Rousseau, Kant, and Nietzsche's hammer...
January 29th 2007 19:56
Hey,
time to write a little bit about ethics. As usual, i ask you to get a little information on these topics:
- Rousseau, and his work on the difference between humans and animals, our "freedom" as "denaturalized" animals
- Kant, in his concept of "good will" and "universality" of actions
- Nietzsche, his "grand style", and his hammer..
As in the first post i wrote about physics, this one exposes the most important lines that will be followed in next posts on ethics. Please take your time to understand it.
The first one to talk about is Rousseau. His most important ideas created the basis over which Kant defined what we know till our days as the humanist "moral". He lived in a time where humanity was taking over all other beliefs, like "cosmos" or "Gods".
Rousseau's most important conclusions come from the analisys of men as the center of our world. Acording to him, men are "beings" that had the possiblity of choosing how to react to the "real". This separated us from animals, which he said that were linked to their instincts, and thus not able to make free decisions. Men are "free", "denaturalized" "beings", which are capable of doing any kind of acts, giving their lives to save people, or spending their lives torturing them..
This "freedom" is the characteristic that leaves us humans the possibility to choose our future, to create and have history and culture, to evolve, and to think how to act. "Freedom" oblies men to think in the consequence of his acts, and thus to define how he will behave to others and to himself. This freedom makes us men "moral beings".
Then we have Kant, who took this idea of freedom and said that, since men are free to decide whatever do the good or the evil, than in his "freedom" acts we can define what is a "good" action or not, in terms of moral. Kant so concluded that "good will", the things that you do for others (and have no interest for your side), are the "moral" acts. So the "moral" developed by these men stated that our goal is to use our "freedom" with "good will" for humanity.
After all of this, and before presenting my conclusions on "ethics", i have to talk about Nietzsche, and his "grand style", of how the forces in the world help or block our actions in "real".
One of the theories Nietzsche developped defines what he calls "grand style" (i'm sorry to use the term in french, but i read it in french and don't know the term in german...). For every action we do in the "real", we have internal and external forces that help us doing it. The control of these forces make us able to do this action with "grace", instead of being "blocked", of realizing something where forces are not aligned in the same way, where we have things that block us, and don't let the action be perfect.
The best example i know about this i got from Ferry, which compared this to service in tennis. When you see a great champion in service, it seems that he has complete control of the situation, that he can control all the forces in the "real" to create a perfect movement, to make a perfect "action". In the same time, you see plenty of people that are unable to do this, where the movement is deformed, and the failures that succeed make the person angry, cursing things around him, etc. This is the case where the forces are not aligned in the same way, where the action is "blocked".
This perfect organisation of the forces for an action is called by Nietzsche "grand style". He considers this as his definition of beautifull, and in a certain way, "moral". I do not agree exactly with this, but it's a subject for other post...
Now that we have taken a look on these 3 ideas, let me start taking conclusions.
First of all, i have to disagree with the way Rousseau sees our "freedom". Ok, we're not animals, but still we have instincts, and Rousseau's thought seems to conclude that it isn't "moral" to follow them. Acctually, the most we get away from them, the better. Kant takes this and makes it worse: he really gets to the conclusion that the "good" action is the one that do not take our interests into account, in which our "freedom" is used for the good of others, and best, for the good of all (for the universality).
Hey, that's not humanism. The ideas of these men are anything but human. That's why i don't understand when i see on TV these "humanitarian" actions. People who go to Africa to help these countries, create instititutions to help disabled people, etc. I'm not saying that this is not good (it's acctually awsome), but it's not human. It's "saint", or "over-human", whatever definition you want to pick.
Explaining it in a different way: we humans, even if we have "freedom" (a certain degree, which is bigger than animals, but not complete at all), it's not in our nature to give our lives to save others. And we still have a part of us that is nature, that is instinct, even if Rousseau and Kant wanted to forget them. In certain cases, we have people which we really care and to them we would do anything, and sometimes there are people that are able to do this to the universatity (to use Kant's expression), to everybody.
But sometimes we help people in a way that may "unhelp" us in another. Taking the Nietzsche's "grand style" into account, it would be like adding "reactive forces" in our way to act, which would make our actions be "blocked", and thus unletting us to get to the most of what we could be.
