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I'm a big Nietzsche fan. I regard him as, first and foremost, a brilliant psychologist of philosophy and morals. But one of his biggest, most seemingly culturally-consequential claims always struck me as just kooky-implausible, in the psychology dept. Until now. 1/
The thesis is (we could quibble but this is roughly it): relentless 'criticism', itself a by-product of Christianity, will lead to nihilism. Christianity's moral suspiciousness, at root passive-aggressive, will eventually poison all wells, including Christianity's own. 2/
This will culminate in cultural, civilizational crisis and collapse (out of which an Overman will/won't emerge and save us.) I always found the self-undermining dynamic to be plausible, but at most in a niche, boutique sense. 3/
'Nihilism' will become a perennial intellectual - and spiritual! - topic for avid students of philosophy and culture and religion. It will be a challenge to intellectuals, artists, so forth. I don't mean it will be just a salon/coffee house amusement, although it will be that. 4/
It will be a very serious issue, but not one whose sinuous subtlety is 'open' to most people. But nothing that doesn't mean a thing to most people is going to lead to a civilizational crisis of meaning. It will be a matter of private conscience and contemplation. 5/
When I teach Nietzsche, I sometimes show this slide at this point. Brueghel, "The Fall of Icarus". Or: 'and the farmer continued to plough'. I said nihilism was the guy falling in the sea, his Enlightenment wings melted. A problem for HIM, sure. Everyone else has a day job. 6/
And then I proceed for the rest of the semester, to try to turn students into the guy falling into the sea - at least thought-experimentally, exploring that ideational lifestyle choice - after which, I trust, my students mostly graduate and get jobs. 7/
Or if you want to put it in Hume terms: he's basically right about how skepticism lasts until the seminar is over. Then, in practice, it evaporates and people mostly live ordinary lives. 8/
And, of course, some people are NOT going to just get a job. They will do something amazing, exciting! Maybe revolutionary! But mostly I don't believe they will be argued into that by the likes of Nietzsche. 9/
No, the problems of nihilism and valuational skepticism Nietzsche explores, so brilliantly, are never going to move crowds, hence factor into crowd psychology. Crowds will always be simpler minds. 10/
Until now. Social media (not Nietzsche) has made us epistemologically sophisticated in a way we've never been before. A Nietzsche-grade hermeneutics of suspicion has been achieved; a kind of 'lol nothing matters' abyss-dancing style can be popularized, bite-sized. 11/
Something of the sort was achieved before under totalitarianism (see: Arendt.) But it was different in character. We are now seeing for the first time self-conscious, mass-cultural epistemological nihilism as a kind of carnivalesque, (faux) democratic style. 12/
And it's coming most of all from 'conservatives'. Nihilcons. It's perfectly self-aware. It's post-truth because information is power. Social media, the world as representation. But under that there's Will. Well, if you can't beat em, join 'em! https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/republican-conspiracy-theory-counterprogramming 13/
And it isn't just 'elites' leading some gullible base. How to put it? Everyone's psychological suspicions about what is REALLY driving the thinking on the other side has grown so suspicious. Even crude right-wing agitprop now reads like bad Nietzsche, critiquing Christianity. 14/
Populist hermeneutics of suspicion. I realize, typing this, someone is going to object: but paranoid mobs are nothing new! Yeah, but I think paranoid mobs, who come armed in part with bizarre, dueling half-sophisticated theories of the epistemology of social media? 15/
Sounds like you, Holbo! (You object.) Well, ok. I need to think about it more. I just feel like politics has gotten more self-consciously Nietzschean - in its psychology - in a way I would have heretofore doubted was possible. 16/
I wouldn't have thought it was possible for so many to be so semi-sophisticated about the psychology of discourse and critique, about the role of motivated reasoning in battles of ideas - without ceasing to be such damn idiots. 17/
So, how's by you? 18/
OK. One last. My students sometimes ask 'does Nietzsche have a politics?' And my joke is always. 'Politics? That guy couldn't schedule himself a play date.' (With apologies to @HDrochon, whose book is very interesting.)
