Roots of ideologies

Nietzsche, in my opinion, was an artist bestowed with a prodigious capacity to love and with an … unflinching jealousy, jealousy consisting certainly, in its most speculative and humanely sublime form, in looking for a master over which to dominate.

Ultimately, if we wish to separate the poets from the philosophers, contemporaneous or not, and precisely identify the sources of ideologies, even to hatch a few, it is quite simple. I know three means to go about it.

The first is to consider one of the seven dimensions of man which most of the worldly traditions lay out – the vegetative dimension, the animal dimension, the spiritual dimension, work, friendship, politics and religion – and to isolate one of these dimensions from the other six (one can also take 2 or 3 of them and mix them together, whilst separating them from the others, or even endeavour to exclude one of them and only consider the 6 remaining ones). For example, Marx and Nietzsche exalted (admittedly in quite different ways) work or the artistic activity as being the only acceptable way to save man and humanity. Kant exalted the religious dimension and morals, etc.

The second means consists in taking the three poles at the center of which rests the answer to any problem – Truth, The Human Person and Liberty – and in the same way as in what preceeds, to isolate one of the three. For example, Sartre isolates Liberty and veneers it for its own sake, etc.

The third is even more efficient, as it is more hidden to blunt intelligences. Take the 5 transcendentals (transcendental = notion which is convertible to Being) : Esse (Being), Aliquid (Something), Verum (Truth), Unum (One) and Bonum (Good). I’m showing you the general technique here, without entering into any detail, because we may end up getting spotted! LoL Firstly, note that "beauty" is not a transcendental, even though it has been exalted as such and is still exalted in this manner. Many people do not understand for example how the concentration camp SS could listen to the quatuors of Mozart during their dinner… as if beauty finalizes! Beauty is relative to the transcendentals and can be separated from them.

All right, but even more devious, only Being is an authentic transcendental, it is the keystone, and the four other transcendentals are acolytes of Being. Those who have a metaphysical touch understand this, the others stare blankly, persuaded that all this has no interest at all or is not concrete, even though we are well and truly at the heart of the most real reality.

Therefore, if one seeks to identify the source of all the deliriums and monstrosities that human intelligence is capable of, sometimes with much talent, one only needs to isolate one of the 4 transcendentals relative to Being (Aliquid, Verum, Unum, Bonum) and to consider it as separated from Being. You will have there a formidable tool to manipulate the fools and seduce the intellectuals. This approach is obviously the name of the game, the other two being more immediate and straightforward. :P

Ideological tyrannies

Aristotle was quite careful in not mistaking his way of knowing with what he knew; this is why he used the approach of analogy with art (art is closer to our psychological conditioning). Many have not understood this, thinking he was projecting his artistic analysis on other realities.

I am under the impression that the modern mistake (but it must be there since the beginning of humankind), the most universal and the most pernicious, is to mistake the conditionning of intelligence - in other words our way of knowing - with what determines intelligence - being - then do deny being exists outside of becoming, or outside of what is measurable, which comes down to a materialization of being: only what is concrete or abstract exists. Imo, there is certainly a link there with the self-importance of an intelligence which only considers that over which it can dominate, in other words either the concrete or the abstract. Yet being is neither concrete nor abstract, it is, and intelligence only starts to lift off when it accepts to let itself be measured by this fundamental evidence. We can dominate over everything, not over being.

Thus the two major modern ideological tyrannies are on the one hand a materialization of everything (only the concrete, what I can measure and weigh, exists) and on the other hand immanence of thought (only the abstract, what I conceive of, exists). We can be subjugated by one of these tyrannies or by both of them at the same time, even though being is what falls first in intelligence (like the other person, is what falls first in the order of friendship/love), but also what reveals its profoundness. Consequently, it is metaphysics/first philosophy which makes us intelligent, or more precisely which ploughs intelligence.

Credit drawing: Frits@HikingArtist.com

As you leave a comment, please read profile.