Matters of Honor

Is there such a thing as "Honor", or "Honour" as our British cousins would have it, in these disturbing times?  There are honors, of course, and people are honored in one way or another with some frequency.  They receive awards or their merits are recognized by others.  People are held in esteem, they're respected.  But here I refer to Honor as a characteristic or virtue which is expressed in a code of conduct.

Honor in that sense isn't easily defined.  It's not the same as the law, it's not the same as morality or ethics.  It may manifest itself in conduct, it may be said to require certain conduct in certain circumstances as morality or ethics may indicate certain conduct is moral or ethical.  But it isn't itself moral or ethical.  So, I think H.L. Mencken was incorrect when he wrote (taking his phraseology from Nietzsche, with whom he was infatuated) that honor is simply the morality of superior men

I'd maintain it is a sense of oneself.  That doesn't say much, though, does it?  Perhaps it's better to define it as a self-judgment of one's worth or quality.  Because someone is a person of honor, conduct of a particular kind cannot be countenanced.  There are things an honorable person wouldn't think of doing, not because (or at least not merely because) it would be wrong to do them, but because doing them would be contrary to the nature of a person of honor.  Honor may, therefore, be related to the Stoic injunction that we should act according to (our) nature.

Acting dishonorably would diminish a person of honor.  It would render the person less worthy in that person's eyes, and should in that of others as well, if they're also persons of honor.  It would do so regardless of the consequences of the act or whether the act conforms to law or rules of a particular ethics.

Honor in this sense usually is thought to encompass the possession of certain virtues, most notably honesty, courage, chivalry, justice and nobility.  This may be due to the fact that it appears honor in this sense seems to  have its basis in cultures of aristocracy and rank.   It has been associated with status.  Gentlemen have honor, or nobles do, not merchants or tradesman or peasants.  Honor has been associated with violence as a result, I think.  When one's status is questioned or put in jeopardy, than extreme action may be taken.  If one's honor is impugned, revenge may be called for, or the person being dishonored may have grounds to challenge those questioning their honor, to a duel or seeking some other kind of recompense.  Honor has also been referred to in the military, or at least was in the past, and appears to arise in warrior cultures.

If Honor as commonly defined isn't appropriate except in aristocracies or the military or is an antiquated concept, I think it may survive provided it is seen as a sense of personal worth or merit or status which requires a code of conduct.  A person of honor would act in a particular way without regard to others or circumstances, simply because that is the nature of the person.  The nature of a person of honor would be such that the person's worth, merit or status would be lessened by acting dishonorably, which is to say dishonestly, unjustly, without virtue.  Again, I think the concept of honor so defined would have similarities to what it is that would make a person a Stoic Sage.  I don't know whether Honor as a code of conduct would be a basis for an ethics or morality, but conceiving of it as a part of one's nature seems consistent with the idea that our nature and that of the universe is essentially infused with and devoted to reason, and the belief in an immanent divinity of which we're a part.

Is Honor of any significance, now?  I would say it is not.  Clearly, those who purport to be our leaders have none.  What is significant to them, and to others, is entirely determined by factors unrelated to personal qualities and worthiness.  Generally, those factors are wealth, power, and advantage.  A glance at the headlines is all that's required to establish this is the case.  Politicians are notoriously dishonest, but no person of honor would be able to abide the spectacular, unrepentant dishonesty of the new member of the House from New York without being sickened and ashamed.  Such a person would be shunned by the honorable.  Nonetheless, nothing is being done to  discourage him by the leaders of his party simply because his vote is needed and the potential that there will be one less Republican in Congress outweighs any thoughts of honesty or decency.  A person of honor cannot accept the claim that the end justifies the means, because neither the means nor the end are of importance.  They are, as it were, indifferents.

There is something compelling in the thought that some conduct is unworthy of human beings, something which is more compelling even than the belief that some conduct is wrong, or immoral, or contrary to imagined commands of paternal and paternalistic gods.  Contempt and shame are powerful emotions, particularly when we direct them at ourselves.  Perhaps a sense of honor is something which we should cultivate.

