Sauwelios
September 27, 2006, 8:58am
1
In his essay “Politics or Nothing!: Nazism’s Origin in Scientific Contempt for Politics”, Harry Neumann argues that what is usually called “Nazism” is actually not Nazism at all, but “pseudo-Nazism”. All blockquotes in this post are from this essay, unless otherwise indicated.
In the 1953 publication of lectures given in 1935, Heidegger, who probably regarded himself as the only Nazi, attacked pseudo-nazis in the name of nazism:
The works offered everywhere today as the philosophy of national socialism actually have nothing to do with the inner truth and greatness of this movement (namely the meeting of global technology and modern man). They have been written by men fishing in the murky waters of values and universals (or wholes).
I suggest the following interpretation of Heidegger’s nazism.
Only real nazism is sufficiently courageous to incorporate the apolitical or anti-political thrust of science or global technology. As such it has nothing but contempt for all values (any notion of good and bad, right and wrong, true and false) or wholes or universals (anything political, anything common or communicable). Since politics always is concerned with such things, true nazis are radically apolitical. In its contempt for politics, nazism is one with science which emerges when anyone from cavemen to contemporaries declares his independence from philosophy.
Prior to this declaration of independence, there is no science as such. Instead there is Aristotelian, Epicurean, Stoic, Thomist, Newtonian, Einsteinian, Christian Science, etc. Each of these pseudo-sciences is subordinated to some more or less clearly articulated philosophic (or theological) theory about the universe. Each subordinates science’s radically private, incommunicable core to a hypothesis or theory, a philosophic effort to communicate something common to the whole universe.
[…]
Unaware that science reveals a nihilist world, pseudo-scientists, like Himmler or Heisenberg, strive to prove their faith or hypotheses scientifically. By this proof they seek its legitimation, its political acceptability in regimes whose propaganda, that is, education makes the “educated” respect this legitimation. Their respect springs from their education’s obfuscation of a scientific nihilism for which all their goals - whether democratic, communist, nazi, or anything else - are empty reveries.
This distinction between real nazism and pseudo-nazism is the same as that between Nietzsche’s Ubermensch and the “Aryan” Ubermensch of pseudo-nazism:
Nietzsche demanded a superman […] capable of destroying “the chief source of political vitality, faith in justice and indignation against injustice.” He placed the responsibility for that faith and indignation in the spirit of revenge:
That man be saved from the desire for revenge: That is for me the bridge to the highest hope - The spirit of revenge: that has been till now man’s best reflection - Everywhere where responsibility or reasons were sought it was the spirit of revenge doing the seeking. Over millennia this spirit of revenge has achieved such a mastery over mankind that all metaphysics, psychology, conceptions of history but above all morality is stigmatized by it. As far as man has thought he has dragged the bacillus of revenge into things - [w]e others who wish to win back for becoming its innocence wish to be the missionaries of a purer thought: That nothing has given man his qualities, neither god, nor society, nor his parents and ancestors, nor he himself - that nothing is responsible for him. There is no being (Wesen ) that could be made responsible for anyone’s existing or being the way he is - There is no purpose, no sense for our being - This is the great solace, in this lies the innocence of all existence.
A world purged of moral indignation [the political passion] and responsibility - science’s nihilist reality - makes impossible non-arbitrary goods or evils, friends or enemies. To have such goods in that world and to have enemies against which to defend them, one must will them out of reality’s nothingness. This desperate willfulness is the fanatic determination to do the impossible, to break out of the empty privacy which is nazism’s inner truth and greatness.
The true Ubermensch, the Ubermensch of real nazism (and Nietzsche was such a nazi, i.e., a nihilist scientist, avant la lettre), is precisely the man who can endure this empty privacy:
Zarathustra […] does not conceal the fact that his type of man, a relatively superhuman [Ubermenschlich] type, is superhuman precisely in its relation to the good - that the good and the just would call his overman devil …
You highest men whom my eyes have seen, this is my doubt about you and my secret laughter: I guess that you would call my overman - devil!
What is great is so alien to your souls that the overman would be terrifying to you in his goodness…
It is here and nowhere else that one must make a start to comprehend what Zarathustra wants : this type of man that he conceives, conceives reality as it is : it is strong enough for it -, it is not estranged or removed from it, it is reality itself and exemplifies all that is terrible and questionable in it, only in that way can man attain greatness …"
The “good and just” are the members of the herd:
In any human or bestial herd, the main concern of herd members always is to get or to preserve what is good for themselves. The “themselves” here are not experienced as isolated, nihilist individuals who are nothing more than a chaos of arbitrary sentiments or experiences. The herd member’s self-knowledge is political. It is of himself as a father and citizen, a member of his herd. Thus obtaining or preserving what is good for himself is interpreted in terms of communal or political, not private, goods. No real privacy is available to, or desired by, herd members; everything crucial in their lives is political.
Philosophy, as distinct from science, is the political effort to think through, to seriously question, the common goods responsible for rootedness in one’s herd. It is this rootedness’ compulsion which makes herd members believe that they have selves and inhabit a world which exists as more than empty reveries. In that political world, the main concern of all bestial or human herd members is obtaining and defending their common or political good.
