Lombardian heresy denying the humanity of Christ. For, just as that ‘nihilist’ heresy denied the incarnation, so Dostoevsky finds nihilism in a people whose religion denies the Christian Messiah. The politi- cally reactionary, deeply Slavophile Dostoevsky here anticipates by some decades the connection made between nihilism, socialism, and ‘international Jewry’ by the ideologues of Nazism." [Shane Weller, Modernism and Nihilism]

Satyr wrote:

If you consider it carefully then an organism , on the conscious level of a human, with a still developing identity (self-consciousness) would have to be deconstructed, detached from reality, from nature (past), and refocused upon the immanent, the yet to be, the still to come, the future.

Yes, the detachment is a mutilation of time, a dissection of man into a past, a present and a future but really, there is no line by which we can ever discern when the past intersects the present nor when the present meets the future.  Time is seamless, the past is ever becoming the present, the present is ever becoming the past.  Man is not an observer of time nor a mere participant.  He is time and whether he looks back or forward, he never loses sight of his self.  It is only when he tries to stand outside time that he is swallowed up, only when he tries to see himself as separate from the past and the future when he tries to imagine a present isolated, then he loses himself.

By Stanley Rosen, Leo Strauss' student:

Quote :

"The nihilist invokes us to destroy the past on behalf of a wish which he cannot articulate, let alone guarantee fulfillment. The classless society, the superman, the next epoch of Seinsgeschichte, so far as we in the present are concerned, are extreme revisions of the kind of wish described by Socrates in the Republic. Not even Plato's modern enemies have pointed out with sufficient emphasis that the just city, the city for which just men wish, depends for its actualization upon the destruction of the past. This is obvious from the need to expel everyone (with the unstated exception of the founding fathers) above the age of ten from the new city; it is also obvious from Socrates' criticism of the poets, especially of Homer. One cannot understand the Republic by means of popular political categories like "conservative" and "reactionary." Plato, like every philosopher, whatever his politics, is a revolutionary: he wishes to "turn men around" (Book VII, 518D: the famous 'periagoge'), to make them face in a direction different from that of tradition.

The difference between Plato and the nihilists, however, is this: whereas nihilism points us toward the historical future, Plato turns us neither backward nor forward in a historical sense. The Platonic 'periagoge' is directed upward. Plato wishes us to take our bearings in time by a vision that remains free of the transience of temporality. If such a vision is possible, then and only then has one acquired a "steadfast" or secure ground for the present. Only then may one overcome not merely the past, but the dangers inherent in the undefinable character of the future. The nihilist's future is a creation ex nihilo; the instructions for the overcoming of the past do not serve as the "matter" in which the new possibility is to be actualized. Differently stated, since temporality is the only substratum common to past and future, the one steadfast characteristic that may be attributed to the future is transience, negativity, or imminent worthlessness. The wished-for creation of new value, even as a wish, is on the way toward becoming a valueless past. What seems like the positive aspect of the nihilistic repudiation of the past arises not from a vision of the future, but from an illusion about the present. This illusion concerns the mode of presenta- tion of the present, that is, of present instructions for replacing the past by the future. For given the nonexistence of the future and the valuelessness of the past, how can a radically temporal present stand on its own, or signify in its own terms? What terms can the discontinuous temporal moment of the present call its own?

The present as the moment of nihilistic decision is a transient version of the nonarticulated monad of Eleatic ontology. Hence the speech in which nihilism is formulated as a positive doctrine is in fact silence. The distinction between the positive and negative versions of nihilism cannot properly be expressed as a difference between two speeches or accounts; instead, the account must be one of the difference between two moods. For the positive nihilist, the genuine response to a transient, worthless, and silent world is courage or resolution; for the negative nihilist, it is dread or nausea. Since courage or resolution is itself rooted in dread or nausea, it is easy to see that the mediating term is not reason, but hope. The nihilist perseveres in the face of despair not because he has a reason for so doing, but because his ostensible comprehension of the worthlessness of all reasons is understood by him as freedom. The nihilist is freed by the instability of the world to find stability in his own despair. Like the arguments of modern mathematical epistemology, the nihilist is value-free. He is a fact. In one decisive respect, however, the nihilist is much more acute than the epistemologist. If "the world is everything that is the case," or the value-free fact of all facts, then the facticity of those facts has itself no value. Facticity is merely a synonym for transience. The significance of "what is the case" depends not on the fact that it is the case, but upon the peculiar fact of human consciousness, that is, of the (nihilistic) consciousness which grasps the intrinsic valuelessness of the factic. It is not the facts that count, but their significance; and their significance has nothing to do with their facticity. This is the paradoxical inference from the primacy of facticity: to persevere in the face of the value-free is to become free for the projection of value.

According to Hegel, modern philosophy is decisively characterized by giving primacy to the freedom of subjectivity. Nihilism in its full or positive version shares that characteristic and may perhaps be its last necessary consequence: despero ergo sum, or even spero quia absurdum est. Again, the nihilist despairs because he is fully enlightened (the ultimate consequence of the Enlightenment) or free from all illusions. His despair is the sign of his enlightenment or freedom, the seal of his integrity. One is tempted to say that the nihilist hopes for despair in order to be free for the possibility of hope. Value and significance, if they are the ground of facticity, restrict man's freedom by the chains of objectivity. The nihilist dissolves these chains by the acid of despair and resolves himself in the hope of hopelessness. This is the existential manifestation of his essential incoherence. In terms of an older vocabulary, nihilism is doomed to shipwreck because it sunders courage from wisdom, justice, and moderation. As we have seen, a reliance upon courage led Nietzsche to invoke the unleashing of the blonde beasts and wars of universal destruction as the negative prelude to the advent of positive nihilism. Similarly, Heidegger was led to mistake madness for courage in 1933 and to identify the destiny of the Third Reich with that of Being. This mistake would seem to be consequent upon the elimination of the divine, and hence of divine madness. The least one may say is that the courageous turn to Being, when unaccompanied by justice or moderation, raises political dangers of so great a magnitude as to cast a shadow on the wisdom of unmitigated hybris." [Nihilism]

Quote :

The nihilist perseveres in the face of despair not because he has a reason for so doing, but because his ostensible comprehension of the worthlessness of all reasons is understood by him as freedom. The nihilist is freed by the instability of the world to find stability in his own despair.

The mis-understanding of those with a declining health?

Nietzsche wrote:

“What must not be confused with [ the no of active nihilism or pessimism ]: pleasure in saying no and doing no out of a tremendous strength and tension derived from saying yes – peculiar to all rich and powerful men and ages.  A luxury, as it were; also a form of bravery that opposes the terrible; a sympathetic feeling for the terrible and questionable because one is, among other things, terrible and questionable: the Dionysian in will, spirit, taste”

Rosen makes atleast one other interesting point, through the example of the libertarian and the communist; I like the presentation of how in the latter case, the erasure of the past, of historicism, entailing a loss of self and therefore of speech in deeds - that was communism. We have here the Goethean extreme - "In the beginning, was the Act" and No Word at all... to the other Xt. extreme - "In the beginning, was the Word".

If Xt. connoted extreme Abstraction of reality into inward bliss of "glad tidings", communism was about extreme Revolution, All Act... into outward justice of "happy saturnalia".

To resist every injustice in order not to act as was Xt. has at the other end of its own continuity - the Communist's inability to resist not reacting to the slightest of injustice...

The resistive mentality and the revolutionary mentality are two sides of the same coin.

Stanley Rosen wrote:

"Disaffected speech takes essentially two forms: solipsism and communism.

...The types correspond to isolation from deeds in speech (solipsism), and to a loss of self, and so of speech, in deeds (communism).

Speech is rational only if it preserves the continuity between itself and will or desire. As is especially evident in our own age, the fundamental feature of nihilism is discontinuity, and particularly so in the efforts to replace speech by immediate ecstasy or symbolic abstraction. The two moments or phases of time, coming-to-be and passing-away, are disjoined from each other as is remembering from forgetting. Let me give one final illustration of this by a brief consideration of what is today the central experience of "creativity." One cannot create except by forgetting the author- ity of the past; at the same time, one must remember how to create, or what it means to be a creator, and therefore a certain memory of the past is indispensable. In a healthy or non-nihilistic society, the discontinuity of remembering and forgetting is overcome by tradition. Tradition (traditio) is the "handing over" from past to present of the basis for a significant projection into the future; underlying this temporal transfer is the "surrender" of temporality, that is, of creativity itself, to the ideal of the completely rational speech as the eternal foundation for the creative manipulation of time. A living tradition is possible only through this double transference, only where philosophy is the lifeblood of the spiritual activity; otherwise, the aforementioned discontinuity occurs. We see this today not merely in the so-called dissolution of formal structure which seems to be a characteristic of contemporary art, but in the attempt to suspend or replace form altogether by the spon- taneity of "happenings."

