Showing posts with label mencken. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mencken. Show all posts

7/31/11

Mencken was the disciple Nietzsche did not need

From Mencken's introduction to his translation of Nietzsche's The Antichrist:
In brief, what he saw in Christian ethics, under all the poetry and all the fine show of altruism and all the theoretical benefits therein, was a democratic effort to curb the egoism of the strong--a conspiracy of the _chandala_ against the free functioning of their superiors, nay, against the free progress of mankind.
The use of the term chandala which refers to a low caste Indian who was regarded as the dregs of society demonstrates Mencken's animosity perfectly.
Today's political conflicts demonstrate that it is values and not social standing that actually determines progress.
Retrograde values reside at the very top of the economic and social ladder and are freely chosen by all manner of humankind.
The higher ontological values of democracy, helpfulness, tolerance and non-idolatry reside in all individuals and dominate the passage of time whether we recognize them or not.
Those who choose these higher values are the true force of  progress.
I think Nietzsche might well have changed the views which enabled Mencken to engage in the slavish discipleship noted in the above quotation. 

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Where Nietzsche and Mencken are both wrong

Mencken from his introduction to Nietzche's The Antichrist.
The fact is that Nietzsche had no interest whatever in the delusions of the plain people--that is, intrinsically. It seemed to him of small moment _what_ they believed, so long as it was safely imbecile. What he stood against was not their beliefs, but the elevation of those beliefs, by any sort of democratic process, to the dignity of a state philosophy--what he feared most was the pollution and crippling of the superior minority by intellectual disease from below.
This a bald statement of Menckens's low regard for the mass of people. 
Why is it wrong. Why was Nietzsche wrong insofar as he embraced the same view.
For the same reason that racism is wrong.
The ascription of special and elevated qualities according to class and wealth and occupancy of this or that elite is a profound and sad philosophical error.
Our current Tea Party fracas is a case in point.
Democracy is the value which cuts through this crap.
It is why we have the positive moments like Tahrir 
Like the civil right movement of the 1960s
There is no class or elite or race that encompasses either saintly or despicable values
The ontological value of democracy can be willed by anyone and when it is willed it is not submersion in a hateful mass that it seeks
It is the same rights for all

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