Unlike unphilosophic herd members, philosophers, that is philosophic herd members do not unquestioningly accept what their herd believes to be right and good. They transform their herd’s main concern, to live the good or pious life, into a question. They doubt their herd’s claim to answer this question, to know what is good for its members. However, in the decisive respect, philosophic herd members side with their unphilosophic brethren by embracing the illusion that their political good exists as something more than nihilistic reveries. Like all herd members, philosophers are shaped by what Nietzsche called the spirit of revenge.
Unlike scientists knowledgeable about reality’s nihilism, philosophers never doubt the existence of a true moral-political good for their herd, however difficult or even impossible it may be to adequately ascertain this good. Since they obtain this fundamental certainty not by self-evident insight but by a political faith shared by all herd members, they remain philosophers, seekers after wisdom or knowledge. As such, they claim to know that their political good is the highest object of knowledge, although they do not know it adequately.
The following is what constitutes true wisdom or knowledge:
[…] science is the simple realization that whatever is experienced “a self, a world, the law of contradiction, a god, or anything else” [i]is nothing apart from its being experienced. [/i] […]
[…] science reveals a nihilist world […]
[…] all […] goals “whether democratic, communist, nazi, or anything else” are empty reveries.
[…]
Except for realization of life’s nihilism, no scientific proofs or discoveries exist. This simple, unsophisticated realization - and it alone - is science! No other truth is provable or discoverable in a universe where nothing prevents anything from changing into anything else or into the nothingness which everything always is. For example, there would be no real change if, as in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, men became insects.
In reality, neither men nor insects nor anything else is anything but empty experiences or reveries. […]
Both pseudo-nazis and communists have this nihilistic insight:
Both half-hearted nazis and communists are characterized by desperate determination to make their empty reveries seem more than merely private experiences. […] Both share the desperate need to create political life ex nihilo , since no divine or natural justification for politics exists. Both rebel against the nothingness which genuine science finds at life’s core. Both flee to forms of humanist creativity or scientific technology, futile efforts to appease their political passions by creating something commanding moral-political respectability in their communities. Technology’s “wonders” give science a patina of redeeming social value, a politically effective propaganda in contemporary regimes. Hess’ form of this propaganda is fired by the determination to force life’s nothingness to be something “to be political” or to destroy the world in this futile effort!
Both communists and half-hearted Nazis are wise men [“wise” in the sense of “knowledgable”: knowledgable about “reality’s nihilism”, as Neumann calls it] suffering from wisdom [knowledge]. As such, they are superior to democratic liberals or traditional conservatives:
More grievous to Nietzsche than the wise man’s suffering from wisdom is the victory of ignorance over wisdom. […] [Nietzsche] condemns the Socratic spirit because it allegedly reflects a gross incapacity to see the world as it is, to comprehend what tragic wisdom makes visible. Thus, paradoxically, Nietzsche condemns “aesthetic Socratism ” and its supreme standard - “To be beautiful everything must be intelligible” - on the grounds that such an outlook stems from ignorance and conceals the true character of existence (BT 12).
Unlike democratic liberals and traditional conservatives, pseudo-nazis and communists are at least Dionysian men:
Nietzsche artlessly describes “Dionysian man” as one who has “once looked truly into the essence of things”; who has “gained knowledge ” of the “eternal nature of things”; who possesses “true knowledge” of “the horrible truth”; who, no longer able to take comfort even in the gods, “sees everywhere the horror or absurdity of existence.”
This “tragic insight” urges them to obfuscate reality’s nihilism:
Bukharin’s political needs, fanaticized by his awareness of reality’s nihilism, prevented him from confronting his judges as Jesus or Socrates had. The same is true of Hess’ willed dependence on Hitler, a desperate loyalty unto death. Hess’ and Bukharin’s realization of reality’s “black vacuity” makes it impossible for them to be Socratic or Christian gadflies, bearing witness to a truth, or search for truth, able to save men. Their only salvation is desperate willing of it ex nihilo .
It is precisely this fanatic ex nihilo willing which obfuscates what Heidegger called the “inner truth and greatness of national socialism - by fishing in the murky waters of values and universals.” Nazis strive to incorporate their nihilism, as Nietzsche did, not to will its obfuscation as Hess and Bukharin did:
The spirit of national socialism was not so much concerned with the national and the social but much more with that radically private resoluteness which rejects any discussion or mutual understanding because it relies wholly and only on itself - At bottom all its concepts and words are the expression of the bitter and hard resoluteness of a will asserting itself in the face of its own nothingness, a will proud of its loathing for happiness, reason and compassion.
That ALL nazism’s concepts and thoughts express ONLY this “bitter and hard” will cannot be emphasized too strongly. They do not express things or truths existing apart from that resoluteness. Nothing - and only nothing - exists in nazism’s scientific reality. Nazism’s will asserts itself in the face of its own nothingness.
Even in the case of communism (or even Christianity) the application failed to adhere to the dogma.
Also the victorious moral code or cultural norm judges the vanquished using its own standards.
Nazism’s demonization is due to Nazism’s failure.
I see Nazism as a desperate gasp to return western man to his pagan roots.
I am having a hard time physically digesting this scientific nihilism. Maybe I need meds to alter my brain chemistry. A difference between one who can accept it with no troubles and one who can not, is that one is physically able(the brian is physical) and the other is not.
or so it seems…