To take a still more specific example from painting, the Cubist, the Surrealist, the Dadaist, even perhaps the Abstract Expressionist may distort the traditional forms in a way that makes it hard for most of us to see the continuity with the past as a sign of the transfer of meaning from the eternal to the temporal. But this continuity remains, in the extreme case if only in the artist's intention to restate every perception by means of more valid formal matrices. To express a mood or perception abstractly is to adhere to the notion of intelligent coherence as present not simply in the artist's consciousness, but in the world he experiences. In at least some phases of so- called abstract art, we see the influence, perhaps the excessive influence, of geometrical perception and related modes of math- ematical intuition. Elements of discontinuity, so-called quantum jumps, may be in the process of prevailing, as for example in the very turn to mathematical perception as dominant over natural perception. But continuity has not been suppressed. Or again, the artist may be communicating a perception of disor- ganization, but he does so with reference to criteria of order which may be seen, as it were, just outside the perimeter of the art work, and so as participating in its definition. Something quite different, however, is the denial of or indifference to order and organization, even as inversely reflected by a coherent portrait of disorder. People are not simply reduced to things, and human affairs to the contingent relations of things. Things themselves are "dismantled" or deprived of causal connection, and so of any rational significance.

To substitute a shoe salesman for a prince as a dramatic hero is one thing; to remove all perspectives by which we may see the difference between them is another. Of course, the advo- cates of art as spontaneous happening will say, and rightly so, that creative intention operates in the artist's selection and technical presentation of discontinuous events, that he is por- traying the contemporary world as it is, or as it is experienced by an enlightened (or at least up-to-date) sensibility, or by one which is free from the hypocrisy of dead traditions. But this is merely to assert the artist's nihilism, either as a project of his own will or as an acquiescence in the contemporary situation. In the active or passive acceptance of nihilism, the world is "held together" by nothing but man's refusal or inability to find value in it. One could perhaps argue that this posture, if rigor- ously maintained, is so contrary to our everyday inclinations as to constitute in itself a highly abstract formalization of experi- ence. I myself should be ready to suggest that we see in the "adopted" nihilism of intellectuals a kind of erotic perversion which is similar to the worship of machines. To the extent that passion may be detected in either, we may still find at least a negative taste for order.

Nevertheless, the artist or intellectual does not assume the posture of nihilism as a special or esoteric mood, except in response to, and as a defense against, popular or global nihilism. In past ages, individuals who suffered from world- weariness were immobilized by their condition and thus sepa- rated from normally functioning society. Only during the past one hundred years or less has it become fashionable on a global scale to say that it is abnormal to function normally. Philosophers and prophets have of course always criticized everyday, political, or "bourgeois" life, but always in terms of a higher vision, not a lower one. And this is to say that, with varying degrees of clarity, they have responded positively to the ever-present threat of active nihilism. Even in Dostoievski, the nihilistic protagonist is presented not as a hero, and therefore not as an anti-hero, but as a victim-one who has been disabled by the loss of vitality of traditional ideals. The remedy for nihilism is always evident: a restoration of the lost vitality, not an acquiescence in the consequences of that loss. By steady stages of decay, we have reached the present situation in which the nihilist protagonist is shown as the norm (even as an os- tensible eccentric or instance of "black humor"), and indeed as the paradigm or ideal type for coping with discontinuous reality.

The discontinuity of reality, and so the irrational fluctuation of remembering and forgetting; the acquiescence in and glorification of absurdity; a fastidious attention to the bodily Eros in all its imaginable forms, first, as a consolation for the disap- pearance of the psychic Eros, then as a kind of applied mechanics of the technicist anti-mind; more generally, an obsession with technique, whether as applied to bodies or in the empty formal systems of logic and mathematics; the concomitant praise of intoxication and sobriety as themselves discontinuous or indis- tinguishable manifestations of chaos: these are the easily iden- tifiable characteristics of the contemporary nihilist scene. But they in turn become intelligible only as consequences of a particular disproportion in the unending dialectic of the human psyche as desire articulated by speech. We might describe this disproportion by saying that man becomes discontinuous with nature, provided we add that the discontinuity is given by na- ture itself. It is true that, by nature, speech or reason is different from desire. But it is an error, and one which is basic to the modern world from its very inception, to attempt to suppress this difference. At first, the suppression takes the form of an identification between nature and desire, and freedom is understood as the freedom of reason to indulge in its highest desires. Unfortunately, the identification of nature and desire leads to the impossibility of distinguishing between high and low desires. It is then reinterpreted as the radical freedom or autonomy of human reason, or the replacement of nature by human work, through which the difference between the high and the low is reestablished. However, what reason gains in being freed from an external order is overcome by the negativity implicit in work or, more fundamentally, by time, which, as in the myth of Kronos, devours its own children." [Nihilism]

perpetualburn wrote:

Quote :

The nihilist perseveres in the face of despair not because he has a reason for so doing, but because his ostensible comprehension of the worthlessness of all reasons is understood by him as freedom. The nihilist is freed by the instability of the world to find stability in his own despair.

The mis-understanding of those with a declining health?

Nietzsche wrote:

“What must not be confused with [ the no of active nihilism or pessimism ]: pleasure in saying no and doing no out of a tremendous strength and tension derived from saying yes – peculiar to all rich and powerful men and ages.  A luxury, as it were; also a form of bravery that opposes the terrible; a sympathetic feeling for the terrible and questionable because one is, among other things, terrible and questionable: the Dionysian in will, spirit, taste”

Right.

The spat between Rosen and Strauss is like that between democrats and conservatives respectively; the common paradigm 'the platonic Good' is a shared one, a taken for granted.

One of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Quote :

BAI: Can you explain how Leo Strauss and his students read Plato’s dialogues?

ROSEN: Well, firstly, the approach to the Platonic dialogues has changed over the course of history. For example, in Neo-Platonist times, interpreters of the dialogues took the dramatic form very seriously. And they read very complicated views into what would look to, say, the members of the contemporary analytical tradition like extremely trivial and secondary stylistic characteristics. Secondly, there was a tradition of taking seriously the dramatic form of the dialogue. It began in Germany in the 18th century with people like Schleiermacher. And that tradition extends through the 19th century, and you see it in scholars like Friedländer and in philosophical interpreters like Gadamer. And we now know, of course, that Heidegger in his lectures on the Sophist took the details of the dialogue very seriously. So, that has to be said in order for us to understand that the apparent heterodoxy or eccentricity of Leo Strauss’ approach to the Platonic dialogues is such a heterodoxy only with respect to the kind of positivist and analytical approach to Plato. That is true especially, or was true about ten years ago in the Anglo-Saxon world and secondarily, in Scandinavia as well as, to some extent, in Germany. So, the so-called un-orthodoxy, or Strauss’ approach, in taking one’s bearings by the dramatic nature of the dialogue, is a heterodoxy only with respect to the kind of positivist philological approach on the one hand, and the analytical approach on the other. One could say that the analytical approach to Plato is heterodox vis-à-vis the whole tradition in that it ignored the dramatic structure. Final point, within the last ten years, even the analysts have began talking about the dramatic form of the dialogue as though they discovered this. More directly, the Strauss approach is characterized by a fine attention to the dramatic structure, the personae, all the details in the dialogues because they were plays, and also by very close analyses. Now, Strauss’ interpretation has the tendency to give you the impression that Plato had complicated views that are concealed by the exoteric surface, and from penetrating the exoteric surface, one may find the esoteric teaching. That’s actually a slight exaggeration of what Strauss really did. Nevertheless, there is a difference between me and Straussians on this point. Whereas I don’t doubt that one has to interpret the dialogues carefully, I don’t assume that I’m going to find a coherent and a secret teaching hidden underneath the text. The purpose of the text is to stimulate the reader to think, and it does that by being an intricate construction with many implications, some of which are indeterminate in the sense that you can’t be sure of what Plato meant and what Socrates meant, but they are intended to make you, the interpreter, do your thinking for yourself. Now, Strauss wouldn’t disagree, but he and his school tend to give the impression that there is a doctrine, worked-out and concealed beneath the surface. In this generalized view of the Straussian position, the surface teaching is directed towards the many, to people who are not genuine philosophers, that is, they are not the very individuals who can think for themselves. It is meant to be helpful to these people, not harmful. The exoteric teaching so to speak expresses the truth in a manner that is accessible to non-philosophers, or it replaces the dangerous truth with a healthy myth. But the deeper teaching, which can be discerned or perceived only by the genuinely philosophical reader, is concealed underneath that surface. I think that it would be better to emphasize that the dialogue has as its primary function the task of stimulating the reader to think for himself, not to find the teaching worked-out for him.

BAI: You are against the idea that there is some sort of fixed structure of the Platonic dialogues?

ROSEN: That’s right. There is no doubt that there are some other opinions hidden beneath the surface opinions. But how do you know when you come to the end?

BAI: Do you think that Strauss had that kind of fixed picture of the Platonic dialogues?

ROSEN: For Strauss, there were three levels of the text: the surface; the intermediate depth, which I think he did think is worked out; and the third and deepest level, which is a whole series of open or finally unresolvable problems. Strauss tended to emphasize the first and the second. I wouldn’t say he didn’t mention the third, whereas I concentrate on the third.

