We Are All Ubermensch Now!

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.