 

Invincible Irrationality

I'm not much of a fan of Nietzsche.  I've come to refer to him, perhaps unkindly, as Frantic Freddie.  I quote him nonetheless, and in doing so include thereby a picture of him wearing a mustache not quite as foreboding as the one we see him with in other photographs, and in caricatures, looking somewhat demented.

He has something of a point in this particular quote, at least.  I ask myself how the irrationality of a thing would be an argument against its existence, I confess, but it can be maintained easily enough that it is a condition of ours, at least.  Not necessarily what we lawyers like to call a condition precedent, perhaps, but a condition at least to the extent a characteristic can be one.

It was Aristotle I believe who wrote that we humans are rational animals, meaning that we are capable of reason.  The Stoics thought that capacity was what made us, in small part at least,  participants in the divine intelligence of the universe.  Reason was long honored with the highest place in the history of human thought, and then replaced (or supplanted) by faith when reason was thought to be inadequate, only to reappear during the Renaissance and then explode during the Enlightenment.  Since then it has been dying a slow death; slow, because the achievements of the methods of science cannot be denied entirely, but dying nonetheless because it seems not to satisfy what we want, because what we want now is to be irrational.

That seems obvious enough given the fact that apparently thousands if not millions of people not merely accept that the world is flat (according to CNN) but wish others to do so as well.  This belief requires that a good deal of what seems obvious be ignored or explained away, and this is done with fascinating ease by the conviction that the government or someone or other having great power and influence wants us to believe otherwise and so fake a landing on the moon, the apparent curvature of the Earth, and much, much more.  Thus do we cycle back into ignorance.

There is currently an obsession with conspiracy.  To an extent this is understandable, as there can be little question that our politics is corrupt as are our politicians.  We've grown accustomed to deceit and combinations entered into to benefit the interests of a small and perhaps shrinking group of people who care about nothing but themselves, ultimately.  We see this every day.  We see it most clearly in the impeachment hearings, courtesy of someone who is intent on self-gratification and his minions.  But we see the appeal of the irrational in the response to the hearings as well.  It is assumed that others share the same proclivity for self-gratification and so do what they do to advance their own interests by thwarting efforts by others to do so.  There is a presumption of selfishness that must be overcome, but, curiously, it cannot be rebutted because selfishness is the rule, the standard by which all is judged.

It isn't rational for Republicans, for example, to not merely protect but encourage an executive who seeks merely to satisfy his own concerns.  A Democrat may soon be in the same place, and do the same things, and Republicans will then be faced with the same arguments supporting such conduct they used to support it when it benefited them.  It's hard to believe any rational person would be so short sighted.

But it isn't just in our politics that we see this invocation of the irrational, but everywhere.  The more that science, or statistics, or reason, or the learned recommend certain actions or support certain conclusions, the more those actions and conclusions are thought to be fake, or deceitful, or to result from some wrongful motive.  Thus the return of the flat earth theory.

When the inclination is to disbelieve what is credible and supported by the best available evidence, there is a serious problem.  It's a problem which will become increasingly significant as the attitude is encouraged and fostered, as is being done now.  Soon enough the irrational will become invincible, impervious to reason, impervious to argument, impervious perhaps to fate itself.  We'll slide into chaos and self-destruct, unthinking.

Regarding Prayer

If you look for a definition of the word "prayer" you'll most likely find a reference to a solemn plea for help or expression of thanks addressed to God.  The famous painting above is called The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer.  The martyrs, of course, are located to the right, kneeling at the feet of some saint standing tall. A lion is posing in center-left, looking I think rather proud, but not evidently vicious.  They're clearly in the Colosseum or some other amphitheater.

That the martyrs are praying is clear enough from their posture if not the title of the painting itself.  Given the definition of "prayer" stated, though, just what are they doing?  Requesting God's help?  I suppose that's possible, though it seems a situation where help won't be forthcoming (though the lion seems as likely to ignore the martyrs while pacing disdainfully about as to devour them).  I'd suggest they're not expressing thanks, but I know and have referred to in this blog the story Tertullian told of the crowd of Christians who went to a Roman governor's house demanding to be killed.  Perhaps these martyrs are supposed to be thanking God for bringing them to the arena to be dispatched.

