Edward Nixon Dr. Erik Nordenhaug
Antonymous Negativity and its Nihilism
The "Prophet of the 20th Century"1 as Dr. Robert Solomon calls Friedrich Nietzsche in his lecture, essentially deconstructed the entire system of moral values within the European society he lived in through combining historical and philological research with revolutionary insightfulness and a penchant for noticing unnoticed patterns. The theories suggested within the philological texts involving the origins of morality and logic clearly suggest that neither outdate mankind. Through his insights and my own historical research, I have both formed a rudimentary timeline for the evolution of religion from the original science to its modern state as a moral code, an evolution that Nietzsche strongly implies if not explicitly explores within his work, as well as a short collection of epiphanies brought on by the serious revaluation of values brought on by this verification of Nietzsche’s theory.
Basic Devolution of Religion from Science to Morality:
Based on the current scientific theory that the origins of mankind lie in Africa, so may we suppose that mankind’s existential curiosity of his origins do as well, and therefore his self-awareness. In this supposition, Africa would also be the birthplace of science, which in the pre-historic era manifested itself as religion, which sought to explain their existence. The Kono Tribe of West Africa have a Creation Myth2 that predates historical record, as well as moraliy. The myth is devoid of any traces of modern morality, lacks a lesson, and achieves nothing but an explanation of life and death. In it, an entity, Sa, creates the world. Their god, Alatanga teases his
world’s inferiority, and supplies it with life, later marrying Sa’s daughter against his will. Alatanga, however, does not have the power to create light, and asks Sa for help. In return for creating light, Sa reserves the right to call upon any of his grandchildren, mankind, to come to his company. In effect, Sa is death, who created the world and light, while God steals daughters, and the afterlife is not divided into heaven or hell. It simply explains existence, it is science. Morality is likewise absent in religion itself until the Classical Era, as Nietzsche often implies himself.
Predating the Classical Era by approximate a millennium, Hammurabi’s Code is one of the oldest known written law codes. It opens by naming the Babylonian gods, Enki and Marduke, and declares that they have charged Hammurabi with “Promoting the welfare of his
people”(Pritchard)3, and commanded him “to destroy the wicked and the evil”(Pritchard). In this manner, Hammurabi also makes himself one of the first rulers to establish gods as entities that have any interest in the morality of humans.
While keeping with the trend of origins, Hesiod’s Theogony, circa 700BC, immediately predating the Classical Era, provides the Greeks creation story4, which provides a description of the afterlife and the God’s realms. Tartarus, the deepest realm of Hades, the underworld, was a prison of eternal suffering for threats to the Gods. The Elysium, paradise, was reserved for relatives of the Gods, which excludes any Greek by the fact that none were actually related to the Gods. The common man was sent to the Asphodel Fields, which may, in its abject nothingness, even be an allegory for a nonexistent afterlife; in the Asphodel Fields, the soul wanders eternally through infinite sprawling fields of nothing, among all other souls.(Hendrick 2003)5 To advance
3 Pritchard, James B. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3d ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969.
4Lattimore, Richard, trans., Hesiod. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1959. 5 Hendrick, Lorenz. Ancient Theories of the Soul. October 23, 2003.
the nihilism, souls who entered first drank from the River Lethe, which erases the drinkers memories, and thus any identity prior to entering nothingness. It wasn’t until the Classical Era, after Socrates conception of the eternal soul as a separate entity from our physical bodies in Pheado, 70b (Plato)6, during the 6th Century BCE, that any sense of morality entered the realm of the Greek Pantheon. Their Gods were hardly ever an example of what is, in the modern era, considered morally right, and actually trended more towards the category of complete pettiness. The Greeks managed to hold on to their sense of amorality, using religion as only a creation myth, until the Classical Era, when the eternal Socratic soul couples with the new Platonic view of the afterlife, setting the new standard for religions. With the understanding that the soul was eternal and immortal, and Plato’s new concept that both the Elysium allowed “good” mortals and that Tartarus imprisoned “evil” souls in permanent suffering (Gorgias, 523a)7, the modern views of morality and eternal suffering for immorality were born.
The Judea-Christian Book of Exodus, written between 950- 450 BC (Gainty, Ward)8 also falls around the same period as the Classical Greek era, and also introduces the Judea-Christian morality in the form of the Ten Commandments(20:1-26)9. Among introducing a morality, the first two commandments also introduce monotheism in the form of establishing the Judea-Christian God as the most powerful God (20:1-2), and establishing that the worship of any other god is a sin (20:4-6). The transfer to pure morality, the introduction of moral sin rather than behavior, was completed by the Sermon on the Mount10, given by Jesus Christ of Nazareth in 30
6 Plato. Phaedo, Plato in Twelve Volumes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966. 7 Plato. Gorgias. Published onlineat http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html, 380 BCE.
