Ethics
On G. Herbert Mead and Nietzsche.
19:th century: all is about Kant. The kind of Kant busy with epistemology. Realising that our relation with reality is not a direct relation, not a confrontation with things as they are independent of anything else, but a confrontation with how we, as human beings, make sense of reality. By using frames and concepts to make sense of it. Framing of space, time and causality. Therefore, the way reality appears to us, is not how it is as it is, but as we make it.
What an awkward predicament. Because now, if we see things, it is as if we are projecting reality on the screen. We are looking at reality as we make it in a particular way. It is like if you are dreaming. As such, we are not really seeing the real world, and there is no possibility to encounter the object ’the real’.
When dealing with Hegel, this was a fundamental starting point. The world as it appears, is not how it is, but how we in a time and a moment in history make sense of reality in a particular way. Using the concepts that are relevant in our time, using what we together know. This is not an individual account with reality. We make sense of reality not in a subjective way, but we can agree on how to conceptualise reality. The way reality appears to us is not based on me, a singular subject, but about how reality is thought in a community. As such reality is not static, we try to evolve and use better concepts, but can the concepts fit to a pre-conceptualised world? Can there be better perspectives?
Hegel thinks yes.
Trying to find the right conceptions is trying to come up with a presentation of reality in such a way that it makes sense to us consistently and truthfully. But this truthfullness will never be completely finished. This is trying to make sense of reality in a together-doing of reality.
If we are thinking about what we need to do in life, there doesn’t seem to be a cosmic mission. This kind of reality cannot speak to us and tell us what to do, because there is not one objective position. So the emotional reaction to such a dissapointing conclusion is an important impart of discussion.
George Herbert Mead: seen as a sociologist. Habermas for example is interested in Mead. He calls himself a behaviourist. However, we shouldn’t really wear these glasses when reading him. His whole starting point is on communication, and the difference between animal and human communication. In the animal world there is communication, and therefore they seem to be in dialogue, but it seems different from us. They seem to react due to stimuli, creating a kind of spontaneous and immediate reaction. The difference between human and animal communication seems to be that we are aware of the specific thing pointed at when communicating. Animals might make sounds of warning, but when humans point out that there is a fire, this is known as a fire, rather than simply an alarm. There seems to be a point of specificity. As such, we can choose our own behaviour by imagining the kind of reaction it would create in the other. We empathise and so on. This particular point seems to be the relevant starting point of wherefrom a specific reasoning arises. Mead compares fighting dogs and boxers. The dogs react on one another’s reactions, in stimulus response. Boxing seems to not be done instinctively however, rather it seems that boxers are attempting to plan out and strategise on the kind of maneuvers to use. As such, the possibility to think arises out of the ability to put yourself in the position of the other and presuming their reactions to a certain action. As such, we behave verbally, and we know the meanings of the words because we know how a person would react to the uttering of a certain word. People will never use words in a purely private way, unless they know that that private meaning can enlist a reaction in the person in front of you. If you are talking to a stranger, using words for private reasons will be meaningless. So you instead use ”official” or rather the ’stranger-way’ of dealing with words when dealing with a stranger.
Depending on what kind of group we speak to, the meaning of words will differ a little bit. We cannot readily say the same things to different people. We constantly realise that the meaning of what we are doing is related to the group, so we have to take the position of the generalised other, an instance of abstraction which most people, vaguely, reach when having dealt with a group of ’those people’.
What is interesting then, self-consciousness, being aware of myself, can’t be thought outside of a context in which there is a mutual understanding and a dialogue with others. On my own, without any communication and relation with the other, there is no me. So as long as there is a reflection on my own, I am also thinking about the position of the generalised other in my personal reflection. The fact that I think of myself comes out of the fact that I think about the position I take on myself; we think in intersubjectivity. This is inherently tied to Wittgensteins argument of the private language.
What is interesting here, if we want to make sense of reality, we are not just seeing the object as itself, but rather we associate all the possible actions and reactions we can do with that ’thing’ we point out. When we think about a thing, we think about the relations of actions that are tied to it. There are certain things we cannot do with things and certain things we can.
What is our identity then? Is it itself a kind of object? It seems to be how we are meaningful in a particular context, how we are seen by the generalised other. Among our friends it’s going to be different from how we are seen by different groups. The generalised other will view me differently than my close friends and so on. And as such, there isn’t really a true self towards which we can reach. If we try to explain it away by Plato, we can say that we are connected by all that is created from the one instance, and that holds close to our inner structure, but even if this is the case, it seems to be kind of meaningless because this is not how we act.
There seems to be a difference between the acting creature and the result of those others view of me. The me is the result of how the action that is done is perceived by the kind of group you are participating in. Each group viewing you as a whole, but wholly different and as such the totality of those views is not you anymore. 100% + 100% doesn’t mean anything.
It is only to understand the position of the generalised other that we can understand what is appropriate or inappropriate to do. Perceiving things in this kind of intersubjective way is therefore crucial in finding out what is right or wrong. The hegelian approach always ends up in a kind of communitarism, what matters is always the community and the general mind’s idea of right and wrong.
What if, then, these communities are bad and so on. Where is the possibility of finding a way that improves this. If we follow what the group is thinking we might be forced to do something evil. The idea however, is that all these small communities are all part of a smaller community that interact between each other, and as such have a common way of understanding what they are talking about from a common perspective, and as such a tendency to see a universal understanding of right and wrong – an evolution in the direction of world-community. We should have a word in which common understanding and awareness of the common good for all is possible therefore.
In such an approach, the inter-individual perspective therefore seems important. This goes back to joint-intentionality too.