I've also seen "prayer" defined as communicating with God.  That I would think would include begging him for help as well as thanking him, and any other form of communication.  But the prayer I'm most familiar with is a form of communication by which God is asked for something, or thanked for something.  Very often, forgiveness is what is asked.

This kind of prayer is clearly the kind one would expect to be directed to a God who is, most of all, a Lord.  We ask favors of a Lord, seek to placate him, flatter him, and avoid punishment.  We seek to rise high in his service and so be an object of his bounty and respect.  We're beholden to him for our very existence.  He has the power of life and death over us and our loved ones.

Prayer is called ennobling, but this kind of prayer doesn't seem so, to me at least.  It seems more in the way of debasement.  It debases not merely we who pray, but the God we pray to in such a manner.  Is the Deity merely a Lord, a Master, who wants things done and done in a particular way by his many inferiors?  A Master, however good, is a Master nonetheless.  And a slave is a slave, however kindly treated.

This kind of speculation was probably indulged in by Nietzsche, who thought Christianity to be a slave's religion.  I can't recall, really.  It's been quite a while since I read Frantic Freddie, but it seems familiar.  And it seems in a way appropriate enough.  But I can't recall whether he understood, also, that a slave to a master, or a vassal to a lord, may not only be debased but devoted, indeed enthralled in devotion; fanatic in the service of a master or a lord.

There are many things which can be prayed for besides forgiveness or favors.  Courage, for example, or being a good and devoted servant, dedicated to protecting the interests of the Lord and Master, extending his dominion (which is to say extending the quantity and quality of our slavery), seeing to it that others are good and faithful servants, rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies.  What else are slaves or vassals for?

Debasement and fanaticism go well together, in a strange way.  Such is the fate of those who only follow orders.

Reason and its Enemies

Richard Wolin, a professor of history and comparative literature at City University of New York, has written an interesting book entitled The Seduction of Unreason:  The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism.  Although its title is cumbersome (it seems authors these days must include explanatory subtitles, as it were, following colons, in every book title) the writing is not.  It's a lengthy book, but unfortunately there's much to tell.

The title of the book is, shall we say, suggestive of its argument.  If it had been written by an American or English philosopher, continental philosophers and their followers here would likely ignore it.  But perhaps the author's status as a professor of comparative literature will lure them into reading at least summaries of the book, comparative literature buffs being far more capable philosophers than actual philosophers almost by definition as far as postmodernists are concerned.

It's not clear to me that the romance of intellectuals with autocracy began with Nietzsche.  I think certain philosophers have always had a fondness for "enlightened" despotism.  Even J.S. Mill in his more Romantic moments thought this would be beneficial, and under the influence of such as Coleridge dreamt up a kind of elite, a "clerisy", which would govern humanity wisely.  This pernicious view has been with us since Plato, at least.

But fascism is a peculiar, modern form of autocracy, a hodgepodge of political, racial, quasi-religious, quasi-philosophical and nationalistic mumbo-jumbo, and as such grew out of what I think can fairly be called the "unreason" which resulted from the reaction to the Enlightenment which has been called (not very creatively) the Counter-Enlightenment.  I personally prefer calling it the Un-Enlightenment.  Some thought that because reason, in and of itself, didn't produce a paradise here on Earth, it's opposite should be unleashed upon the world.

It turns out reason's opposite could be all kinds of things when considered by European intellectuals.  The emotions, the instincts, Jungian collective unconscious, the erotic, the spirit inherent in a particular race or purported race or nation.  Whatever was unreasonable in human beings was glorified at least as much as reason, or what was thought reason, was glorified by other European intellectuals during the Enlightenment.  This intellectual environment was ideal for the growth of fascism, a political/social/cultural philosophy dependent on the unreasonable, dismissive of moderation and tolerance, devoted to the irrational in humanity.