8 Gainty, Denis. Ward, Walter D. Sources of World Societies. Boston, MA: Haddon Craftsmen, Inc., 2009. Print. 36.
9 “Book of Exodus”; New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, 1989. Chapter 20
AD. In the Sermon, Jesus reinterprets the Ten Commandments; “Do not murder”(Exodus 20:13 does not only refer to murder, but that “everyone who is angry at their brother shall be subject to judgment” (Matthew 5:22) as well. To abstain from adultery (Exodus 20:14) was, likewise, not enough; “Everyone who looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). To simply act moral was no longer enough, sins were no longer judged on the standards by which men can judge them, but now God was judging man’s sin based on his thoughts, based on the core of his being.
In the realization that morality was not the starting point, and morality as it stands today is not even the same form it was when it started out, the structure of what man has developed as morality, which coincided with man’s development of Socratic logic, falls apart into little more than a value-less mess, which begs to be revaluated by the Nietzschean evaluation that
bankrupted them.
The Case Against the Dichotomy of Opposites:
In morality’s vicious struggle for one-ness, which Nietzsche explains in great detail within the Genealogy of Morals11, morality and logic, being the two methods of explaining life,
were combined despite their incompatibilities. In their incompatibility, similar concepts bred together to create tragically flawed infants ideas, one of which is the linguistic-mathematical confusion of their respective concepts of the antonym and the negative.
The antonym, as a linguistic concept, is a reactionary force to the synonym, as it can only exist in opposition to another idea. Synonyms, which describe words with the same meaning,
Chapter 5
evolved out of the parallel uses of many concepts throughout different languages. The English language, given its tendency to borrow heavily from other languages, is very prone to the development of synonymous words. The problem, however, with the antonym is that it does not operate in this way, but seeks to explain the opposite of words, seeking to find a conflict within its own language in essence. The antonym is a way of differentiating values, as in the Noble Mode of evaluation found in Genealogy, in a “good” or “bad”(465-468) sense; it simply expresses an unlikeness.
The negative, the mathematic concept, is defined as the absolute value of a number multiplied by -1. This concept, since it involves “less than nothingness”, can only exist in a totally abstract world; To go forward at -6 meters per second is not to travel at -6 meters per second, but to travel +6 meters per second backwards. Furthermore, the negative deals with the element of quantities, while the antonym concerns itself with qualities. However incompatible these two ideas are, an expression of qualitative difference and an expression of less than nothingness, one pervaded the other and the two bore a horrific child that believes that nouns have negatives via the belief that numerical quantitative value is synonymous with moral qualitative value. His search for a singular reigning truth lands him within a spiral of incoherent valuing and circular logic. He logically deduces the illogical, carefully stepping around the gaping holes in the solid ground he claims to stand on.
negative of lightness. In this sense, “dog-ness” may be viewed as the negative value of “cat-ness” by those who see the tension between the two species. The inherent flaw, of course, is that there is no way to actually quantify "dog-ness" or "cat-ness", no way to ascribe them a value so as to verify them as mathematical opposites ( dog*(-1) ≠ cat). The opposite of "dog" is "not dog", therefore dog *(-1)= 0; there is no negative, there is only zero, neutrality.
It is the horrific child who is responsible for one of the primary charges against Nietzsche; the claim that perspectivism requires the acknowledgement of a non-perspective reality. Through the also heavily criticized, and Nietzschean, route of genetic fallacy, the horrific child seeks to imply that because his perspectivism denies subjectivity, but requires subjectivity to exist, that it is a flawed philosophy. Ironically, in attempting to invalidate Nietzsche’s
perspectivism, they use perspectivism themselves, adopting Nietzsche’s method of genealogy against himself, in essence validating his methods.
Another flaw with their criticism of perspectivism is that it still relies on a strive for “one-ness” within subjectivity, which is absurd by every connotation. Perhaps Nietzsche is not
implying, by perspectivism and subjectivity, that reality itself is subjective. In fact, his works themselves focus on the subjectivity of abstract concepts, such as social structure, morality, language, and expression. He rarely, if ever, marks himself as an epistemological nihilist, acknowledging the usefulness of using such perspectives that operate on an objective reality, such as math or science, when thinking within the realm of the metaphysical world. In pointing out that no single perspective can unite both the abstract and the physical world, the artistic and the logical, the horrific child does nothing but point out their own inability to accept the
The impossibility of creating a single perspective to explain all of existence simply implies that one must have, at the very least, a Nietzschean tension between a metaphysical perspective and an instinctual perspective, the former to evaluate what one sees quantitatively and the latter to evaluate what one feels qualitatively. Nietzsche does not seek to unite science and passion as critics imply, but to show how they can not be indefinitely united.