BAI: Then, what is the basis for the philosopher in the Platonic sense to concern himself with society and other human affairs? I think the background information is this: According to Confucianists, who view themselves as some sort of philosophers, the elite are supposed to be concerned with public affairs. These are inseparable. Then, a specific difficulty for Plato is this: how can his philosophers be concerned with human affairs?

ROSEN: I have to answer this on the basis of my own understanding of Plato. I would say that if the human race is in danger of destruction, and can be rescued only by the philosopher, and the philosopher is asked to rule, then he can’t refuse. That’s simply decency as well as self-interest. Sure, that philosopher has no desire to rule. Aristotle approaches the whole problem from a totally different perspective. Under no circumstances are philosophers involved in politics. Aristotle points out that politics is the domain of practical intelligence. And practical intelligence includes the traditional virtues, which are basically political virtues; so, they are not merely private ethical virtues. Aristotle says that we need a man with ethical virtue to rule. He doesn’t have to be a philosopher at all. That’s a much more sensible approach. But Plato is not intending to be sensible: Plato is making an extreme case; namely, if you want a just city, and you are really going to be consistent about it, and keeping the argument through the end, what price do you have to pay, what steps must you take? One such step is the philosopher-king. Aristotle has no such program; his program is quite different. Let me say this: his conception of politics is quite different from Plato’s, and the way he is dealing with political problem is quite different. Theoretical knowledge is not necessary. Practical knowledge is necessary. That’s a much more relaxed approach to politics. Confucianism, from all I know about it, is much more like Aristotle in this. When Plato talks about philosophers, he means the most perfect human beings. He describes the philosophical nature in the Republic. They are the people with perfect intelligence, wonderful memory, excellent character… the best in every single way. In short, there are no such people, which is another way to show that it’s not possible to have such a city, it’s not a serious political program. One might say, once in a while, you have such a person. Of course Plato wouldn’t do that. He is not talking about turning over the city to a bunch of professors; he is talking about perfect human beings.

BAI: What about contemporary philosophers who are interested in logic, or semantics, or the like…

ROSEN: That for Plato is not philosophy. What does he mean? He means by philosophy the love of wisdom; wisdom, that means totality of life, right? It’s a unity of theory and practice. That’s what he means by a philosopher, the most perfect people. You might want to say: "there are no such people." I am not going to argue against that point right now. But it has nothing to do with making professors-kings. Can you imagine that Plato says that human problems will not be solved until professors are kings and kings are professors?

BAI: If the problem of the elite is one of your primary concerns, and you are not against liberal democracy, how can you reconcile elitism and liberal democracy?

ROSEN: Well, you know, the word "elitism" is so ambiguous today because it’s a political and ideological term. I never use it. If you ask me if I prefer to be governed by intelligent people than by stupid people, my answer is "yes," provided that intelligence includes good character. Is that "elitism"? Then I am an elitist. Only a moron would prefer to be governed by fools. Do I mean that a small number of people are superior to other people in the court of law, or that they should be treated with special deference politically? No, I don’t mean that; of course not. You know I am a liberal democrat in the sense that of all the countries I have seen, America’s about as good as any and better than most. And I never lived in a non-democratic regime. I’ve never lived in a non-democratic country. But I have no desire to do so because it is certainly my conviction that given the circumstances of life today, democracy is the best form of the government that is practically available to us. I would never devote my effort to attempt to establish an aristocracy because it wouldn’t work. I don’t believe in revolutionary transformation of society. I don’t think that one can transform a society into a utopia by a revolution. Of course, if an existing government is tyrannical, it may be necessary to revolt against that regime; this is plain from the example of Hitler. But to transform an imperfect and even decadent regime into a paradise simply by overthrowing the old guard and replacing it with extremely harsh measures designed to transform and purify the existing situation, is, I think, impossible. I think these things have to evolve in such a way that the entire population is involved, not all on the same level, but nevertheless all are involved. So, that’s the first part in my reply to your question. Secondly, universities are not governments. Would you like to be taught by a fool? No, you would like to be taught by the best possible teacher. So, under most circumstances in life, we want people who are competent rather than incompetent; we want people who are of good character rather than people who are of bad character; people who are intelligent rather than people who are stupid. If that’s elitism, then I am an elitist. Is that incompatible with democracy? No, because democracy will not function without competent leaders. These people can come from the humblest political and social backgrounds: they can be peasants.

BAI: Then, what is the proper way to fulfill the political call or task of the superior people?

ROSEN: By teaching. Teaching is a political function.

BAI: Does Strauss hold the same view on this subject?

ROSEN: Yes, I doubt that Strauss has a different view. He was training students. Some of them went into the government, and others are teaching other students. You can only have an effect in that way. Occasionally, I daydream about how nice it would be to be the tyrant of the entire country. But that’s a daydream. People like me are not interested in governing. Under certain extreme circumstances, if power were offered to me, and I was told: "Do it, or we are going to be destroyed," of course I would. But I would resign as quickly as possible.

BAI: But there are some Straussians who are actively involved in real political affairs.

ROSEN: They are mainly political scientists; they are not philosophers. They might think of themselves as philosophers, but they are almost all political scientists, specialists in American politics or constitutional law. They did actually get involved in politics but all of them are advisors; none of them has run for office. They are councilors.

BAI: But do you think that their way of being involved in politics is the proper way…

ROSEN: Not for me, because I am actually a philosopher. They are not. They are clerks, at a very high level. But I don’t want to say that it’s absolutely the case that I forbid philosophers to be engaged in politics. If they want to, let ’em do it. But I think that it’s necessary for philosophers to teach.

BAI: Why should Socrates talk to his inferiors? Why do you teach undergraduates?

ROSEN: Because I want to make sure that I am as smart as I think I am. In other words, only by teaching other people, and making clear to them what I am thinking, do I know that I understand what I am talking about. That’s why I teach.

BAI: Do you think that this is also Socrates’ concern when he is talking to other people?

ROSEN: Yes, don’t forget that Socrates is presented as talking to people in the dialogues to whom in real life he probably never spoke. But forget about the Platonic dialogues, the principle is that we have to talk to people because that’s the only way in which we can find out who we are. If I am staying at home, and just thinking how wonderful I am, or that I know the truth, I may not know it, or I may be crazy. I have to at least have friends to talk to. So, I think that’s very important.

BAI: What are your general criticisms of liberalism?

ROSEN: You know, liberalism means people who are in support of freedom. And I am in favor of freedom, so I have no criticisms of liberalism in that sense of the word. Liberalism in the U.S. today refers to a collection of attitudes, many of which I think are quite silly. For example, liberalism can mean excessive tolerance towards alternative viewpoints, failure to rank-order, the incapacity to distinguish the high and low, the noble and base. I am opposed to that. And I don’t think that’s liberal in the genuine sense of the term. But it is what is called liberalism, right? I am opposed to not holding people responsible for their actions. Does that mean that anyone who steals a loaf of bread should be shot? No, of course not. You have to use your brains. But I am not in favor of excessive permissiveness; I am not in favor of the kind of ostensible objectivity towards politics that destroys patriotism by saying: "Well, no country is better than another" or "We are worse than the others." So, I suppose that I share most of Nietzsche’s criticisms of liberalism. Does that mean that I am a tyrant or monarchist? Of course not. That means that I have a different conception of freedom than what is advocated today.

BAI: Although you make these criticisms of liberal democracy, you are still in favor of it. How so?

ROSEN: Because if we set up an aristocracy, the wrong people would rule. If we instituted an aristocracy, the correct people would not be in charge of things. I prefer a system with much greater chance that my view will be tolerated and respected.

BAI: In other words, philosophers will be tolerated…

ROSEN: That’s right. Philosophers do better in democracies. In tyrannies they can exist only by going underground, by being completely silent. I enjoy talking, so I prefer living in a democracy. Democracy is a terrible regime, but it’s the best available. That’s good enough for me. The last thing I want to have is a cadre of technicians taking care of the country.

BAI: Then, do you suggest any cure for the problems you just mentioned?

ROSEN: No, no. I don’t suggest any cure. What I do suggest is that we all do the best we can, struggle mightily with our problems in as intelligent and decent way as we can. Do I think that we are heading toward the solution? Absolutely not. I mean, history is cyclical, you know, there are just these random movements. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do anything, you know. Maybe we can make things locally better. But there is no Utopian solution. That’s what Plato is telling us.

BAI: And somehow, you are suggesting here that we have no guarantee that even by our great effort, those bad things in liberal democracy can be improved definitely?

ROSEN: No guarantee, no. Let me put it in this way. There is always a chance that things are going to be improved. Sometime they do improve. For example, I have become professionally well-known. I mean, if I stayed home, and said, "Ah well, no point in doing things," I would have no reputation, and so no opportunity to make an influence on bright people’s minds. So, I have some small effect. I don’t want to exaggerate. I have students.