This led to what was extremely goofy in some cases, as Wolin points out.  There is Georges Bataille, for example, a follower of Nietzsche who was fascinated with human sacrifice.  He and others formed a little society which was devoted to the idea, if not the practice, of human sacrifice.  It seems its members were willing to be sacrificed but not inclined to perform the sacrifice, sadly.  Bataille was an influence on Foucault, who favored the Iranian revolution and the religious fascism of the Islamic clerics who took control after the Shah was overthrown, and others.  I'm not sure what was going on in the case of Bataille and sacrifice, but suspect he thought this was the sort of thing unreasonable people would and should do, which is undeniable, and that there was something mystic and pagan involved in it.

Goofiness aside, though, the emphasis on unreason motivated the endorsement of Hitler's Nazism and Mussolini's fascism by a number of thinkers dissatisfied with liberal democratic politics and values.  This is pretty well documented, and Wolin of course goes into some detail regarding famous Nazis and fellow travelers such as Heidegger and Paul de Man.

Mussolini's Italy and  Hitler's Germany were once considered models of efficiency and, it's hard to believe, physical and mental health.  It was thought that these nations had a vigor and intensity lacking in liberal democracies, for what may be considered spiritual reasons.  They were one, a people united, not chaotic in the manner of the democracies and especially the Weimer Republic.  Most importantly it seems to their intellectual devotees, they had abandoned liberal values as well; freedom, individuality, the conflict of ideas and worst of all, materialism.  Money and business have always been the subjects of contempt for the learned as well as the aristocratic.  Of course, the learned were also inclined to  associate them with Jews, themselves yet another subject of contempt.

It's quite possible to overestimate reason, and to impute too much importance to it.  It's also quite possible to underestimate the significance of the irrational in our lives.  Man cannot live by reason alone, and it may be said that the Enlightenment thinkers erred in their zealous emphasis and reliance on it to the exclusion of all else.  I think sometimes that those of the Enlightenment were drunk on their sudden freedom from the dominance of the Church.

But I find it impossible to blame the Enlightenment for the ills of our society, as it seems members of the Un-Enlightenment are inclined to do.  It isn't reason or science which motivated the Holocaust, for example.  Essential to that horror were concepts of the Volk and German Romanticism and mysticism.  They were also essential to German expansionism and sense of mastery and special  purpose; to rule the world and thereby save it.  Heidegger warned against technology but eagerly joined in the glorification of Hitler and in according him the status of a demigod.

We're at out best when we think, and as Dewey said we think when we're presented with problems.   Thinking involves problem solving and is essential to it.  We don't think when we rely on mysticism, our so-called inherent nature, our "being", our vigor, our unity, religion, our race in making decisions.  It's when we abandon reason as a means to solve problems that we produce monsters and follow them.  We become followers only, in fact, as we don't think but rather feel; followers only follow, some better than others.  Reason provides the best chance of understanding and solving the problems we face in life.

Unreason doesn't require justification.  There's no process by which those seduced by it test its results, no questions are asked as unreason isn't subject to question or for that matter definition.  Questioning, defining, testing have no place when reason isn't employed, but is instead shunned.  The result is certainty, but at a terrible price, as the certain are thoughtless, intolerant and cruel.

Amor Fati

It's odd that Nietzsche, who excoriated the Stoics in a frantic rant I referred to a few posts ago, referred often to amor fati,"love of fate."  He did so in such a manner as it appears to have been to him a kind of ideal state.

The phrase is a profoundly Stoic one, and acceptance if not love of fate is found in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and others of The Porch.  I'm tempted to say Nietzsche was indebted to the Stoics for the idea.  This may even account  for his anger at the Stoics.  So many of us come to hate those who benefit us, gratitude being a burden as Tacitus noted.  Nietzsche apparently also was inclined to refer fondly to the idea of eternal recurrence, another view held by the Stoics, though in their case this idea had a more cosmological meaning; the world would eventually perish only to begin again and have an unchanged existence, only to perish again and come to be again.

