The solution, [Nietzsche] believed, was a new individualistic morality system in which the strongest, bravest men would become their own masters and creators, and in turn would become philosopher kings and oligarchs of the spirit. This new man was to be embodied in his infamous, hypothetical Übermensch, or Superman (as Über means above and beyond in German, Nietzsche’s word used to be also translated as the Beyond-Man or Overman, but today is usually not translated at all. The Übermensch goes above and beyond.)
The arch-individual, non-conformist Superman rises above the morality of the herd and harnesses all of his internal energies, all the energy within – his ‘will to power’, which consists of his sexual drive, survival drive, pleasure drive and other non-rational forces – to embrace life fearlessly, and with nobility and courage. The ultimate task of the Übermensch is to face life and live it as if he had lived it an infinite number of times in the past, and will do so an infinite number of times in the future. In so doing he will accept all of life’s horrors and sufferings in a kind of neverending Groundhog Day. Nietzsche ostensibly took this ‘eternal recurrence’ to be literally true, not just a metaphor.
All of these thoughts were developed by Nietzsche in the third stage of his writing. The first stage, from 1872 to 1878, was marked by a preoccupation with the pre-Socratic Ancient Greeks, and how they used art and theatre to make sense of human existence and all its capricious cruelties. The second stage, encompassing the books Human, All Too Human (1878), The Dawn (1881) and The Joyful Science (1883), was marked by experimental and doubtful musings on the notion of truth. While his third and final stage, taking us up to January 1889, when he was struck down by madness, is characterised chiefly by the question of morality, and how his idealised Übermensch would confront and overcome nihilism.
Patrick West, “Nietzsche and the struggle against nihilism”, Spiked, 2018-08-03.
August 23, 2018
QotD: Nietzsche’s idealised Übermensch
August 15, 2018
Robert Heinlein – Highs and Lows – #2
Extra Credits
Published on 14 Aug 2018Heinlein’s novels made science fiction mainstream and even contributed to modern libertarianism. His novels vary widely in the philosophies they explore, but ultimately they all reflect how Heinlein saw himself: as the self-reliant “competent man” protagonist of his stories, despite glaring inconsistencies.
Emergency video to be played in times of crisis
Lindybeige
Published on 25 Jul 2018Everything is all right.
August 1, 2018
QotD: The state of Ataraxia
Epicurus says that nature compels all living beings to search for pleasures and to avoid pain. When they reach their goal, they are in a state of contentment and rest that we can call happiness or tranquility of mind. Ataraxia is the term used by Epicurus to describe a perfect state of contentment, free of all uneasiness.
Martin Masse, “The Epicurean roots of some classical liberal and Misesian concepts“, speaking at the Austrian Scholars Conference, Auburn Alabama, 2005-03-18.
July 21, 2018
QotD: Epicurus and Plato
Epicurus had reacted against the Platonic concepts of Reason with a capital R, the Good, the Beautiful, Duty, and other absolute concepts existing in themselves in some supernatural world. For Epicurus, what is moral is what brings pleasures to individuals in a context where there is no social strife. The Epicurean wise man will keep the covenant and not harm others not because he wishes to comply with some moral injunction being imposed from above, but simply because that’s the best way to pursue his happiness and keep his tranquility of mind.
Martin Masse, “The Epicurean roots of some classical liberal and Misesian concepts“, speaking at the Austrian Scholars Conference, Auburn Alabama, 2005-03-18.
July 10, 2018
QotD: Epicurean philosophy
Epicurus was born in 341 B.C., only six years after Plato’s death. He was 18 when Alexander the Great died. This event conventionally separates the classical Greece of independent city-states from the Hellenistic period, when Alexander’s generals and their dynasties ruled vast kingdoms in the former Persian Empire. He set up his school in a Garden in the outskirt of Athens. There is very little that survived from his many books. But fortunately, the work of his Roman disciple Lucretius, who lived in the first century B.C., De Rerum Natura, or On the Nature of Things, was rediscovered in the 15th century.
Through this work, Epicureanism had a major influence on the development of science in the following centuries. Epicurus had borrowed and refined the atomic hypothesis of earlier philosophers, and De Rerum Natura was studied and discussed by most scientists and philosophers of the West. The physics of Epicureanism, which explains that worlds spontaneously emerge from the interaction of millions of tiny particles, still looks amazingly modern. It is the only scientific view coming out of the Ancient World that one can still read today and find relevant.
Those influenced by Epicureanism include Hobbes, Mandeville, Hume, Locke, Smith, and many of the British moralists up to the 19th century. They not only discussed the Atomic theory, but Epicurean ethics, his views on the origin of society, on religion, his evolutionary account of life, and other aspects of his philosophy.