BAI: But some Straussians seem to have some comprehensive political projects…

ROSEN: I don’t think so. I don’t think that they have more comprehensive projects than Marxists, or Monarchists, or liberal democrats. If you want say that they have projects, you might say that they want a kind of more conservative democracy in the republic, not Plato’s Republic. Straussians who served in the government were generally working for reasonable policies. They were very interested in containing communism. Strauss hates communism, like many Germans. The Nazis used to justify themselves in that way: they had to save the world from communism. Strauss is not a Nazi. But he regarded communism as a much greater danger; you know, Strauss was Jewish, and he hated Nazis, but he regarded communism as the main danger in the last century, and I think that he was in at least one sense correct. I mean that communism came much closer to taking over the world than National Socialism. The Nazis were insane, but Marxists were just fanatical. I mean, the principle of Marxism is very benevolent: everybody will prosper, everybody will be given justice. That’s not what Nazism teaches. So, no wonder communism had a better run for its money. Communism failed because they took Plato literally. So naturally, they had to kill all the people over the age often. That’s where they went wrong.

BAI: What do you think is the future of human society?

ROSEN: I have no idea.

BAI: So, you don’t believe that things…

ROSEN: Get better all the time? Absolutely not. I mean, brain surgery is improving, but not politics. Take a look at the world leaders in this generation, compare them with the leaders of 30 years ago. I even don’t know the name of the man who is taking charge of China now. How can you compare him to Mao? How can you compare whoever is the President of France now to General de Gaulle? How can you compare President Clinton to Roosevelt? How can you compare Tony Blair to Winston Churchill? Now, we need only look back 30 or 40 years or so, in comparison with which you see already the recent decline of world leaders. I think that the West is in a kind of decline, as a matter of fact. I think that China is in decline, I mean, you are turning into America, is that not so? All I know is what I see on television: big businesses, factories, Disneyland, McDonald, making money, everybody is prosperous. Well, in 50 years, there will be no communism here. You don’t have to shoot everybody. You tell all these very brave and wonderful people, who are being shot and being put in prison, "Relax, study nuclear physics. Because in 50 years it’s going to be like New York." Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Those old men who are 90 years old and clinging to power, they may be Marxists. But whatever they are, they will be dead in a few years. Then you are going to have businessmen taking over. And inevitably, they will bring corruption, you know, favoritism… But you want to watch out for it, so that you don’t turn into Indonesia. But I don’t think it’s going to happen.

BAI: Then, even in terms of society, you don’t think there is a guarantee for progress?

ROSEN: No, I can’t really say. I don’t have any apocalyptic views on this matter.

BAI: So, though there is progress in some aspects there is deterioration in others. You wouldn’t say that we can compare progress in brain surgery to deterioration in some other areas.

ROSEN: I wouldn’t say that, although I must say I am very pleased. I just had a surgical procedure two weeks ago. I mean I would’ve been dead horribly if there had been no such procedure and had my problem not been discovered by the appropriate examination. In any case, is that progress? Oh, yes, it is. But it doesn’t improve how I personally live. No, there is no connection.

BAI: So, for you, there is no way to calculate how much we gain, and how much we lose.

ROSEN: I can’t do it. You see certain things are worse, and certain things are better. But in general, no. Things have changed. That’s clear. Some were for the worse. And the dangers in science and technology are bigger just as the advances are bigger. Do you fear being murdered by some nut who may put some poison into the water system? What are you going to do about it? Sit around and worry about it? Or take steps to prevent it from happening?

BAI: Let me conclude by asking you about the Enlightenment.

ROSEN: I am also basically in favor of the Enlightenment. Did you know that? You look surprised. I mean, if the Enlightenment means that we have to try our best to progress scientifically, and morally, and to improve things. Of course I am in favor of it. If it means that more people can live longer, happier, and more comfortable lives, of course I am in favor of it. Do I believe that there is a necessary connection between scientific progress and morality? No, I just told you that. Do I think that the Enlightenment is correct in the very dominant position it gives to mathematics as a paradigm of reason? No, I don’t. Do I believe that the modification of the high standard of virtue of biblical and classical traditions has led to superior morality? No, I don’t believe in that. Do I believe that the Enlightenment is directly responsible for liberalism in the bad sense of the word? Yes, I do believe that. So, I have nuanced positions about the Enlightenment. Then, if you ask what is my final assessment, my final assessment is that we have no choice but to defend the Enlightenment, in a modified form. We should try our best to improve things, and we certainly don’t wish to return to the dark ages, or to authoritarian societies. What would you have me do? Destroy physics? How could we do that? In my essay, "A Modest Proposal to Rethink the Enlightenment," I point out there that it’s impossible to go back. Even if it were desirable. There is no way to overturn the Enlightenment without destroying ourselves completely, we cannot undo the influence of science and technology and civilization. How can we do it? I mean, we’d have to burn all subversive books, and shoot everyone who is capable of rewriting these books. Ultimately, if we couldn’t take any chances, we’d better shoot everybody. Otherwise, somebody will come along, you know, who’d re-invent the wheel. No, I am not a big critic of the Enlightenment. I am a sensible critic of the Enlightenment. Not the only one. It certainly doesn’t follow from this that we should go back to go back to Ancient Greece.

BAI: For me, your position is that we should both warn against some sort of exaggerated ideals of the Enlightenment, such as that by mass education, we can have some sort of Utopia, that kind of ideology, and we should also warn against nihilism or postmodernism.

ROSEN: Yes. I think that nihilism is a consequence of the substitution of science for prudence. Because science is incapable of evaluating anything, including science. People say: "Science is wonderful," but science is incapable of saying "science is wonderful." That’s rhetoric by the scientific standard, and therefore is unreasonable. So, you must not receive the impression that I am one of the reactionary opponents to the Enlightenment. That’s false. I am not that at all. I am a liberal democrat and a man of the people. I understand very, very well that in a way the modern enterprise is nobler than the ancient enterprise because the modern enterprise dares to take the chance of freeing people, and making them comfortable, whereas the Ancients say "No, it’s impossible. We have to pay this penalty. We prefer to have a few cultivated people." So, the modern position is much nobler, it may be impossible, but so what? Isn’t it a principle of the classics that the good is good even if it lasts a short time? So, if we are to destroy ourselves by our attempt to set ourselves free, maybe the period during which we’ve lived free is intrinsically so valuable that it makes up for the shortness. Would you want to live for 5,000 years like the ancient Egyptians, safe from political change but dying of hook-worm at the age of 30, to say nothing of other horrors of daily life? No. Don’t think of me as an enemy of the Enlightenment, please. Think of me as a sane man who therefore sees the dangers and weaknesses of the Enlightenment. There is no necessary connection between being reasonable and being happy. In other words, the illusion is created by a lot of people, including the Straussians, to the effect that the Greeks are all happy, and we moderns are all miserable. That’s nonsense. Plato’s view of human life is not that optimistic. In my book Hermeneutics as Politics, I argued that postmodernism is a kind of logical consequence of Enlightenment. Too much light leads to total darkness. In other words, the Enlightenment leads to the identification of reason with mathematics and physics, which means everything else is irrational, in which case there are no rules and no laws and we can say anything we want to, and that’s what the postmodernists do. Science shows us that reality is matter in motion. Then human life is an illusion, which means that subjectivity is an illusion, consciousness is an illusion, and so on and so forth. Yes, in that sense, it’s very clear that exaggerated Enlightenment ironically leads to chaos. I am not in favor of exaggerated Enlightenment. So that has to be factored into my position. It’s a complicated, nuanced position with respect to the Enlightenment. I neither approve nor disapprove of it one hundred percent. I am much too fussy to approve of anything one hundred percent. There are two exaggerations of the Enlightenment: one, the positivist, scientific exaggeration; two, postmodernism, whose representatives don’t think of themselves as Enlightenment people, but they are. It’s just that the light was so bright that they couldn’t see anything.

BAI: What about Strauss’ political philosophy?

ROSEN: You mean his actual political views? I think he was misunderstood in America. I think that he was himself a liberal. He was a liberal democrat. He supported democracy. Winston Churchill was his great hero. He inculcated in his disciples, too, frequently a kind of exaggerated, rhetorical, amateurish, I don’t know how to put it, appreciation for aristocratic societies, a Burkean conservatism, the Greek polis. But basically, Strauss was a moderate, liberal. Just like me. He was just not understood in this country. People think of him as a Fascist, a Racist. It’s false. He was an anti-Communist, anti-Marxist. He is a classical liberal. He would certainly be called a conservative today. I prefer to say that, whatever his political views may have been, what Strauss cared about was philosophy, and he wanted a political society in which philosophy was possible. In a society which is called liberalism today, philosophy is not possible. Either you have machine man, you know, people who are doing nothing but constructing technical artifacts, or you have these postmodernist gasbags. On the other hand, I want to correct myself immediately. Of course philosophy is possible today. I mean things are so chaotic, even I can exist. It’s just that if you look at the establishment, it’s not very good. It’s rather poor. But that’s to be expected, in democracy, you have low standards of taste. Conniving people who desire power are in every society. In our society, the ideologues and sophists are in the public view. They are the same people who make vulgar interpretations of things to be in favor of the fashions of the day. They exist in every country. It’s not surprising that we have them here.

BAI: Are there any general differences between your political philosophy and Strauss’?