I doubt, though, that Nietzsche himself was ever a lover of fate. His end was grim enough it would have taken a Stoic Sage to bear it happily, but it would seem Nietzsche was far too discontented with life, with people, to love fate, condemned as he was to a life of seemingly endless disappointment.

The idea of love of fate, acceptance of fate, strikes many as objectionable.  It's thought to foster a submissive, passive nature and is reviled by some as promoting, or at least ignoring, injustice.  Self-styled radicals and revolutionaries, primarily those who lived in the 19th and early 20th centuries, like to refer to it as being a bourgeoisie attitude--unthinking acceptance of the status quo.

It is not, however.  It is an expression of the Stoic doctrine that one shouldn't allow oneself to be emotionally or mentally disturbed by matters not in one's control, but it is in the way of emphasizing the equally Stoic doctrine that one should rightly make use of what is in your control, i.e. one should be virtuous.  Acting rightly would include acting against injustice, to the extent one can.  In the one case, the Stoic is not controlled by things, events and people who are not in his/her control; in the other case the Stoic uses what is in his/her control for good.

This is something generally ignored by critics of the Stoics, who often seem to buy into the idea that Stoics are cold, unfeeling, and unmoved.  They prefer to see only one facet of Stoicism and fail to give it what it is due.  But it is a persistent misconstruction of Stoic doctrine.

Stoicism is certainly not a Romantic philosophy, and followers of Romanticism (like Nietzsche, at least sometimes) tend to despise it.  This may be due to the fact that it is thought to espouse the repression of emotion while the Romantic revels in it.  Stoicism does indeed teach that we should live according to nature, which is to say reason; among the ancients nature was infused with the Divine Reason and we shared in it.  The Romantics of course were reacting against what they saw as too great a reliance on reason, and were often embarrassingly maudlin or zealous in extolling and expressing their emotions.  But again, this is to misunderstand Stoicism, which teaches only the dissipation of bad emotions such as anger and hate.

It is also I think to misunderstand reason, and the Enlightenment, and science, and we see this in those intellectuals who may be considered the successors to the Romantics as well as the religious zealots and fanatics who plague us today.  The successors of the Romantics question not only whether we should be reasonable but whether we can be, and denigrate science and reasonable assessment as mere narratives no more worthy of respect than myths.  The religious mistrust science and reason because neither will support their beliefs when those beliefs are put to the test.

So, science and reason are set upon by both these groups, and they or, better yet, the Enlightenment are blamed for everything from the Holocaust to the teaching of evolution in our schools to crime.  The narrowness of vision and arrogance of such as the "New Atheists" and in earlier times the logical positivists serve to empower these reactionary views.

As a result of anti-reason and anti-science, we may well be living in a world of the kind Yeats wrote of, where "the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity."  It seems something to be expected where reasonable judgment and conduct are considered no more worthwhile than any other kind of judgment or conduct, and where the words of books written thousands of years ago are considered to be the words of God, which others cannot be allowed to question.

The Stoic and the Ubermensch

Nietzsche famously, or infamously depending on your perspective, condemned the Stoics (in his understated way) thusly:

You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power--how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live--is not that just endeavoring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"--how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise-- and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves--Stoicism is self-tyranny--Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature? . . . But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.

It's hardly surprising, of course, that Nietzsche, who seems to have been an insistently, deliberately, emotional thinker, wouldn't find Stoicism congenial.  If ever there was someone overwhelmingly disturbed by things not in his control, it was Nietzsche.  It's unfortunate but typical of him (at least from what I've read) that he condemned it in this fashion; delivering yet another rant rather than a serious analysis.

I wonder sometimes if his frenzied style was typical of his time rather than a personal quirk. William James was more or less his contemporary, and C.S. Peirce; J. S. Mill was older, dying it seems when Nietzsche was in his thirties.  Imagine any of them writing in this fashion, and you (or at least I) can't help but laugh.  Perhaps this was the style in continental Europe, though, or at least in Germany.

