When considering a problem it is worth asking, in the Wittgensteinian
sense, is there really a problem or a self referential word game? For example,
to say something is ‘natural’ depends on what is meant by the word natural. Raymond
Williams in Key Words listed a number
of important words that are used in expressing abstract concepts and ideas, but
which are in themselves contentious. An expression like ‘natural social phenomenon’
would prove almost impossible to delineate and means different things to different people. The
question is, are there new or existing problems that need to be considered? The
answer is of course yes. I would like to consider the concept of autonomy/
‘being’ and morality in relation to ‘intelligent design.’
Professor Steve Fuller has, as he says ‘been banging on
about God’ for some time, and for very good reason. The words that are used in
order to make claims about a God or the concept of God have had profound
ramifications upon what has been meant by ‘being’ both for the world and for autonomy.
From the ‘enlightenment’ or ‘aufklärung’ science has been perceived as having
been tasked with discovering the ‘true nature’ of ‘being’ and ‘intelligent
design’. In the process science seems to have created a scepticism which has
in-turn become a disproval of a ‘creator’ and/or ‘intelligent design’. It is now
trapped, in cultural mythology, as being responsible for all that is ‘rational’,
while all that is not ‘scientific’, and thus ‘other’ is irrational and delusional.
Science may well have thrown the baby out with the bath water.
If ‘intelligent design’ is not the answer for the existence
of mankind and the world – and if, as Spinoza would have it, all that there is
to ‘being’ is ‘what there is’ - and if, as Nietzsche proclaimed ‘God is dead’
- where is the compulsion or desire to
be moral or conform to social values? Is there the cultural trend/belief that a
post God ‘utopian’ world would be a better place? There are many problems with
this view point.
For Nietzsche, believing ‘God was dead’, autonomy was derived
by being Übermensch, a Super man/woman
who creates his/her own values within the moral vacuum of nihilism - in short ‘to do is to be’. But what is the
justification of any act if there is prevailing nihilism? For morality to be meaningful
it must be contextualised. For the Ubermensch there is nothing wrong with them following
their desires – acting in a moral or immoral, legal or illegal way as they see
fit.
It is not clear that Hitler ever read Nietzsche or that his
ideas were taken up by him. There is the social myth that the Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistpartei)
took up the Ubermensch philosophy of ‘to do is to be’ with the ‘will to power’.
The historian Joachim Fest considers Nazi ideology in his
book The Face of the Third Reich
“It [National Socialism] was not a programme exclusively
determined by tactical considerations and aiming at success and power, which
set itself up as an absolute and used ideological props whenever they served
its purpose – as the formula has it, the revolution of nihilism.” p247
Fest
Nazi ideology, even with the gift of hindsight, is by its
nature impossible to define. Ian Kershaw in his book
Hitler writes that Nazi ideology was
“ an amalgam of
prejudices phobias, and utopian social expectations rather than a coherent set
of intellectual propositions.” p134 Kershaw
Fest went on to write that Nazism changed over time into
Hiterlism which then became
“A drive for power divorced from any other purpose.”
p248
Fest
Many of the terms used in defining Nazi ideology are
frighteningly similar to those that would be used in defining present day
autonomy. It would seem in the post 60’s therapeutic trend of ‘me’ and ‘you’
that what is actually meant by autonomy/freedom is - do what you want when you
want.
This can of course be said to be merely
hedonism or utilitarianism – the belief that pleasure is the only good. This is
nothing new. Bentham tried calculating the amount of pleasure that an action
could give – as long as it was in keeping with the ‘greatest amount of pleasure
is derived for the greatest number of people’. This position is of course
fraught with contradictions, mainly that an individual might not want the
‘greater good’. There is also the Freudian psychoanalytic concept of the ‘pleasure
principle’ in which individuals derive pleasure from actions that satisfy
‘urges’ which are ‘natural’ to them – even if within a society or culture they
would be seen as a ‘perversion’. So does the dismissal of the ‘pleasure
principal’ and Freud’s socially unfettered ‘urges’ lead the individual back to
adopt the ‘rational’ position of Ubermensch?
Is there a restraint to Ubermensch to found in narrative
structure? The Bible as a collection of stories was used to instruct and guide
communities, and was considered by some to be a ‘literal truth’ and ‘proof’ of
a ‘living’ God. The concept of God and the Bible are now thought of by many to
be fantasy or something like science fiction.
The irony is that ‘morality’ and ‘moral behaviour’
is depicted and promulgated within the stories
of popular culture
- in soaps, films,
computer games -
as a means of
giving it ‘validity’.
A non-moral nihilistic vacuum is not good for
fiction. As Chaucer pointed out with his ‘shitten Sheppard’ knowing what is
moral is not the same as acting in a moral way. An individual might know what
morality is but find that their ‘pleasure principal’ or ‘urges’ are frustrated
by it. Who would not want the Ring of Gyges – where the invisible individual
could act without being caught for doing what they wanted when they wanted? Is
this desire for power really ‘human nature’? Is there a common lust for power
based on individual recognition?
Worldwide there is a trend for TV ‘talent’ shows on ‘reality TV’ for individuals
to seek ‘fame’ - a fame which is power, which allows them to think, and thus
others ‘When I am famous I can do what I want when I want.’ This state of
power/fame is supposed to bring pleasure. But of course the problem is that not
all individuals can have this fame/power.
The modern world likes the ‘absolute certainty of science’,
and as morality is meaningless until contextualised so God is meaningless
because science can not contextualise ‘it’. Science can not, due it’s very
nature, consider the ‘abstracts’ of
‘being’ or participate in any Wittgensteinian word games. It is
impossible for it to consider concepts like ‘guilt’,‘conscience’ or ‘self interest’.
It has offered and retracted numerous theories for the ‘creation’ and backed
away from any explanation of ‘intelligent design’. It is not good enough for
science to say that these issues are not within it’s remit. Science in a pedestrian
way wants to offer up an hypothesis to measure and test in an existential
world. But if the great scientists had not wandered into the realms of metaphsyical
whimsy then great discoveries would never have been made. Philosophy, psychology,
theology, epistemology, cultural studies and many more academic studies are the
tools for looking - where science can not and will not.
It seems to me that a post ‘God’ utopian world where
Ubermensch is preferred will, as Hitlerism proved, end only in further nihilistic
wars and meaningless existence – unless existing for power is an end in itself.