People sacrifice things in their lives to contribute to others. That's not a problem. But if in the same time they loose their youth, or their possibilities, in the end they sometimes will start to hate what they are helping, because it's blocking their lives. How many people loose oportunities in their lives to be with someone, and in the end start throwing this at the other: "you see, i didn't go to NY to get this huge job because of you!"
These so called "humanist" actions are the root of plenty of problems we have after.
This "humanist" way of being Kant sells us has also another huge problem: it's arrogant. I mean, people who give away important things in their lives to the "universallty" do not suppose that everybody have to do this. They define a standard of what they should do that do not apply to others. In a certain way, they put themselves in a higher level than others. They are "over-humans".
A perfect exemple of this is found in the film "Dogville", where in the last scenes Nicole Kidman's dad speaks to her and shows how arrogant she was.
We're not supposed to be arrogants. Applying the "humanist" rule of Kant's moral and making an analogy to Nietzsche's "grand style", we can see that if you're helping someone in spite of you, that's no good at all. Not just for you, but for humanity, since you're human too. I'm not saying that we should be selfish and don't give a damn about others; i'm saying that if you help someone, do this in a way that doesn't "unhelp" you.
It is obviously not easy and not "digital", because our systems have an inifinty of "things", an infinity of forces. The best action so would be the one that puts the forces in "real" for you side, and for the people you want to help too. This is "grand style", not applied just for you, but for humanity. Like our humanists nowadays define "pensée élargie" (i'll get to this in a next post), it would be a "grand style élargie".
Following this conclusion, i finally re-present it using another Nietzsche's concept: "life's value cannot be measured". Be it yours or others, since we're part of it, we cannot take a fair jugement.
The conclusions on ethics could be simplified as this: you don't have to feel oblied to help people, but blocking them is no good either, because you would be stoping others to achieve their "grand style", to domintate the "real", to expand them in life, to live more intensivelly... in the same way, try to have as much "grand style élargie" as you can, try to take all the forces in the world and put them at your side, and for humanity. But don't put yourself down to help others because our old moral says it's right. Don't be arrogant....
This post is quite long and analyses systems that have so many variables that it is complicated to understand all. But it's the first one, and i'll come back to this in the next ones, to clarify things.
Another part that will clarify even more how we should behave in society will be when we get to analyse how should we behave to ourselves. But for now, i need to take a break....
Cheers. Uula
time to write a little bit about ethics. As usual, i ask you to get a little information on these topics:
- Rousseau, and his work on the difference between humans and animals, our "freedom" as "denaturalized" animals
- Kant, in his concept of "good will" and "universality" of actions
- Nietzsche, his "grand style", and his hammer..
As in the first post i wrote about physics, this one exposes the most important lines that will be followed in next posts on ethics. Please take your time to understand it.
The first one to talk about is Rousseau. His most important ideas created the basis over which Kant defined what we know till our days as the humanist "moral". He lived in a time where humanity was taking over all other beliefs, like "cosmos" or "Gods".
Rousseau's most important conclusions come from the analisys of men as the center of our world. Acording to him, men are "beings" that had the possiblity of choosing how to react to the "real". This separated us from animals, which he said that were linked to their instincts, and thus not able to make free decisions. Men are "free", "denaturalized" "beings", which are capable of doing any kind of acts, giving their lives to save people, or spending their lives torturing them..
This "freedom" is the characteristic that leaves us humans the possibility to choose our future, to create and have history and culture, to evolve, and to think how to act. "Freedom" oblies men to think in the consequence of his acts, and thus to define how he will behave to others and to himself. This freedom makes us men "moral beings".
Then we have Kant, who took this idea of freedom and said that, since men are free to decide whatever do the good or the evil, than in his "freedom" acts we can define what is a "good" action or not, in terms of moral. Kant so concluded that "good will", the things that you do for others (and have no interest for your side), are the "moral" acts. So the "moral" developed by these men stated that our goal is to use our "freedom" with "good will" for humanity.
After all of this, and before presenting my conclusions on "ethics", i have to talk about Nietzsche, and his "grand style", of how the forces in the world help or block our actions in "real".
One of the theories Nietzsche developped defines what he calls "grand style" (i'm sorry to use the term in french, but i read it in french and don't know the term in german...). For every action we do in the "real", we have internal and external forces that help us doing it. The control of these forces make us able to do this action with "grace", instead of being "blocked", of realizing something where forces are not aligned in the same way, where we have things that block us, and don't let the action be perfect.