ROSEN: I don’t know. Probably. I think I am more liberal than Strauss is. I tend to support the Democratic Party for example, I mean, talking about concrete political things. The Republicans are sometimes right, but the current state of their leadership is very low, very low. For example, I believe in morality, but I think their version of morality is like fundamentalism. Morality as the evangelical interpretation of the Bible. I think their economic thinking is often quite cruel. Fifty years ago, Strauss persuaded me that Communism was a big danger, and that relativism, and subjectivism is a big danger. I still believe that. But on concrete political issues, I am often to the left of Strauss. You can’t equate conservatism with capitalism. Conservatism originally meant that the state controlled everything. The current view that as long as you have free markets everything will be wonderful, is absurd. You must have governmental supervision of pharmaceuticals, toys, safety belts, right? I think that’s crazy. You’ve got to have governmental supervision of things. I’m sure Strauss would agree with that, but I don’t know to what degree. He was a Republican in his day. He supported Nixon. He was not at all critical of Joe MacCarthy. I know that for a fact. I didn’t share Strauss’ views at all. That’s what I meant when I said I was more liberal. I was more to the left than Strauss. Strauss was quite conservative. But he saw his conservatism as true liberalism. It was not that he wanted to institute an aristocracy. He was very concerned about the Communist menace. In general, I am to the left of Strauss, as those words are used today, but not very far. I am much more frank than the Straussians. They would regard me as imprudent and running the risk of corrupting the multitude by talking about difficult questions in public.

2000.

One review of Stanley Rosen's "The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche's Zarathustra"

Quote :

Zarathustra by an Anti-Nietzschean, February 8, 2008

By Thomas (France)

This review is from: The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche's Zarathustra, Second Edition (Paperback)
That Stanley Rosen is strongly anti-Nietzschean is made quite clear in his Conclusion (p. 249): "Nietzsche's doctrines are at least as dangerous politically as those of Marx, and in a post-Marxist epoch, obviously even more so. Once the Marxist dream of wakefulness is punctured, the temptation intensifies to turn to the Nietzschean effort to derive individual significance from chaos."
Rosen contends that Nietzsche is a nihilist (p. 247) who sees the cosmos as only random chaos. This may be an over-generalization since, on the human plane, Zarathustra says that Will to Power is the foundation - see Lampert's classic commenatary: Nietzsche's Teaching: An Interpretation of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" and Z. Book I.15: On the Thousand and One Goals: "A table of excellencies hangeth over every people. Lo! it is the table of their triumphs; lo! it is the voice of their Will to Power." or Albert E. Gunn in The Review of Metaphysics 1998.
Rosen thinks that Nietzsche's "metaphor" of eternal recurrence could destroy the myth of linear Progress of the Enlightenment, but that this is totally deterministic (amor fati); Rosen then concludes that all Zarathustra's calls for a "creative transvaluation of values" (p. 247) and for the coming of a Superman are impossible and are a "noble lie" (p. 183)
I think that this contradictory vision is by no means inevitable. It is possible for example that the two aspects (determinism and creation) refer to successive phases in Zarthustra's own evolution in the course of the text. Robert Gooding-Williams' commentary Zarathustra's Dionysian Modernism (2001) pays closer attention to the connections between Zarathustra's beliefs and the dramatic sequences of the text.
Rosen's reading of Book 4 is very stimulating though. He points out the very ironic tone used towards the "higher men" who have stopped their progression, their self-overcoming, on the way towards the Superman, because of fear, or too much prudence. Rosen notes: "Zarathustra then warns them to restrict their will to their capacity. There should be no doubt here that he is condemning rather than praising the higher men." (p. 235)

Yea, I saw that Perpetual; Rosen's fear is nothing compared to how Waite spoke of N. in his marxist book:
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Rosen's definition of Nihilism mainly tackles the Relativist angle (eg. the capitalist-solipsism and communism I excerpted before); from a random review...

Quote :

"Nihilism when two antagonistic forces in society that produce a dynamic of conflict are recognized to be exactly the same thing. If you were caught up in the conflict and suddenly looked at the enemy and said “we confronted the enemy and we were them” then that would be a loss of meaning in your world. This is precisely what happens to Achilles in the Iliad when he realizes that the Greeks are no better than the Trojans when Agamemnon takes his war prize Briseis. He withdraws from the conflict, but then when his friend Patroclus is killed he goes into a berzerker state. Both of his reactions are themselves nihilistic. Thus the Iliad functions as a users manual for living in a Nihilistic worldview. It also tells us about the nature of emergence. And so this fundamental duality is at the core of our epic tradition and needs to be understood by those encompassed by the Western worldview." [Kent Palmer]

I haven't read his book 'Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns', which sounds really interesting.

There used to be some excellent commentaries made on a yahoo grp. similar to OPN by a Mr. Joe Martin, he used to go under the handle "pomonomo" - more or less a liberal, but with a long history of an Accurate reading of N./Strauss/Lampert/Rosen/Machiavelli; anyways, he picked up on an interesting observation that Rosen emphasizes:

Joseph Martin wrote:

"Let us recapitulate, phronesis is unattainable, or, what in the long run amounts to the same thing, unpredictably attainable. We never know when we will be graced with a philosopher. Technos is within reach of a few, but, since it is not wisdom, it is merely an ersatz phronesis. Those that aren't wise rely on (a merely technical) theory. But even technos will never be within reach of the many. Now, that is why we have Nomos, or law, which is a cheapened form of a debased wisdom (technos). Rosen tells us that, “[the Stranger] begins by assuming that the laws should be changed whenever circumstances make it reasonable to do so.” Since everything changes, laws that once were useful, and therefore good, become enormities. The greatest enormity being that once the people have been taught, perhaps we should say trained, in a certain way of life, it becomes almost impossible to change them, to turn them in another direction. Again, phronesis is the best, but since philosophers aren't always around when you need them, we resort to technos, but since theories and their rules are subject to continual revision, with said revisions not always either teachable or an improvement, nomos (law) becomes our last resort, but, as Rosen observes, “conservatism is at best only a tactic,” a miserable war of attrition until a philosopher or an ideology appears. It is interesting to note that Rosen here seems to understand philosophical conservativism as permanent revolution. Yes, it would appear the only choice humanity has is how to come to ruin. But these ruins will also be an occasion for philosophy…

So, philosophers tell noble lies, myths and/or ideologies in order to make civilization possible, which, perhaps, is nothing more than putting off the day of ruin. As Rosen says, “A myth is a story, it is a fiction, something that is not true. And yet this untruth, which we hesitate to call a falsehood, is able to communicate deep truths.”

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In the above we see, how Cleverly Rosen is exploiting a Right-wing Plato to a Revolutionary Leftism... a relativistic snare is unearthed - a nihilism. Plato becomes the "first modern", and N. the "last ancient"...

Aside:

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"Nietzsche's Corpse" - Geoff Waite

monoskop.org/images/1/1d/Waite_Geoff_Nietzsches_Corps-e_Aesthetics_Politics_Prophecy.pdf

To go through all that trouble just to call Nietzsche a misogynist.

Has there ever even been a scholar of Nietzsche/philosopher as handsome as Nietzsche? The effect of the real life receptiveness of woman towards Nietzsche and its reflection in his philosophy. Not to dwell or blow this point out of proportion but to keep it in proportion and not out from proportioning. Everything comes together... an incredible memory, aggressive and compassionate thinking, good looks... The effect of a woman on a man being taken to its highest point by(and could only be by) a perfect vessel in a way...that wise mischievousness look...Only those with the right eyes can see woman.

Quote :

Be not wise in thine own eyes; fear the Lord and depart from evil

Quote :

A person who took note of the course of events [at the feast] would have
come at once to the conclusion that beauty is in its essence something regal,
especially when, as in the present case of Autolycus, its possessor joins
with it modesty and sobriety

The Cynical nihilist is one, who picking on a small imperfection at his/her level of understanding and dismisses the whole.

But the opposite instance is also valid. The one, who picking on a small perfection, a valid pattern at his/her level of understanding sanctifies the whole.

Both bring it down to a relative parity, as bad or good as any other. The latter we may call the Alexandrian nihilists. With them, a small goodness is enough to warrant it pofound.

To focus on the flaw or focus on the good at the expense of the whole, are two sides of the same.

And this is what the grand meeting and the remarkable anecdote between Diogenes and Alexander meant; between cynicism and positivism.

Diogenes: "Step out of my sun."
Alexander: "If I were not Alexander the Great, I would like to be Diogenes."

Quote :

"Henry Fielding retells the anecdote as A Dialogue between Alexander the Great, and Diogenes the Cynic, printed in his Miscellanies in 1743. Fielding's version of the story again uses Alexander as an idealistic representation of power and Diogenes as an idealistic representation of intellectual reflection. The false greatness of the conqueror is shown opposed to the false greatness of the do-nothing philosopher, whose rhetoric is not carried through to action."

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As per Nietzsche, the burden of Alexandrian optimism was riding on Science and Art was too cynical, lacking conception of any revolutionary heroism - the period hence why N. was drawn to Wagner.

