Infinitely Demanding

Infinitely demanding

Absolute knowledge or a direct ontology (is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations) of things as they are is decisively the ken of the fallible finite creatures like us. Our culture is endlessly beset with Promethean myths of the overcoming of the human condition whether through fantasy or AI contemporary delusions bout cloning, robotics and generic manipulation or simply through cryogenics and cosmetic surgery.

Stoicism founded by Zeno and was concerned by the relationship between cosmic determinism and human freedom. They presented their philosophy as a way of life, not by what a person said but how he behaved. The stoics provided a unified account of the world consisting if logic non dualistic physics and naturalistic ethics. Ethics was the main focus of human knowledge. Stoicism teaches self control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions.

Nihilism is the breakdown of the order of meaning where all that we previously imagined as a divine has become meaningless. Nihilism is this declaration of meaningless a sense of indifference, directionless or at worst despair that can flood into all areas of life. The philosophical task set by Nietzsche and followed by many in the Continental tradition is how to respond to nihilism or better resist it, The basis of meaning has become meaningless. Our devalued values require what Nietzsche calls re-evaluation. The difficulty here consists in thinking through the question of meaning without bewitching ourselves with new and exotic forms of meaning with imported brands of existential balm. Politically there is something lacking in this violently unjust world and the politics of fear. What might be justice in a violently unjust world? This question of justice provokes the need for an ethic or normative principle that might enable us to face down the present political situation. We need an offer of a theory of ethical experience and subjectivity that will lead to an infinity demanding ethics of commitment and politics of resistance.

Nihilism- passive –looks at the world from a certain distance and finds it meaningless. He is scornful of the pretensions of liberal humanism with its metaphysical faith in progress improvement and the perfectibility of humankind, beliefs that he claims are held with the same dogmatic assurance as Christianity was held in Europe until the late 18^th C. The passive nihilist concludes that we are simply animals and rather nasty aggressive primates at that what we might call homo rapines .Rather than acting in the world and trying to transform it the passive nihilist simply focuses on himself and his particular pleasures and projects for perfecting himself whether through discovering the inner child manipulating pyramids writing pessimistic sounding literary essays taking up yoga bird watching botany was the case with the aged Rousseau. In the face of increasing brutality of reality the passive nihilist tries to achieve a mystical stillness calm contemplation: European Buddhism. In a world that is all to rapidly blowing itself to bits the passive nihilist closed his eyes and makes himself into an island. The active nihilist also finds everything meaningless but instead of sitting back and contemplating he tries to destroy this world and bring another into being.

The history of active nihilism is fascinating and a consideration of it would take us back into various utopian radical political and even terrorist groups. We might begin Fourier’s utopian philansteries of free love and leisure before moving on to late 19^th century anarchism in Russia and elsewhere through the Promethean activism of Lenin’s Bolshevism, Marinetti’s Futurism , Maoism, DeBord’s situationism, the Red Army Fraction in Germany , the Red Brigades in Italy the Angry Brigade in England, the Weather Underground in the U.S.A without forgetting the sweet naivety of the Symbionese Liberation army. At present the quintessence of active nihilism is Al-Qaeda, this covert and utterly postmodern rhizomatic quasi-corporation outside of any state control. Al-Qaeda uses the technological resources of capitalist globalization – elaborate and coded forms of communication the speed and fluidity of financial transactions and obviously transportation – against that globalization.

The sad truth is that this aim they have has been hugely successful. The legitimating logic of al-Qaeda is that the modern world the world of capitalism, liberal democracy and secular humanism is meaningless and that the only way to remake meaning is through the acts of spectacular destruction, acts which it is no exaggeration to say have redefined the contemporary political situation and made the pre 911 world seem remote and oddly quaint. Although they are opposed both active and passive nihilism are Siamese twins of sorts as they both agree on the meaninglessness of reality or rather its essential unreality which inspires either passive withdrawal or violent destruction.

We have to think through and think out of the situation in which we find ourselves. We have to resist and reject the temptation of nihilism and face up to to the hard reality of the world. The violent injustice here and around the world ; it shows growing social and economic inequities here and around the world ; it shows growing that the difference between what goes on here and around the world is increasingly fatuous. It shows the population of the well fed west governed by fear of outsiders whose current names are ‘terrorists’ ,‘immigrant’, ‘refugee’ or asylum seeker. It shows populations turning toward some reactionary and xenophobic conception of their purported identity. Xenophobia is an irrational, deep-rooted fear of or antipathy towards foreigners. It shows that because of an excessive diet of sleaze, deception, complacency, and corruption liberal democracy is not in the best of health. In total it shows massive political disappointment.

The first truth of Marx’s work namely the analysis of capitalism an analysis that is truly prophetic where the economic form of life that began in some remote rain soaked corner of north-western Europe, in Holland, England and some of its former colonies has through the process that we all too easily call globalization spread its movement of expropriation all across the world. In the opening pages of the Manifesto of the Communist Party Marx and Engels write of the revolutionary role of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie are the outcome of the revolutions of the 1600’s in England, the Dutch Republic and the somewhat retarded 1789 revolution in France, and they play a revolutionary role in history. In stripping the veneer of naturalness from all social relations including family relations and the formerly prized professions and hierarchies of feudal society in making the experience of labour unbearable and indeed crippling through industrial organization the bourgeoisie reveal the contingency of social life and what we might call the historicity: the possibility that the particular set of social arrangements through which we are living are the outcome of transformative social process and are therefore capable of being transformed. Through the extraordinary energy that they expended on the overthrow of feudalism in its various forms the bourgeoisie unwittingly reveals the political character of social life. In reducing those social relations to essentially monetary relations, in creating a world market based on the abstract universality of money and the experience of self estrangement and alienation the bourgeoisie is the condition of possibility for anti-bourgeoisie political struggles.

“Where it has come to power the bourgeoisie has obliterated all relations that were feudal, patriarchal, idyllic." It has pitilessly severed the motley bonds of feudalism that joined men to their natural superiors and has left intact no other bond between one man and another than the naked self-interest, unfeeling ‘hard’ cash. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, ad in place of countless attested and won freedoms it has established a single freedom –conscienceless free trade. In a word for exploitation cloaked by religious and political illusions it has substituted unashamed direct brutal exploitation. Ours is a universe where human relations have been reduced to naked self interest to unfeeling hard cash and where all social life is governed by one imperative: conscienceless free trade a life of open unashamed direct and brutal exploitation. Reading him on the function of money as the universal yet alienated capacity of human kind; on commodity fetishism and the mystified nature of exchange value; on the massive structural dislocations of capitalist society and the yawning inequities that it produces one is simply persuaded of the massive prescience and truth of these analysis.

(more to follow)