Nietzsche's exclamatory comments are very Dionysian, certainly, but if you like me are unimpressed by mere denunciations--argument by exclamation--it's difficult to see in this excited outpouring much that is coherent or much of significance.  I'll perforce address what he seems to be saying to me.

First, he states that Nature is indifferent and we, by living are otherwise than indifferent; we value, have preferences, are unjust.  Of course the ancient Stoics didn't feel that nature was indifferent in the sense being used by Nietzsche, as it was infused with the Divine Reason and had a purpose, so Nietzsche rather than addressing or even acknowledging that is merely telling us what he thinks Nature to be.

Let that pass, though.  We humans are parts of Nature, however, and so our feelings, desires etc.--which Nietzsche seems to think of as contra Nature--are, therefore, just as much part of Nature, as natural, as we are.  So when the Stoics refer to acting according to Nature they obviously refer to acting according to human nature as well as Nature in general, as human beings interacting with the rest of Nature.  It's not possible for us to live "otherwise" than Nature as Nietzsche claims.  Nietzsche's distinction between us and Nature is thus unsound.  Perhaps, though, he didn't think of us as parts of Nature. 

Next, he equates the Stoic dictum live according to Nature to "live according to life."  It's not clear to me, though, why he does so.  In what sense is Nature "life"?  In the sense that it exists?  It does of course exist, but it has certain characteristics, as do we.   Is Nietzsche seriously claiming that the Stoic dictum in question is simply "exist" or "live"?  That would indeed by silly, and it is silly of Nietzsche to maintain that is the case.  The Stoics clearly refer to living in accordance with certain characteristics of Nature and humanity, i.e. to living in a certain way, not merely living.

Then, he accuses the Stoics of imposing morals and ideals on Nature.  He does not trouble to explain this claim anymore than he did his others, but he seems to be saying that the Stoics purport to see in Nature what to think and how to act. 

This makes no sense either, though, as the Stoics quite consistently insist that what is in our control is very limited, and what is beyond our control is vast.  The great majority of Nature, therefore, is not something with which we should concern or disturb ourselves.  So, we would not "see" Stoicism in Nature.  Instead, being Stoics, we understand that Nature is to a great extent something we lack the ability to impose upon.  Also, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius state that our lives are what are thoughts make it; that what disturbs us is not what takes place, but our feelings regarding what takes place.

Stoicism doesn't appear in Nature, but Nature and our nature, and our interaction, necessarily figure in how we should act.  We live according to Nature when we live as reasonable human beings, based on what we know of Nature and ourselves.

He also calls Stoicism "self-tyranny", again for no stated reason.  Just what tyranny is involved in not being unduly disturbed but rather tranquil, being calm and reasonable, is not clear.  But Nietzsche may have so committed himself to being full of Romantic sound and fury that even the merely sensible seemed to him vile and evil.

Not content to denounce Stoicism, he proceeds to denounce philosophy in general.  Indeed, why not, being Nietzsche?  What did he do that was not, directly or indirectly, a denunciation of something?  Nietzsche was an extremist, I think, and more an artist (a tortured one, of course) than a philosopher.  The reference to Bedlam in his condemnation of Stoicism is unfortunate in his case.  Perhaps if he had been a Stoic he wouldn't have gone insane in the end, identifying himself so much with Dionysius that he claimed to be the mad god.

Mencken and Nietzsche

Those who have done me the honor of reading this blog will know that I hold in high regard the Sage of Baltimore, the great journalist H.L. Mencken, and that I deplore the fact we have not seen his like since he departed this life.  Now we have pundits aplenty, but none with his wit and learning, certainly none with his gift for words.  The late Christopher Hitchens was a worthy successor, but not a newspaperman, really, in the sense Mencken was; but then there may be no such thing as a newspaperman now.