After Nietzsche, today the Alexandrian optimism rides on Art, to the extent simulations have displaced and taken over reality, more good than the real; and Cynicism falls upon Science - without abs. certainity, nothing is really real or valid or fit to be objectively evaluated; science means statistical validity.

Modernity and Postmodernity have straddled from one pole of nihilism to the other.

Why the criss-crossing of Alexander and Diogenes remains one of the most ironic moments of history...

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The Genealogy of Nihilism via Plotinus: How the World became a Fable

Cunningham wrote:

"In Hesiod’s Theogony we are told the tale of a divine drama involving tolmatic patricide and mutilation, which is the very advent of the world. Ouranos, the highest god, fathers wild children whom he hates. Because of this hate, Ouranos buries these children in the bosom of the earth, where they lie like seeds. The earth sets out to free these children. She encourages Kronos, ‘a most terrible child’, who is the first son, to attack his ‘lecherous’ father.3 Kronos does so, castrating Ouranos in the process. In this way Kronos takes his father’s place, and he in turn fathers sons with Rheia after forcing himself upon her.4 These children are ‘glorious’, yet Kronos fears them for they might avenge Ouranos their grandfather. As a result Kronos swallows all the children, keeping them within himself. But Rheia hides one of these sons, who is called Zeus. Zeus is allowed to grow in strength and resolve, until the time when he attacks his father, binding Kronos with chains and emancipating his brothers.

Plotinus utilises this myth to explain the eternal procession of all from the One. For Plotinus Ouranos is the One, while Kronos is Intellect and Zeus is Soul.5 The myth encapsulates, in Plotinus’ rather sanitised version, the movement of emanation, which arises contra the Gnostics by way of contemplation, and not discursive and agonistic activity. The One produces Kronos without need, but instead out of a plenitude which overflows. This mode of ‘making’ is external to the progenitor. When Kronos in turn gives birth to a ‘beautiful progeny’ he does so within himself, but for Plotinus this is not, as for Hesiod, a result of hate. For Kronos is said to love and adore his sons. Indeed, it is this love which causes Kronos to swallow them – thought remains inside the mind. But one ‘stands apart’: this is Zeus (Soul). And it is this standing forth which makes manifest the external world. Furthermore, this last child, who brings about the corporeal world, imitates his grandfather (Ouranos) since his generation is apparently external. For Plotinus the One would flow forever were it not for the castration carried out by Kronos. This castration restricts the flow of the One which in turn allows for the advent of the intelligible. It is this ‘calling halt’ that enables the dualism of subject–object, which is the basis of thought per se. If there was no cessation, then there would be no possible conceptualisation or noesis. But because this occurs within the belly of Kronos (‘fullness’; Saturn) there would still fail to arise any visible world.6 Plotinus has Zeus perform this task by ‘standing forth’ in the most audacious of manners. Yet here again there is no internecine strife. For Plotinus, Kronos hands over the governance of the world to Zeus in a most willing manner.7 Nonetheless it will be argued that this myth epitomises the immanence involved in nihilism. For what proceeds from the One, which is beyond being and beyond preceding, must in a sense remain within its placeless providing.

Thus since Non-being is the father of all that is, there is a sense in which the reditus (to non-being) precedes the exitus (to being).8 In other words, that which comes from the One ‘follows’ a (me)ontological return which ensures that its necessity does not infringe the simple, autarchical, supremacy of the One. This means that what emanates from the One, being, is not, in so far as to be is an inferior mode of existence compared to Non-being which is the only entity that really is (the really real). It is for this reason that Non-being can necessarily produce being without infringing simplicity, because to be is nothing. And as comparatively nothing, being does not actually escape the One, but remains immanent to it; being is in this sense an internal production. This is made possible by the protective negations which Plotinus employs at a methodological level throughout the Enneads." [Genealogy of Nihilism]

Cunningham wrote:

"How will Plotinus account for that which is ‘produced’ without reducing the status of the One? In other words, how can the One remain One? This ancient problematic here gives rise to certain philosophical moves which predispose the generation of the aforementioned nihilistic logic. Plotinus develops a meontological philosophy in which non-being is the highest principle. The One is beyond or otherwise than being.10 This will, it is hoped, protect its simplicity. The consequence of such a move is a series of negations which will give rise to a fully immanentised realm, one that may accommodate the nihilistic logic of nothing as something.

We can identify at least four prophylactic negations. The first is that of ‘tolmatic’ language, which is to say, language that implies a fall from a state of grace: to be is to be fallen. Although Plotinus sets himself against the Gnostics on just this point he cannot, it seems, help but utilise their logic of creation as a fallen state. By so doing, he ensures that that which is becomes subordinate to that which is not, a consequence to be continually repeated. The second negation arises because in simply not being the One that which is is not: to be is not to be. So all that which emanates from the One is nothing, because it has being. The third negation is the ‘negation of negation’: the ineluctable return to the One. This return, as has been said, in a sense precedes every exit. The fourth negation concerns a series of repetitions of the original negation of the One itself. At some point each hypostasis imitates the One in its contemplative non- production of that which is.11 Plotinus, contra the Gnostics, relies on contemplation to engender production. But the nature of this contemplation is, in a sense, non-production, since being consults nothing (the One) and repeats nothing in the innermost core of everything.

Thus that which proceeds from the One returns to the One – is always already returning. This desiring return is the contemplation of each emanation’s nothingness. In this way the return precedes every departure, for every departure is but the ‘embodiment’ of a return. But this provision will be incomprehensible unless we remember Hesiod. For it was in recalling the Theogony that we learnt of Kronos giving birth to sons within himself. Now we have also learnt that it is characteristic of both the One and the Soul to produce externally. Yet I have argued that we can only understand the emanation from the One as that which, in a sense, takes place within its cavernous belly. How is this reconcilable with the idea of external generation?

The One’s differentiation from all else cannot be spatial, for that would set something over and against it. So difference must, it seems, take place within and through the One: ‘The One does not sever itself from it [all else], although it is not identical with it.’12 (Hegel argues for a similar understanding in relation to the infinite and the finite.)13 Plotinus is unable to posit an ontological difference: we see this to the degree that the One can produce only one effect, doing so necessarily. That is to say, the One re-produces itself in every emanation: the One is non-being and being is not. In this way the One produces nothing ontologically different from itself. For all difference, that is, being, fails to register a real distinction between itself and its cause. Why? Because any reality a being might be said to have would be its non-being, for only the One’s non- being is truly real (or really real). Difference between the One and what falls beneath it is noticed only by an aspectual differentiation: like the aforementioned Gestalt effect of the duck-rabbit; but it must be remembered that both aspects manifest themselves on one picture.

Plotinus does hint strongly at the notion of a ‘cavernous’ – internal – provision, as he states that the universe is in the soul and that the soul is in the intelligible.14 For each causes only one effect which must remain immanent to the cause as a result of causation’s merely ontic logic. What is meant by this is that the One must look to an external logic, or rubric, which dictates and explains what difference is. In this way the One does not create, for the One cannot create difference, but must, instead, be protected from it. (It is argued in Part II that this is not the case for the Trinitarian God of Christian theology, for the Trinity creates difference from divine sameness.) Furthermore, Plotinus asserts that the ‘authentic [all] is contained within the nothing’. Bréhier comments on this idea by speaking of the reabsorption of all into ‘undifferentiated being’. So too does Bouyer. We know that for Plotinus the One is otherwise than being, and that every addition is from non-being. Indeed, we have only been as persons because of non-being. This does suggest that the place of being is within the cavernous belly of non-being. Plotinus calls the world the soul’s cave, and more pertinently he suggests that ‘to depart does not consist in leaving in order to go elsewhere’. It seems that the many which flows from the fecundity of the One does so only within the One. Indeed, as Gilson suggests, that which is provided ‘loses itself in the darkness of some supreme non-being and of some supreme unintelligibility’." [GN]

Nihilism is a mental disease caused by several factors. I struggle to fight my own nihilism every other day.
Nihilism can be caused by ennui, excess, lack of challenges, idleness, or a repetitive lifestyle.
Nihilism can also be the result of mental trauma, an overused mind, abuse, or a chemical imbalance, such as low testosterone or low or high serotonin.

Annihilism aims to rectify Nihilism. The average Nihilist has several shortcomings, and is equivalent to a chicken running around with no head. A Nihilist will tell you that his life has no meaning or purpose, and then he will tell you that he is not miserable. A Nihilist will defeat any attempt at problem solving and avoid any goals. The average Nihilist will take joy at the thought of the world ending, even though such a thought is illogical and I will explain why.

