Jackson, WY
We went to Jackson, Wyoming two weekends ago to visit with friends Bill and Diane, see wildlife, and eat at unbelievably good restaurants. Some pics:
Hanna had gone there separately with a 3-day class field trip. My favorite moment of the vacation was picking her up from the camp early in the morning. Steam was rising from some hot springs, and there were bison in the mist.
Happy Halloween
I tend to drag my feet when it comes to decorating for any sort of festival. But pumpkin carving remains a delight.
My valuation of Nz’s revaluation
(from the book I’m writing)
What are we to make of this bold attempt to revalue our values? A first thing to note is that, in some ways, Nietzsche’s new foundation for value is not unfamiliar. Aristotle (whom Nietzsche rarely mentions) based his ethics upon a science of human nature. He believed that, with broad experience, humans can determine the most natural way to behave in society and the world. He urged temperance or moderation in all things, which simply means gauging the “right” expenditure of effort in any direction. Aristotle’s ethics are similar to Nietzsche’s in that what is right or proper is supposedly determined by what human beings are and what their experience teaches. But Nietzsche departs from Aristotle’s teaching in two significant ways. First, Nietzsche opens the door to individuals having very different natures: what satisfies or thrills one may leave another cold. Aristotle recognized this to some extent, of course, but for Nietzsche the differences among individuals become stark and significant. “I am a law only for my kind,” says Zarathustra, “I am no law for all” (Z 4, “Last Supper”). Second, for Aristotle a major component of finding the “right” expenditure of effort has to do with the attitudes of one’s peers. The right actions are those which would be approved by the people who have been brought up well. Nietzsche, of course, is far more individualistic. The free spirit or übermensch may take societal norms as one consideration, as background information against which to make an informed judgment, but never would such a superior soul take orders from others.
This individualism is at the heart of Nietzsche’s revaluation. Most other systems of moral value are other-oriented: morality, after all, is meant to limit our behavior for the sake of others. But, for Nietzsche, others have value only insofar as they may, in one way or another, encourage our own strength. Indeed, given Nietzsche’s will-to-power psychology, it is hard to see how any genuine concern for others can even arise, except as a kind of sickness. If Nietzschean health is a flourishing of drives, each of which is concerned with its own strength and enhancement, then the only way I can will or desire your own flourishing, for your own sake, is if some of my drives are somehow twisted toward the ends of your drives. In other words, some part of me has to be tricked and turned into a pursuit for your own sake. That, technically, is a Nietzschean sickness. But that, on the other hand, is just what love is: a selfless concern for the welfare of another. Nietzsche is free to redefine love any way he likes, of course, but that would not change the fact that love, as we know it, is a disease, in Nietzsche’s view.
The closest Nietzsche’s philosophy comes to allowing for the possibility of healthy love is when a superior individual is so full of power that it pours out in all directions in a flood of noble generosity. But this again is not quite love as we know it, since it is not at all focused on others. It is accidental, and the lucky recipients of this generous outpouring could easily be replaced by others without affecting the attitude of the great soul. My love for you, we like to think, is more about you than it is about me, and that is simply what should not happen, according to the standards of Nietzschean health.
We can admire this strategy on the part of a man experiencing painful loneliness and heartbreak. But is it a set of values we want to place upon ourselves?
Of course not. What Nietzsche longed for his whole life, and felt he never received, was the fully compassionate fellow-feeling of being in love. No one could stand by him, he felt, except for a short time, in a limited degree. It took incredible strength for him to face this lonely abyss and in fact build a life around it. But this is clearly a case of settling for less. His life would have been better, we are all tempted to say, had he found someone to love. He would not have been as strong, perhaps, and his philosophy would have suffered as a result, and we would not be reading him now, in all likelihood. And yet he would have been loved. Who could say that would have been worse than the life he led?
But even if we acknowledge this major deficiency in Nietzsche’s thought — the lack of any space for love — there is plenty in his new system of values with which we still need to wrestle. Let us agree with him that God is dead, and that the great moral systems of western thought have been based on bad thinking, superstition, and an ill-placed faith in grammar. Let us agree with him that the only real values are the ones life itself encourages us to have, the values we have qua living beings. Where does this lead us?
In short, it leads us into a brave — and frightening — new world of possibilities. Consider the powers we now have over life, or soon will have. Consider the possibility of genetic engineering, of creating new species, of reconfiguring the human genome. Think of slowing or halting the breakdown and decay associated with aging. Think of living forever. Think of the ways we can integrate our biosystems with new technologies, such as (perhaps) immediate links between our brains and the internet. Think of new ways in which we could construct societies, if we have left behind the superstitions which tell us not to depart from tradition. Think of the wars that can be waged, particularly if we are keen to strengthen ourselves through dire challenge. If you learned of a new society which was interested only in achieving what is possible, technologically and physiologically and socially; and in what would strengthen them against all possible threats; and which was completely unfettered by traditional morals; would you cheer them on? Or would you blink?
The virtue of windows
My son was helping me fill out a questionnaire from his school, answering questions about how satisfied we are with the teachers, facilities, curriculum, etc. At the end, I could leave comments about what we liked most about his school. I said, “Safety, and windows.” Ben found “windows” just hilarious. I explained that, no matter what, there will always be boring teachers and classes, and then you need to have windows so you can look out and daydream. Well, the next day, Ben sidled up to me conspiratorially and said, “I found out how great windows are.”