But for all the admiration I have for him, I have trouble understanding his admiration for Nietzsche.  How could Mencken, so accomplished at deflating the egos of the pompous, so sardonic, so disdainful of boosterism in all its forms, admire a man who, I think, is likely to have used more exclamation points in his work than any person in history?  And of course question marks, or perhaps more properly rhetorical questions, and italics.  One imagines Nietzsche breaking pen after pen in his efforts to declaim, frustrated that writing his thoughts (feelings may be more appropriate) was so little like shouting them which it seemed he longed to do--and perhaps did; I don't know.

Of course, Mencken was in his twenties when he wrote his book on Nietzsche's philosophy, and it was apparently the first book about that philosophy published in English.  Mencken, though, read him in the original German.  I've often wondered if translators are at fault for making Nietzsche (and others as well) appear so frenzied, but they seem to do so consistently.  It may be that exclamation points, endless rhetorical questions, and trumpeting italic emphasis were typically used by Europeans in the 19th century, but I doubt it.  Perhaps Mencken thought that as he was in a way introducing Nietzsche to the English speaking/reading world, it made sense to emphasize aspects of his works which he felt were new and interesting.

But since Mencken was relatively young, and Nietzsche's thought new to the English or American-English world, it's possible that Mencken found himself overwhelmed by a kind of Dionysian madness of the type Nietzsche seemed to extol.   He can be an intoxicating read for a young person.  I admit he was for me, in any case.  I read Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, The Birth of Tragedy, in my teens, and was most impressed.  I may have read more of his work.  I'm not sure, though; they seem to run together in my mind as a kind of torrent, full of the kind of bold and dramatic assertions so pleasing to read at that age.

As I'm confessing, I may also just as well note I read Ayn Rand in those heady years, and was also impressed by her works.  I'm sure I'll insult someone by noting this, but I think there are similarities between the two, at least as to style--declamatory, condemning, absolute, intolerant, angry.

I like to think an older, wiser, or at least more jaded Mencken would have had second thoughts about Nietzsche.  But unfortunately even an admirer of Mencken must acknowledge that he was something of an elitist (also something of a racist, unfortunately) and did not think fondly of most of his fellow humans.  He was certainly not a fan of American democracy or American politicians, for the most part.  It may be he shared with Nietzsche a certain contempt for the common herd, and what Nietzsche thought was the herd mentality.  This may have lead him to believe that we had no choice but to be mere members of the herd or a superman of sorts.  This can be a dangerously suggestive belief.

And there can be no doubt that Mencken shared with Nietzsche a distaste for Christianity.  Mencken was, I believe, far wittier than Nietzsche in his treatment of it, though, as he was in his treatment of all things.  What I have read of Mencken indicates he felt Christianity was to be criticized because of its status in his mind as a superstition, and its disregard of what reason and science tells us.  Nietzsche may have felt this way about Christianity also, but it seems he was primarily repulsed by it because it renders us meek in a way he found objectionable.

I think wit makes us tolerant, or at least serves to make us less inclined to think highly not only of others but ourselves.  Nietzsche I would not consider a witty man; he took everything far too seriously, including I would say himself.  His little essays about why he was more clever, etc., than everyone else may have been intended as wit, though.  It seems to me that if that was his intent in writing them, his good intentions soon gave way to his tendency to pontificate. 

They say opposites attract, however, and it may be that Mencken in reading Nietzsche recognized in him a disparate soul, with a kind of enthusiasm and feeling Mencken lacked, being an analytic mind and not an intuitive one like the philosopher.  Like that philosopher, I should say, who may more properly considered a poet, or at least a frustrated one. 

An Old Chaos of the Sun

We live in that old chaos, said Wallace Stevens in his poem Sunday Morning.  Is that enough for us?  That seems to be the question debated somewhat leisurely in that work, but profoundly enough, even with coffee and oranges.

There's nothing complacent about that debate.  That it even takes place in the manner it does establishes that the poem is of the 20th century.  The rather disturbingly dramatic pathos displayed by certain artists and thinkers of the 19th century in the face of the realization that we humans may not be the special favorites of the divine isn't evident.  I think of the histrionics of the characters of Dostoevsky and the yapping of Nietzsche and can't help but feel embarrassed.  Despair and defiance seem childish responses to the vastness of the universe and our tiny place in it.  In Stevens' poem we have cool appraisal of our "predicament."  We are, at least, adults in the universe, if only temporarily.