The average Nihilist, thinks of the world ending, yet life going on, in some way. This is illogical, because it would lower the quality of life.
Annilihism aims to rectify this. Annihilism does not promote the world ending in conventional means. For example, Annihilism does not promote nuclear warfare, because life would still go on, and it would lower the quality of life. Annihilsm does not promote a giant asteroid, because life would still go on on some other planet. Annihilsm does not promote the ideals of Nihilism. Annilism promotes the good of pleasure, and the evil of displeasure. Annilism also recognizes the ideals of lorem ipsum, that some pain may be tactical in order for the better good. Annilihism also recognizes the virtue of good planning and intellect, in order for the better good, good health and activities. Annilihism aims to improve the quality of life of all lifeform, in an open minded way. However, Annilihism also recognizes that the best quality of life is no life at all, because it is mathematically improbable to construct a life without any suffering. However, Annilihism does not promote world destruction via primitive means, but it does promote the search for a scientific a way to end recurrence in a non-painful way.

Trixie Celūcilūnaletumoon wrote:

Nihilism is a mental disease caused by several factors. I struggle to fight my own nihilism every other day.
Nihilism can be caused by ennui, excess, lack of challenges, idleness, or a repetitive lifestyle.
Nihilism can also be the result of mental trauma, an overused mind, abuse, or a chemical imbalance, such as low testosterone or low or high serotonin.

Annihilism aims to rectify Nihilism. The average Nihilist has several shortcomings, and is equivalent to a chicken running around with no head. A Nihilist will tell you that his life has no meaning or purpose, and then he will tell you that he is not miserable. A Nihilist will defeat any attempt at problem solving and avoid any goals. The average Nihilist will take joy at the thought of the world ending, even though such a thought is illogical and I will explain why.

The average Nihilist, thinks of the world ending, yet life going on, in some way. This is illogical, because it would lower the quality of life.
Annilihism aims to rectify this. Annihilism does not promote the world ending in conventional means. For example, Annihilism does not promote nuclear warfare, because life would still go on, and it would lower the quality of life. Annihilsm does not promote a giant asteroid, because life would still go on on some other planet. Annihilsm does not promote the ideals of Nihilism. Annilism promotes the good of pleasure, and the evil of displeasure. Annilism also recognizes the ideals of lorem ipsum, that some pain may be tactical in order for the better good. Annilihism also recognizes the virtue of good planning and intellect, in order for the better good, good health and activities. Annilihism aims to improve the quality of life of all lifeform, in an open minded way. However, Annilihism also recognizes that the best quality of life is no life at all, because it is mathematically improbable to construct a life without any suffering. However, Annilihism does not promote world destruction via primitive means, but it does promote the search for a scientific a way to end recurrence in a non-painful way.

Annihilism is a term I also coined last year in my private notes, to refer to Annihilation + Nihilism = An-nihilism, as the destruction of the spirit and masculine in particular that is occuring.
Satyr, of course has dedicated all his observations to this phenomenon.

Back to you, it is already a nihilism on your part to want to "end recurrence" in any which way... to eliminate a causal chain, is self-elimination and self-hatred. This has already been said to you here before. And collapsing distinctions to the extent, you equate recurrece to repetition is a further nihilism.
One way of speaking of recurrence is to say it is the repetition of arche-Types. The same entity in all its unique characteristics does not repeat, but the general principle of its type may repeat.. we say, may recur.
Recurrence therefore is not a monotony, but your expressed wish that there should ever be novel forms is nihilistic.
The general moralizing of things in terms of good/evil is yet another nihilism.

The good of pleasure and the evil of displeasure is exactly what the Bible teaches... discounting the variance of whatever counts for pleasure and displeasure.

How J.-Xt. are you...?

Never saw it like this... Derrida as a Plotinian Spinozaist...

Cunningham wrote:

""Derrida’s position illuminates Spinoza’s position." [R. Harland]


It is possible to argue that Derrida is a Plotinian disciple of Spinoza (a discipleship which is here referred to as meontotheology). We can begin to see this Plotinian Spinozism when we read Derrida insisting that ‘in order to exceed metaphysics it is necessary that a trace be inscribed within the text of metaphysics, a trace that continues to signal . . . in the direction of an entirely other text’. It is this inscription that may allow ‘an entirely other question’.16 But this question remains where it was by the very fact of it being an inscription. This question is, I suggest, why something rather than nothing? Why do we need something when the nothing will be more than sufficient? So this question takes place in the ‘displacement of a question, a certain system somewhere open to an undecidable resource that sets the system in motion’. This question will be the un-questioning question of différance; un-questioning because it does not ask something, yet an unquestioning question because it does ask nothing.

Derrida argues that this question is older than the ontological difference. Différance will ‘provide’ or generate the nothing as something. The question of différance risks ‘meaning nothing’20 – an un-meaning which allows meaning to come after it, but such an un-meaning, this différance, is not before as it is before every before. (This is similar to Deleuze who grounds sense in nonsense.)21 Hence, ‘the name origin no longer suits it’.22 It will be this un-questioning question that will make presence and absence possible.23 Furthermore, it will allow language to say nothing and thought to think nothing; we will be without being. Oppositions qua oppositions arrive within the active movement of différance.24 If différance renders the nothing as something, then the question of being cannot come first and the idea of origin is indeed problematised. The nothing as something is ‘first’, but this nothing as something detaches itself from these oppositional logics. Derrida is here endeavouring to escape ontic categories, yet still provide what those appeared to provide: language, thought and being. (Being is an ontic category in so far as it is trapped by the notion of the something.)

Derrida appears to provide continually semantic performances of the nothing as something: pharmakon is both cure and poison, the hymen is marriage and virginity. (Each side supplements the other, thus allowing Derrida’s text to provide all that it does under erasure: to be without being.) The most important example is that of the Plotinian ikhnos (trace). The unquestioning-question of différance ‘goes without saying . . . remaining silent’.27 That is, language does proceed, but does not say something. It does not seek something; instead it treats the nothing as something. This lets it escape ontotheology, yet without lack. The silent ‘a’ of différance passes by unheard, like the intonation of this modern question: why something rather than nothing? This inscribed trace, which ‘continues to signal’, is the non-productive production we found in Plotinus and in Spinoza. (In Plotinus the One was the all, while the all was the One; in Spinoza God is Nature, Nature is God.) The trace is, according to Derrida, ‘nothing’.28 It is for this reason that ‘in a certain sense thought means nothing’.29 Just as ‘deconstruction is nothing’.

In a sense the trace, like différance, is before presence and absence, as it is a non-origin that is originary.31 This is the nothing as something, which for Derrida is an occultation, a ‘disappearing of the ground necessary for appearing itself’:32 this sounds like Hegel and, as we shall see later, also resembles moves made by both Sartre and Lacan. From where does this trace issue without origins? It proceeds from the work of Plotinus, who tells us that the ‘trace of the One makes essence, being is only the trace of the One’.33 We know that, for Derrida, the trace is nothing and that this trace, according to Plotinus, is the trace of the One which is itself otherwise than Being and therefore nothing. This double bind resides within différance as ‘primordial non-self-presence’.34 (Maybe this is a hyper non-being, an immanentised negation that becomes ‘plenitudinal’.) Derrida speaks of this Plotinian transgression:

In a perhaps unheard of fashion, morphe, arche, and telos still signal. In a sense, or a non-sense, that metaphysics would have excluded from its field, while nevertheless remaining in secret and incessant relation with this sense, form would in itself already be the trace (ikhnos) of a certain nonpresence, the vestige of the un-formed, which announces-recalls its other, as did Plotinus . . . The closure of metaphysics, the closure that the audaciousness of the Enneads seems to indicate by transgressing.35

For Derrida we must think of ‘différance as temporalization, différance as spacing’.36 It seems that this is another Plotinian trace. It was Plotinus who may have initiated a ‘new subjectivity’, a new temporality.

This temporality is the audacity of ‘subjectivity’. Audacity, as the unquiet faculty of the soul stirs a desire, initiating a progression. The soul refusing to see all at once, all as the One, generates an endless alterity, an otherness which is the act of procession away from others (aie heterotes).
(We find this Plotinianism in Alain Badiou’s notion of the ‘Two’.) As Plotinus says, ‘time begins with the soul-movement’. It is with Plotinus’ use of the word parakolouthesis that ‘a term translatable by “consciousness” appears in philosophy’.41 Furthermore, the term synaisthesis hautou, meaning self-perception in the sense of self-consciousness, also appears for the first time in the Plotinian text. Time is no longer the image of eternity, there is no Cosmic time, or recollection of eternal truths.

Plotinus tells us of this new time: ‘So it stirred from its rest and that state too stirred with it; they stirred themselves toward a future that was ceaselessly new, a state not identical with the preceding one but different and ever changing. And after having traversed a portion of the outgoing path they produced time.’43 Soul moves itself audaciously away into difference; alterity being the principle of procession.44 Motion measures this ‘subjectivity’. What we find is that time is an intensive expression of heteronomy as endless consciousness. This expression pays witness to the silent provision of that which is. By this is meant the provision of being in the absence of being. Contemplation causes this passage of time as it produces the production of bodies: ‘I contemplate and the lines of bodies realise themselves as if they fell from me.’45 But that which is produced is produced within a ‘silent vision’.46 It is here that we notice the heritage bequeathed to différance. Différance silently produces language (doing so by silencing language), for it ‘goes without saying’, like the ‘a’ of the written différance, to ‘speak of a letter’ which cannot be heard nor apprehended in speech.