To me, Epicureanism is the closest thing to a libertarian philosophy that you can find in Antiquity. Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, were all statists to various degrees, glorified political involvement, and devised political programs for their audiences of rich and well-connected aristocrats. Epicurus focused on the individual search for happiness, counselled not to get involved in politics because of the personal trouble it brings, and thought that politics was irrelevant. His school included women and slaves. He had no political program to offer and one can find no concept of collective virtues or order or justice in his teachings. On the contrary, the search for happiness implied that individuals should be as free as possible to plan their lives. To him, as one of his sayings goes “natural justice is a pledge guaranteeing mutual advantage, to prevent one from harming others and to keep oneself from being harmed.”
Martin Masse, “The Epicurean roots of some classical liberal and Misesian concepts“, speaking at the Austrian Scholars Conference, Auburn Alabama, 2005-03-18.
July 8, 2018
QotD: Marx on how to run a true communist state
What really clinched this for me was the discussion of Marx’s (lack of) description of how to run a communist state. I’d always heard that Marx was long on condemnations of capitalism and short on blueprints for communism, and the couple of Marx’s works I read in college confirmed he really didn’t talk about that very much. It seemed like a pretty big gap.
[…]
I figured that Marx had just fallen into a similar trap. He’d probably made a few vague plans, like “Oh, decisions will be made by a committee of workers,” and “Property will be held in common and consensus democracy will choose who gets what,” and felt like the rest was just details. That’s the sort of error I could at least sympathize with, despite its horrendous consequences.
But in fact Marx was philosophically opposed, as a matter of principle, to any planning about the structure of communist governments or economies. He would come out and say “It is irresponsible to talk about how communist governments and economies will work.” He believed it was a scientific law, analogous to the laws of physics, that once capitalism was removed, a perfect communist government would form of its own accord. There might be some very light planning, a couple of discussions, but these would just be epiphenomena of the governing historical laws working themselves out. Just as, a dam having been removed, a river will eventually reach the sea somehow, so capitalism having been removed society will eventually reach a perfect state of freedom and cooperation.
Singer blames Hegel. Hegel viewed all human history as the World-Spirit trying to recognize and incarnate itself. As it overcomes its various confusions and false dichotomies, it advances into forms that more completely incarnate the World-Spirit and then moves onto the next problem. Finally, it ends with the World-Spirit completely incarnated – possibly in the form of early 19th century Prussia – and everything is great forever.
Marx famously exports Hegel’s mysticism into a materialistic version where the World-Spirit operates upon class relations rather than the interconnectedness of all things, and where you don’t come out and call it the World-Spirit – but he basically keeps the system intact. So once the World-Spirit resolves the dichotomy between Capitalist and Proletariat, then it can more completely incarnate itself and move on to the next problem. Except that this is the final problem (the proof of this is trivial and is left as exercise for the reader) so the World-Spirit becomes fully incarnate and everything is great forever. And you want to plan for how that should happen? Are you saying you know better than the World-Spirit, Comrade?
I am starting to think I was previously a little too charitable toward Marx. My objections were of the sort “You didn’t really consider the idea of welfare capitalism with a social safety net” or “communist society is very difficult to implement in principle,” whereas they should have looked more like “You are basically just telling us to destroy all of the institutions that sustain human civilization and trust that what is baaaasically a giant planet-sized ghost will make sure everything works out.”
Scott Alexander, “Book Review: Singer on Marx”, Slate Star Codex, 2014-09-13.
June 24, 2018
QotD: Ludwig von Mises and Epicureanism
On page 147 of Human Action, Ludwig von Mises writes:
The historical role of the theory of the division of labor as elaborated by British political economy from Hume to Ricardo consisted in the complete demolition of all metaphysical doctrines concerning the origin and the operation of social cooperation. It consummated the spiritual, moral and intellectual emancipation of mankind inaugurated by the philosophy of Epicureanism.
This is a rather strong statement. Epicureanism, says Mises, inaugurated the spiritual, moral and intellectual emancipation of mankind. There are several other passages in his books where he mentions this philosophy in a very favourable light, but without ever explaining in details why. And although a lot of attention has been devoted to the influence of Aristotle, Aquinas, the Scholastics, the French liberals and others on Austrian ideas, as far as I know, nobody has ever paid attention to Epicurus.
Now, why would Mises make such a claim in relation to a philosophy that has been so reviled for 2000 years? Stacks of new books devoted to Plato, Aristotle and other philosophers of Antiquity appear every year. But if you go to a university library, you will usually find a shelf or two containing books on Epicureanism, and that’s for all those that were published in the past hundred years.
Epicureanism has been largely forgotten. And when it is mentioned, it is usually the distorted view that has been propagated since Antiquity that is being repeated. Epicureanism is said to be the philosophy of “Eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow you die.” An “Epicure” is a depraved and irresponsible individual only concerned with bodily pleasures. In Austrian terms, we would say he has very high time preference.