The best example i know about this i got from Ferry, which compared this to service in tennis. When you see a great champion in service, it seems that he has complete control of the situation, that he can control all the forces in the "real" to create a perfect movement, to make a perfect "action". In the same time, you see plenty of people that are unable to do this, where the movement is deformed, and the failures that succeed make the person angry, cursing things around him, etc. This is the case where the forces are not aligned in the same way, where the action is "blocked".
This perfect organisation of the forces for an action is called by Nietzsche "grand style". He considers this as his definition of beautifull, and in a certain way, "moral". I do not agree exactly with this, but it's a subject for other post...
Now that we have taken a look on these 3 ideas, let me start taking conclusions.
First of all, i have to disagree with the way Rousseau sees our "freedom". Ok, we're not animals, but still we have instincts, and Rousseau's thought seems to conclude that it isn't "moral" to follow them. Acctually, the most we get away from them, the better. Kant takes this and makes it worse: he really gets to the conclusion that the "good" action is the one that do not take our interests into account, in which our "freedom" is used for the good of others, and best, for the good of all (for the universality).
Hey, that's not humanism. The ideas of these men are anything but human. That's why i don't understand when i see on TV these "humanitarian" actions. People who go to Africa to help these countries, create instititutions to help disabled people, etc. I'm not saying that this is not good (it's acctually awsome), but it's not human. It's "saint", or "over-human", whatever definition you want to pick.
Explaining it in a different way: we humans, even if we have "freedom" (a certain degree, which is bigger than animals, but not complete at all), it's not in our nature to give our lives to save others. And we still have a part of us that is nature, that is instinct, even if Rousseau and Kant wanted to forget them. In certain cases, we have people which we really care and to them we would do anything, and sometimes there are people that are able to do this to the universatity (to use Kant's expression), to everybody.
But sometimes we help people in a way that may "unhelp" us in another. Taking the Nietzsche's "grand style" into account, it would be like adding "reactive forces" in our way to act, which would make our actions be "blocked", and thus unletting us to get to the most of what we could be.
People sacrifice things in their lives to contribute to others. That's not a problem. But if in the same time they loose their youth, or their possibilities, in the end they sometimes will start to hate what they are helping, because it's blocking their lives. How many people loose oportunities in their lives to be with someone, and in the end start throwing this at the other: "you see, i didn't go to NY to get this huge job because of you!"
These so called "humanist" actions are the root of plenty of problems we have after.
This "humanist" way of being Kant sells us has also another huge problem: it's arrogant. I mean, people who give away important things in their lives to the "universallty" do not suppose that everybody have to do this. They define a standard of what they should do that do not apply to others. In a certain way, they put themselves in a higher level than others. They are "over-humans".
A perfect exemple of this is found in the film "Dogville", where in the last scenes Nicole Kidman's dad speaks to her and shows how arrogant she was.
We're not supposed to be arrogants. Applying the "humanist" rule of Kant's moral and making an analogy to Nietzsche's "grand style", we can see that if you're helping someone in spite of you, that's no good at all. Not just for you, but for humanity, since you're human too. I'm not saying that we should be selfish and don't give a damn about others; i'm saying that if you help someone, do this in a way that doesn't "unhelp" you.
It is obviously not easy and not "digital", because our systems have an inifinty of "things", an infinity of forces. The best action so would be the one that puts the forces in "real" for you side, and for the people you want to help too. This is "grand style", not applied just for you, but for humanity. Like our humanists nowadays define "pensée élargie" (i'll get to this in a next post), it would be a "grand style élargie".
Following this conclusion, i finally re-present it using another Nietzsche's concept: "life's value cannot be measured". Be it yours or others, since we're part of it, we cannot take a fair jugement.
The conclusions on ethics could be simplified as this: you don't have to feel oblied to help people, but blocking them is no good either, because you would be stoping others to achieve their "grand style", to domintate the "real", to expand them in life, to live more intensivelly... in the same way, try to have as much "grand style élargie" as you can, try to take all the forces in the world and put them at your side, and for humanity. But don't put yourself down to help others because our old moral says it's right. Don't be arrogant....
This post is quite long and analyses systems that have so many variables that it is complicated to understand all. But it's the first one, and i'll come back to this in the next ones, to clarify things.
Another part that will clarify even more how we should behave in society will be when we get to analyse how should we behave to ourselves. But for now, i need to take a break....
Cheers. Uula
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