Do we need paradise?  Is this world enough for us, or are we fated to long for something more, something not just better but best?   Some of us at least seem to need the best; perhaps even some of us expect it as our due.  So we look for it or forward to it.  Heaven or higher knowledge, good or beauty, beyond that available to us in this world which we refuse to accept despite the fact that we are so completely a part of it, one kind of organism among many.  We're much more sophisticated than the others we know of so far, it's true; we may find we are much less sophisticated than others we become aware of in the future.  Will they be more privileged than we humans as a result and have a greater claim to God's favor?

Our belief we're exceptional has rendered us monotonous.  Although we should know better now as we understand we are not the center of the universe and that it does not revolve around us for our delight we make the same assumptions and ask the same questions we did when we thought that way from ignorance.  To a great extent, we come to the same answers, or no answers at all.

I think Stevens in his poem comes to the conclusion that the world is indeed enough, or should be.  Perhaps that's what he and Hemingway fought about that drunken evening in Key West.  In any case, that seems to be the adult response.  Neither despair nor defiance is reasonable.  If there is more than this, it's likely it will be another version or aspect of this (the universe).  If there is something that is not a part of the universe, to which we will have access, it is necessarily unknown to us now.  We can only know that which we can know and we can only know what we have experienced or others have and told us about.  We may feel what we call transcendence, but feeling it we feel whatever it is as parts of the universe and thus it is part of the universe as well.

The universe is remarkable indeed; we may never be done exploring it.  Understanding it and our part in it is a monumental task, but it is a task we can engage in and we can progress in that task in a manner which is measurable.  Paradise is something we can't attain in this life, but we can obtain and accomplish some things, and should do so.

The Dangers of Rereading

I suppose it's not unusual to find that authors you once were fond of, particularly during your adolescence, are not what you thought they were on a second reading.  I remember reading a good deal of Nietzsche, once.  Now, I'm not sure why I took the time to do so.  I suppose he can be said to have proclaimed quite a few things, some of them interesting, but it seems he did not think it significant to explain his many assertions in any reasonable manner.  As I grow older, I tend to think explaining is important; it's a good indication that one has actually thought about what one is contending.  There was a time I read Ayn Rand with something approaching pleasure, delighting in some perverse sense in her solemn and relentless sermonizing.  Now, I find it hard to read her without giggling.

I was surprised, though, to find myself disappointed when reading Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad.  I recalled Twain as being an insightful and thoughful critic of human affairs, and as a great American comic writer.  It was depressing to read his little sketches about this trip to Europe by what appeared to be a number of stock American comic characters, some of whom were characterized as mere buffoons, all of whom were uninteresting.  They seemed to lack all credibility.  Was Twain playing up to some readers back home, who actually found such stuff amusing?  Even his description of the sights of the Azores, Gibraltar and Tangiers, for example, were uninspired.  The foreigners are dirty and smelly, and so for that matter are their cities.

Now, I must confess that I simply stopped reading.  I found myself dreading to read any more, after a time.  It's quite possible that he eventually gave up his hackneyed descriptions of the antics of his fellow voyagers, and that he came to make interesting observations on the people and places he visited.  If so, I didn't have the patience to read on.  This work, and his other works, are apparently the subject of intense study by academics and creative writers.  Perhaps I'm at fault.

But it seemed shoddy stuff, and even if the quality of his writing is attibutable to the fact that he was writing on a deadline, as a journalist, I think he comes off looking rather shabby.  Mencken would have done far better with such subject matter.  Some creative writers can be outstanding journalists as well, e.g. Stephen Crane.  Did they have more respect for the intelligence of their readers, and their own intelligence, than old Sam?  I wonder if he came to be a tiresome parody of himself in time--the folksy humorist.  For that matter, Thurber would have done a better job making the characters amusing.