Axel Honner uses Mead to understand the concept of recognition. Immigrants for example, who are not recognised as ’real people’ is a proper problem that his theory can clearly speak of. If you are not recognised by a generalised other in a particular society, society is hell.
Nietzsche:
Was convinced that studying Greek and Latin was important in that it opened up the view of studying your own reality. In realising that the reality in which you live is no different in that sense. In one’s own environment you always assume that the way you live is more enlightened than the last. Nietzsche tried to figure out the Greek culture as it was before the golden age mentality. Where they had their own insular ways of dealing with reality and so on, before the pre-socratic time began. He was fascinated by how they dealt with life and reality in a much more honest way. To understand this honesty, we need to realise that Nietzsche came from a family which was heavily religious, his father was a protestant priest and his sister was intensely religious. In studying he lost his faith and was confronted with the Kantian epistemological frame. We are confronted with an unreal reality built on metaphors and constructions, and we think that the reality we speak of is the real reality, when in fact there is something beyond which we are not really grasping.
A long standing idea is that people are made by God and have a long-standing goal inhering out of that creation. As such we are clearly justified in what we are supposed to do. Even in Hegel there is this kind of theorising. But from Nietzsche onwards, there is a realisation that this is a fiction.
Nietzsche was very emotionally touched by the idea that reality, from that previous point, has little care for us as we are, and in what we try to do.
In the birth of tragedy he describes what he thinks is the Greek way of dealing with reality. We start living, we enjoy life, we embrace our passions, and then we become sick and we die. At the first instance, the Greeks were able to stand this kind of knowledge, by having certain rituals, like dionysian rituals, which were honest with how things are. Then came philosophers, who offered the drug of escape from reality. In the Phaedo, everyone is anxious about the death of Socrates, and the story Socrates tells is that there is something that everyone needs to spend their lives to focus on in order to find the definite destination to survive death.
This makes reality as we live it bad, or rather, reality in the body. We need to find a solution during which we become immortal. However, this does not confront us with the kind of reality we have access to analyse. It corrupts our experience of reality in our community.
Nietzsche was heavily inspired by Schopenhauer, and his idea of Vorstellung. We feel reality in a kind of direct way in our longing and craving of certain things. The longing actually shows us something that is real, that really exists – as the Will. A kind of constant movement, which for Nietzsche moves in a zero-directional dialectic. The solution for Schopenhauer is the denial of individuality in space and time, and as such overcoming desire through asceticism. Nietzsche was opposed to the idea that the only way to live is to strip away desire and passion, because it is an untruthful way of denying life. In this approach, what is artistic and beautiful and real focuses on brave strong individuals who can reach meaning by dominating others. If there is culture, it is not the result of a mass, but rather the result of exceptional people who are great. The cathedral of Florence was built by Brunolesci by himself, because he was the only one that mattered in its construction as the Florence-cathedral. As such there is the idea that the Greek culture could’ve only existed together with slavery because that is inherently what allowed certain people to be greater than others. There needs to be a master who commands the weak.
Nietzsche wrote a book on David Strauss. He wrote the Lebenjesuforschung. The exegesis after the heglian period wherein they rewrote the life Jesus. They say that rather than that all that is said by the prophets is realised by Jesus, Jesus does what should be realised as is written in the old testament, or it is written as such in the Gospels. Strauss shows that the Greek texts are very comparable to the previous sources, and as such it seems a lot is constructed in the gospels. Strauss says that the Gospels are created and that the historical figure of Jesus seems questionable, but the moral message implied in them is still valid. This is something Nietzsche had intense problems with. This gives into the comforting messages of christianity. The story may not be right, but we are not changing how we are living. Nietzsche saw the same problem in Kant when he makes recourse to the christian religion. Nietzsche thinks this kind of movement becomes a kind of treason against reality which is evil and horrible and wants to kill you.
What does Nietzsche mean with ’deeper reflection of reality’? He seems to be very emotional about autheniticty and the being as is really there. Nietzsche takes himself very seriously. As is said in Zauberberg ”don’t take yourself so seriously”.
There seems to be a task for society to make a system in which life can be okay, it isn’t a male-loneliness epidemic that causes our sadness, and if there even is one, it is a symptom of further problems. Nietzsche wants to search for the truth, whilst also being aware that truth is a human thing which is historically developed. Why is it necessary to be truthful? Something which cannot be thought without taking the concept of truth seriously. Truth remains whatever we do. But the truth he seeks is a kind of truth of authenticity. The authenticity of cultures, of the self etc.
We need to be aware, in the development of ethical theores, much is related to a kind of identity confirmation. A reaction-formation against oneself, or for oneself. There is the distinction between descriptive ethics and the normative ethics. The normative theories seem to generally come up with something which is not awfully honest, and this is part of what Nietzsche despises. It is a way of pretending that there is an objectively correct way of doing anything that is done. However, this is inherently a kind of self-justification, to prove to oneself that one is good.
Nietzsche was also quite reluctant to embrace the idea that justice and equality and the removal of suffering is something good. For him this would deny the painful creation of heroic and sublime individuals. He was anxious that morality that favours equality is motivated by a resentment from the weak people who want to pull down those individuals who are too beautiful.
In the liberal moral endeavour it seems that the reason to remove high and low culture is done in order equalise the kinds of culture that are created. We deny that there are beautiful artists and culture in order to make everyone equalised.
For Nietzsche there are a lot of people who try to hide away from the tragic reality. Then there is christianity which is neoplatonism for the people. And then another strategy, amusing ourselves to death: ’all things are pleasant and beautiful and I enjoy everything and everything is good and etc etc’ and in this kind of cultivation, we are not cultivating. We hide away from tragic reality.
Niel Postman: In the watching of quick media, we become insensible to actual news: amused to death.