Différance is the trace of the Plotinian One, which is non-being. Furthermore, différance temporalises and spatialises. It is for this reason that Derrida will announce that ‘at this very moment in this work here I am’. In this moment Spinoza and Plotinus are conjoined. Différance is ‘transcendentally’ generating the space for time and the time for space, in terms of a certain ‘subjectivisation’ of reception. The temporality of time and the spacing of space are found in the ‘I am’, ‘which goes with- out saying’. ‘I am time’, a possession which is a procession, allowing space to measure itself within this endless arrival: to occupy its own space. The space which space occupies is that of an audacious ‘work’, an ergetic generative becoming. (By this term I intend to imply work: Descartes’ ‘I think therefore I am’, is an example of this in so far as the cogito must do something to be. In this case, the cogito must think.) This ‘I am’ is comparable to the Deus of Spinoza’s Ethics. God is immanentised within the arrival of a ‘work’, which can be thought of as ‘nature’. Nature and God arrive together, each as the other. This divinity is the effect of the trace, just as we saw that the Plotinian (and Avicennian) One requires the finite, arriving only within the finite (as the arrival of the finite). The arrival of the effects, which are always already within the movement of différance, belies the differing and the delay of all that does ‘come’. God is different and deferred, in that God is an endless act of Nature, while Nature is an eternal God. Consequently, it too remains different and delayed. As with Spinoza, both terms cancel each other out yet, in so doing, an appearance is ‘allowed’. This is the nothing as something." [Genealogy of Nihilism]

Quote :

Love is an action, an action of giving, not taking.
"For God so LOVED the world that he GAVE his one and only son.." - John 3:16
"If you're not ready to sacrifice your ego and be ready to give yourself, you cannot love--only when you're ready to surrender yourself and put the needs of someone else before yours then you can truly love." - Mom ‪#‎momswisdom‬
<"Love your God"
"Love your neighbor"
"Love your spouse"
"Love your enemies">
- Bible

In the modern world, the middle man must be transparent in order for the looming authority to shine through to maintain consistency and structure that makes up the perfection of submission. In a time of excessive nihilism combined with the limitations of resources, over population, environmental abuse, further combined with the influence of materialistic, constant consumption, those standards of perfection deteriorates the consistency and structure, thus creating and pushing the ghastly sight, perception of human decay.

The distance of the authority is what determines the standards of perfection, the less intimate the relationship the more immediate the destruction, where the lack of identity becomes a chaotic projection. The authority will not risk close intimacy, on a mental level due to natural human variations, which will eventually develop into sects, different types of interpretation which eventually presents a disturbance to the overall control, especially when it is emotionally fueled.

The modern authority's middleman is of a technical nature, a lack of emotion and a lack of rationale, robotic formation, a specialized condition, reiteration and a regurgitation. Occasionally, the slide drops, the record skips and the process is sent into a momentary frenzy, a confusion, a black hole that exists between the transition between the previous intimate middleman and the new modern inanimate medium, and the distant vague power source. . Occasionally,  it consumes the being completely.

The black hole is constantly occurring, the closing of it still draws side effects and collateral damage, relative to the degree of closing, the period in time, and genetic response. The side effects and collateral damaged leads to the majority of modern mental illnesses increased and perpetuated by a momentary consciousness within the synapse.

Relative to genetic response, natural resilience and degrees of comprehension allows certain particular individuals to withstand the reality, the consciousness of this moment, thus developing the ability to move through it. A type of time travel, self transportation, into the self, to reconnect to an "area" of reality that the individual descends from, returns and becomes.

Quantity becomes the degradation of quality, that which has persistently existed has split, the reconnection from that split, is where the consistency of quality exists relative to that which it connects to. If a “positive” connection is made, e.g, a quality mixed with a quality, it takes on a different form, losing its purity, but gaining strength, or advantages. If a “negative” connection is made then the high quality, longer existing duration, is tarnished. The less existing quality, on the other side of the connection is improved.  If a lack of quality is mixed with a lack of quality results in increasing reduction of quality, the modern nihilistic environment turns into quantity, due to previous excessive mixing bordering consistently on the negative side of the spectrum in the context of quality, and mixing.

If a high quality is mixed with high quality, high relative to the resistance from self, occurring “equally” on both sides, determines the overall strength of this new form, forms which exist in all aspects of the human condition.

If low quality is mixed with low quality, intrinsic less resistance from self automatically results into quantities, weakness and increased likelihood of death, at the same rate of propagation of this particular mixing, which is used and encouraged in modern society.

The “spiritualized” symbolization of the act of sex, becomes a memetic filtration of genetic reproduction. In previous cultures, relative to genetic isolation, this memetic social mechanism takes on a protective binding form of reproduction, where the genetic isolation disallows for any natural interference, physically.. the memetic circumstance of this allows for the fluidity of the reproductive cycle in the social circuit, usually increasing or extending quality relative to the symbolization.

The modern symbolization of sex is less spiritual, without the boundaries of genetic isolation, memetically welcoming interference, protecting and encouraging it specifically, losing its binding aspect to quality, thus producing excessive inconsistencies with no connection to the past, or previous memetic binding, they become both artificial and primal in base functioning. Artificial, in this context, becomes the removal of self knowledge allowing direct access to the primal functioning of the being, where quantities of this becomes easier to control, akin to a hundred sheep and one dog.

I consider nihilism many things. One thing it is for a human, is hypocrity.
The mind is made of meanings, and thoughts are all meanings.
But the whole mind can betray meaning and say there is no meaning.
This is a type of hypocrity.

Nihilism is not "many things" it is one disposition towards reality, world, which manifests itself in multiple ways, because it is nihilistic.

At its most basic it is a noumenon, an abstraction, that has no reference outside minds - depending on being present in multiple minds to remain "meaningful".
It is a meme not founded on genes which have emerged within natural rather than artificial environments.

A rabbit, to use the example they used to describe the r/K selected types, is a type evolved in nature to feed on resources that are in abundance.
it is because resources are in abundance that the particular species evolved as it is.
No intervention had to precede.
Their r-selection is naturally produced.

But with human r-selected types the process is different.
Nihilism is this inversion.  
It is the K-selected that establish the stability, safety, order, abundance that then makes r-selection possible.
Abundance of resources, absence or reduction of culling, is the artificially produced and maintained environmental condition, one of many, which then allows the r-selection to emerge as a symptom of decay, decline, which will bring the process back to K-selection.

It is BECAUSE a population is protected from culling that mutations, within it, will multiply and compound; it is BECAUSE ideas are protected and offered respect, no matter how absurd they are, that ideas multiply and are only limited by human imagination and the rule that prevents the disturbance of another's fantasies; it is BECAUSE nihilists detach from world, or detach their abstractions/noumena, and the words that represent them, form phenomena, the apparent, that they can display a variety of different theories, and ideals, and not because they are intelligent or more creative, or free-thinkers.

I've explained in my own thesis how it is male dominance which makes emasculation possible - it is male innovation, in pursuit of dominance, in these sperm-wars, which then invents the environment, and the techniques/technologies which make males obsolete, and with this obsolescence the cycles begins its downward cycle.
To use another example...it was the Roman Empires dominance that made its own decline inevitable.

When herbivores decline, so do the numbers of carnivores, until the carnivores are so few herbivores begin to multiply, once, more, on veneration which is now recovering from its decline due to herbivores increasing.
The symptoms of r-selection in humans is part of this cycle of ascent and then descent - the Dark Ages come gradually, and they begin from a Golden Age.

It is existing in human circulation, the level of self sacrifice determines the direction and confirms the depth of the nihilism, in this time, it manifests as a human, or the worship of ideals manifesting as a human. By noticing the depth, you can understand the current manifestation. The hiding of genes, polishing over everything where the worship of the ideal human becomes a hopeful coping mechanism, like a personal yes man whilst setting the standard at the same time. This loop leads to increasing artificiality, self-denial and deception. The standards are mostly fixed with little variation, which allows for the emerging unity to manifest in the physical, just as much as anywhere else, which reinforces the self of no self, continuously.

Liberalism is the social lubricant to communicate the nihilistic meme, allowing the birthing of other similar memes even if it  negates the previous meme. Liberalism allows for the meme to be meaningful even if it is not shared among everybody, liberalism created a secure social language that protects the flow of the meme being communicated, irrespective of a positive or negative connection, it either increases the meme in it's shared understanding and grows, or it increases the development of another meme. This is necessary in modern times in order to manage the excessive reality of the r-selection types, it is the only way that a large amount of humans can coexit without there being a large amount of  confrontation, especially if there is no culling.

The meme becomes meaningful and meaningless at the same time and all is kept on an artificial friendly level. It is  a social language that encourages the meaninglessness of words, allowing the extent to be pushed in any direction at any extreme, thus impacting written/spoken language in it's own evolving process into an artificial realm which reinforces the nihilistic loop of words, thoughts and focus. The human will is then bounded into the so called unbounded, also known as freedom. The boundaries are not perceived because reality is not perceived. All is apparently known in the unknown.