Casting votes vs. counting votes
Eye-opening story here (in Rolling Stone) about the insidious operation the GOP has in place for throwing out as many as a sixth of a state’s votes — particularly if they come from the sorts of people most likely to vote Democrat. Like Stalin said: it’s those who count the votes who control the election.
Beethoven & German idealism
I’m lucky to have been invited to present three lectures on “Beethoven & Philosophy” to the Beethoven class being held this semester (see below). They’re scheduled for the end of this month, so I’ve been preparing.
Philosophers don’t have a lot to say about music. There is discussion of it in aesthetics, of course, and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche wrote a good deal about it. Plato wrote about music in the Republic, though the distance between his culture and ours makes it pretty hard to appreciate. So I’m not taking the direct route of “here’s what philosophers have to say about Beethoven.” Rather, I’m relaying what the big philosophical concerns were in LvB’s time and just after it, and making links where I can to where his music expresses some of the passion motivating the philosophy.
That last bit, by the way, is really exciting for me. What is the music that expresses the frame of mind Kant was in while crafting the CPR? What music expresses Hegel’s insight that the real is the rational? What’s the soundtrack to Nietzsche’s eternal return? I think it all can be found in Beethoven. Indeed, as in Shakespeare and Plato, it’s hard to find a human voice that doesn’t get expressed somewhere in the works.
The first lecture will be on Kant. Remember that, for Kant, the world we experience has come pre-formatted for us by the structure of our minds. Space, time, substance, and causality are all in the world because they are forms and categories we impose upon a reality that is, in itself, impossible for us to experience directly. Similarly, it is the structure of the human mind that tells us how a human being, as a rational being, ought to behave; and that is the sphere of morality. And in the world of art, what we find beautiful has its harmony because of the way our understanding restrains our imagination, and what we find sublime has its power because it reflects the tremendous power of our will. In all: there is order in the world, and morality, and beauty and sublimity because of us. We invest the world with its intelligibility and its value. (Can you here the final movement of LvB’s 9th?)
The second lecture is on German idealism (the philosophies of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel). I have always been fascinated by German idealism because of its strangeness and difficulty. The movement started as philosophers tried to tie up the loose ends Kant had left behind. Most notably, he hadn’t explained what this powerful “human mind” is, or how it relates to the reality we cannot experience. The world in itself is something we can think, Kant said, but never understand. But the GIs would not accept this. If we can think it, then we can understand it. Fichte thought the world in itself must be exactly what it seems to be — namely, an idea of the mind, which the mind produces as a sort of reflection of itself. Schelling couldn’t believe we’re making all this shit up, so he postulated a higher unity of mind and reality frought with tension and disturbance, from which all things flow. Hegel saw the absolute not as a pre-existent unity, but something coming into being through our attempts to understand the world and impose order on it. The world becomes real as it becomes rational. I cannot exaggerate the passion of these thinkers, and their zeal to find order in all things; pulling out all stops in order to give voice to the turmoil and hope they felt within themselves. (And that, to me, is how LvB’s Grosse Fuge sounds.)
The final lecture is on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who each, in his own way, rebelled against the very idea that the core of reality was something rational. They each placed will or blind passion at the heart of things. Schopenhauer thought this made all of experience a long ordeal of suffering, for the will is never satisfied. One can expect only tragedy after tragedy, and weariness. (LvB’s slow movement from the 7th.) Nietzsche saw the suffering as a necessary condition for victory: namely, the victory of accepting life just as it is, and embracing it. (The final movement in LvB’s last string quartet has the following annotation: “Muss es sein? … Es muss sein!” — “Must it be? … It must be!”)
There you have it. In any event, this has been a whole-brain exercise. We’ll see how the lectures go.
Beethoven string cycle
We just finished attending all six concerts of Beethoven’s string quartets, performed by the Fry Street Quartet. Their performances were truly splendid: very charged and aggressive, but also tightly coordinated. I have recordings of some top quartets performing these pieces, but found myself enjoying the Fry’s interpretations more — just more passion in them.
Along with attending these concerts, I have been showing up when I can to the course being offered on campus on Beethoven, which has been very illuminating. And, in conjunction with the performance of the cycle, Robert Winter (well-known Beethoven expert, visiting from UCLA) has provided several lectures and pre-concert talks. So my head, ears, and heart have been absolutely stuffed with Beethoven. I feel like I ate too much at Thanksgiving: pleasingly sluggish and sated.
My only bit of outrage about the whole affair is how little the University has made of this extraordinary event. To have the whole cycle performed is fairly rare; at a school like USU, in a small town like Logan, practically unheard of. And, on top of that, a whole course centered on the cycle, with a very distinguished guest lecturer of international renown! Most of the nights were sold out. But so far as I know, not one administrator from the dean on up attended a single concert, or has publically made hay over the event. I can understand someone not liking Beethoven. (Well, no, I can’t, but I am abstractly familiar with the possibility.) But to not acknowledge the importance of the event, and to pass over it in utter silence, seems to me an egregious intellectual failing on the part of educational leaders. Harrumph!
I don’t wish to end on a sour note. This has been a powerful couple of weeks I will remember my whole life. I am grateful to the people who supplied money and made the whole thing happen, even if they didn’t wish to take part in it themselves.
leave a comment