[lbo-talk] PARAGRAPHS PLEASE Re: Nietzsche: Free will

james.irldaly at ntlworld.com james.irldaly at ntlworld.com
Sun Jun 10 14:04:47 PDT 2007


My apologies -- J. D.


> From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> Date: 2007/06/10 Sun PM 07:27:02 GMT
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: [lbo-talk] PARAGRAPHS PLEASE
Re: Nietzsche: Free will
>
> Quite frankly, when a complicated argument is offered without the courtesy of paragraphs separations, one can only conclude that the writer doesn't give a damn whether anyone reads or not -- so why should the reader care. If I were going to read this I would first have to edit in a different window. Your are almost certainly wrong about
Thrasymachus because you don't notice how Plato distorts his actual argument. But my eyes can'ttake jkrading more.
>
> Carrol

**********************

There are three different Sophistic perspectives on justice as not natural but a "convention" or invention, the command of someone or some group with the power to command. From each of these perspectives the will to pleasure and power, disguised as the reason for morality, is viewed as coming from a particular social source.

First, an eagle's eye view: for the upper-class Callicles in The Gorgias, who stands to gain by the rule of force, as for Nietzsche, morality is a slave revolt. He says philosophers ought to be whipped because they are wimps and turn the other cheek (the connection between The Gorgias and the Sermon on the Mount is striking, recalling Nietzsche's condemnation of Christianity as Platonism for the masses).

Second, a horizontal view: Glaucon expresses the view of the average middle-class person, who is more likely to see reason as serving the individual as an instrument to secure what s/he can get out of a dangerous situation; suggesting the calculating convention of morality as a nonaggression pact. As Glaucon describes it such a Hobbesian contract is an insurance policy; it is rational to pay the premium, but only if it cannot be avoided.

Third, a worm's eye view: Thrasymachus, like a libertarian, represents, albeit unconsciously, an underdog view of the same scenario. He maintains that conventional justice is always, in fact, whatever the strong impose to their own advantage, so that the just person always loses by being just, which means obeying their rules.

His position is in a way a left-wing anarchism, the antithesis of Callicles's right-wing anarchism. Callicles sees "conventional" justice, the social contract, as the conspiracy of the weak to clip the wings of the strong. Thrasymachus to the contrary sees it as the advantage of the strong. Thrasymachus's is a reading of the basic factual situation which he shares with the Cynics and the early -- subversive -- Stoics.

Unwittingly, in his justified realism about the facts or the existence (which he, however, wrongly identifies with the nature or essence) of social life, he takes up the theme of the oppressed, the anarchist protest against institutional justice as disguised power, against justificatory reason as disguised will. This is a partial insight which later served ancient and mediaeval natural law theorists in their critique of unjust law as an act of violence; which served the bourgeoisie in its ideology-critique of the Ancien régime; which served Marx's ideology-critique of capitalism; and which is now being rediscovered by postmodernists, in the critique of "actually existing" mechanistic Marxism.

Thrasymachus has a very important half truth, one which must be maintained against any attempt (including the misuse of dialectics) to justify unjust rule by identifying it with the ideal function of ruling which Socrates speaks of. That, I think, is why Plato in The Republic shows Thrasymachus remaining as a friend throughout the entire later discussion of The Republic.

Postmodernists have made a pluralistic use of the term genealogy current. In fact for Nietzsche there is *only one* genealogy of morals. It it can be illustrated by the figures of the Romans and the Jews (and later, Christians). The Romans in their greatness use the valuations "good" and "bad" -- the latter, meaning "no-good", worthless, they apply to the Jews. The Jews on the other hand use the valuations "good" and "evil", and apply the latter to the Romans.

As George W. Bush would say, that is because they hate freedom, which is something the Romans love -- to have, that is. That is because they are life enhancing, yea-saying -- just look at their aqueducts!

In their fear, envy and powerlessness, the resentful Jews invent a trick to trap the Romans. They claim that it is "good" to love one's enemies, and that they are "good"; they pretend to love the Romans, in spite of their barbarities and cruelties, and claim that the Romans should be "good" and love them too, and cease being "evil". They want to drag the Romans down to their level of wretchedness and life-denying, nay-saying.

Strangely, Allen Wood claims in *Karl Marx* that Marx the immoralist brings us to a mysterious territory *beyond good and evil*, just like Nietzsche. In fact what has happened is that Wood has declared (wrongly, I think) that for Marx justice just means conforming to the rules of a given economic system (such as slavery or capitalism), and cannot be used to criticise such a system. In fact there is nothing mysterious about what is beyond *good and evil*; beyond that (i.e. the only other choice) is *good and bad*-- which is simply a "morality" *WITHOUT JUSTICE*-- unless you count the Thucydidean "natural justice" of the rule of the stronger -- might is right. You can choose to be either a "Jew" or a "Roman"; Nietzsche chooses to be a "Roman", and those who think he cares what they are, are "Jews".

I think Walter Kaufmann -- who was virulently anti-Communist and individualist -- portrays Nietzsche with too soft a focus. Although I did not see the post which inspired this thread, I agree with Charles Brown that Nietzsche is anti-Marx. When I wonder how Christians, Marxists and others, including Gustav Mahler whose niece Anna was murdered in a concentration camp, see value in Nietzsche, I remember that in my adolescence -- a long time ago now -- so did I.

J.D.

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