Mathematical Hope:
It is in this misunderstanding that fuels itself through its own foolishness. It is this horrific child that keeps the slave morality running along in its supposition that because there is no proof that the Gods that run them don’t exist, that their Gods do exist. In the mind of the Horrific Child, P(e) = proof of existence, P(n)= proof of nonexistence, and V= value, where P(e)≤0 and P(n)≥0, and V= P(e)+ P(n). Of course, this is glaringly flawed by the assumption the
child has that P(n) can even have a value, by the inability to realize that proof of nonexistence is itself an impossible paradox. If there were to be proof that something does not exist, then it would have to have some existent negative. However, for there to exist a negative, there would have to exist a positive. Where P(e)=0, zero must be regarded as exactly what it is; nothing, neutrality, neither proof nor disproof. There can be only proof of existence, P(e), if anything at all. This vicious attachment to values that cannot be disproven as if they are truth is the root of dogmatism, and the source of the desperate cling to the idea of inherent meaning. In applying the Equation for Value to the concept of meaning, and deducing that V=0 here as well, then meaning fades back into the realm where it came from; the abstract.
When it has been deduced that V(meaning)=0, there are two routes that can be taken: Nihilism, and passionate embrace. In the nihilistic mode of evaluation, the absence of inherent value means that nothing shall be valued; it clings to the desire for an inherent meaning, and abandons all hope. The embracing mode, however, takes the absence of inherent value and turns it on its head. While the nihilist thinks “everything means nothing, therefore nothing is
anything”, the passionate embracer thinks “everything means nothing, therefore anything can mean anything”. He loves the nothingness, as it abdicates him of the absurd search for value, replacing it with the absurd attribution of value, acknowledging that if the most “valuable” of things are worthless, then the most “worthless” of things are also “priceless”. As a direct result of this mode of thought, everything is passionately valued, and easily gives way to the elevated, extravagant style in which Nietzsche wrote. The Elevated Style paints every idea as a beautiful, monumental, Biblical monstrosity. The most arbitrary and unnoticed elements of existence are as Earth-shaking and ineffable as standing within the throat of a screaming God. In Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes that one must “Write with blood, and you will find that blood is
spirit”(Nietzsche, 37)12. Zarathustra “hate(s) those readers who idle” (37), pointing to those who choose to read shallow, bland literature. The elevated style Nietzsche uses in Zarathustra is characterized by its aphoristic style. His aphorisms are beautiful, complex, and filled with passion-igniting connotations. His “Aphorisms hould be peaks, and those addressed, tall and lofty” (37). Nietzsche himself points to his style as elevated, and above the depth the average slave, saying “You look up when you long for elevation. And I look down because I am elevated” (37), and to those who are among the higher men, those who embrace the elevated style “love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving” (38). In his
elevated style, Zarathustra is not within the throat of the screaming god, but places the dancing god within himself (38).
Summation:
Nietzsche’s revaluation of morality and social structures reveal the fusion of science and morality via religion, a slow development easily verified through independent research. This marraige of science and morality implies, the birth of their horrific child, who equates quality with quantity via the concept of the opposite, which governs his morality. The fallacies within this horrific child’s logic are easily invalidated through the use of their own logic, as are their criticisms of Nietzsche’s perspectivism. And despite other criticisms that his philosophy is pessimistic, he inverts the nihilistic accusations against him by pointing out that an ultimately arbitrary world can be arbitrarily given immense value, simply for the sake of passion, for the sake of the dancing god.
1. Solomon, Robert C. PhD. “Lecture Ten: Friedrich Nietzsche on Nihilism and the Death of God”, Lecture Series: “No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life” at The University of Texas.
2. Offodile, Buchi. “The Origins of Death”; The Orphan Girl and Other Stories: West African Folk Tales. Northampton, Mass: Interlink Books, 2001.
3. Pritchard, James B. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3d ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969.
4. Lattimore, Richard, trans., Hesiod. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1959. 5. Hendrick, Lorenz. Ancient Theories of the Soul. October 23, 2003.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-soul/ (accessed April 4, 2012).
6. Plato. Phaedo, Plato in Twelve Volumes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966. 7. Plato. Gorgias. Published onlineat http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html, 380 BCE. 8. Gainty, Denis. Ward, Walter D. Sources of World Societies. Boston, MA: Haddon Craftsmen,
Inc., 2009. Print. 36.
9. “Book of Exodus”; New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Division of Christian
Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, 1989. Chapter 20
10. Matthew. “Book ofMatthew” New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Division of
Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, 1989. Chapter 5