I even read in an article posted on LewRockwell.com that the unbridled hedonism of the Epicureans played an important role in the transformation of ancient Rome from a republic to an empire. There is not a shred of historical evidence that they had that kind of influence, and Epicureans were not a licentious lot anyway. On the contrary, their goal was tranquility of mind. For them, it is true, all pleasures were good, including those of the body. But they tried to attain happiness by planning their lives in the long term in the most rational way possible.
Epicurus’ ethics can be summed up by this sentence from his Letter to Menoeceus: “For it is not drinking bouts and continuous partying and enjoying boys and women, or consuming fish and the other dainties of an extravagant table, which produce the pleasant life, but sober calculation which searches out the reasons for every choice and avoidance and drives out the opinions which are the source of the greatest turmoil for men’s souls.”
Martin Masse, “The Epicurean roots of some classical liberal and Misesian concepts“, speaking at the Austrian Scholars Conference, Auburn Alabama, 2005-03-18.
June 13, 2018
QotD: Utopia
Utopia is not under the slightest obligation to produce results: its sole function is to allow its devotees to condemn what exists in the name of what does not.
Jean-François Revel, Last Exit to Utopia, 2009.
June 9, 2018
QotD: Thomas Jefferson on Epicurus and Plato
As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us… Their great crime [the Stoics] was in their calumnies of Epicurus and misrepresentations of his doctrines; in which we lament to see the candid character of Cicero engaging as an accomplice. Diffuse, vapid, rhetorical, but enchanting. His prototype Plato, eloquent as himself, dealing out mysticisms incomprehensible to the human mind, has been deified by certain sects usurping the name of Christians; because, in his foggy conceptions, they found a basis of impenetrable darkness whereon to rear fabrications as delirious, of their own invention.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Short, 1819-10-31.
May 29, 2018
The History of Non-Euclidian Geometry – Sacred Geometry – Extra History – #1
Extra Credits
Published on 26 May 2018Before we get into non-Euclidian geometry, we have to know: what even is geometry? What’s up with the Pythagorean math cult? Who was Euclid, for that matter? And what the heck is the 5th Postulate?
May 27, 2018
QotD: Epicurus on the ethics of pleasure
Epicurus begins with the question asked by Socrates at the end of the fifth century — what is the good life? His answer is that the good lies not in virtue or justice or wisdom — though these are not to be ignored — but in happiness.
“Pleasure” he writes, “is our first and kindred good. It is the starting point of every choice and every aversion, and to it we come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing.”
Now we have more than enough of Epicurus to know that he is not arguing for what are called the self-indulgent pleasures — of eating and drinking and sex and the like. Aristippus of Cyrene (c435-366 BC), we are told, had already argued for these. He also claimed that happiness was the highest good, but went on to claim that happiness lay in the pursuit of pleasure regardless of convention or the feelings of others or of the future.
This interpretation was attached to Epicurus in his own lifetime, and the attachment has been maintained down to the present — so that the words “Epicure” and “Epicurean” have the meaning of self-indulgent luxury.
What Epicurus plainly means by happiness is the absence of pain. We are driven to act by a feeling of discontent. We seek food because we are hungry. We seek warmth because we are cold. We seek medicine because we are sick. Once we have acted correctly and removed the cause of discontent, we are happy.
Turning to his own words, he says:
When we say… that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice or wilful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not by an unbroken succession of drinking bouts and of revelry, not by sexual lust, nor the enjoyment of fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul. Of this the beginning and the greatest good is wisdom. Therefore wisdom is a more precious thing that even philosophy; from it springs all the other virtues, for it teaches that we cannot live pleasantly without living wisely, honourably and justly; nor live wisely, honourably and justly without living pleasantly.
In this scheme, therefore, happiness is to be defined as peace of mind, or ataraxia. This pursuit of happiness does involve bodily pleasure, but such pleasure is a means to the greater end of ataraxia. “No pleasure” he says, “is a bad thing in itself, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves.”
His ethics of pleasure can be summarised as:
The pleasure which produces no pain is to be embraced. The pain which produces no pleasure is to be avoided. The pleasure is to be avoided which prevents a greater pleasure, or produces a greater pain. The pain is to be endured which averts a greater pain, or secures a greater pleasure.
And so the happy man for Epicurus is one who lives simply within his means, who seeks only those pleasures which contribute to his long term peace of mind.
And while hedonism is ultimately a doctrine of selfishness, what Epicurus had in mind was not a life spent in the pursuit of solitary happiness. He says: “Of the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.”
It may be that we seek friendship for selfish reasons. But friendship is to be persistently sought and maintained throughout life. Epicurus himself had an immense capacity for friendship.
Sean Gabb, “Epicurus: Father of the Enlightenment”, speaking to the 6/20 Club in London, 2007-09-06.
May 13, 2018
QotD: The lost works of Epicurus
[Most of the original writings of Epicurus have been lost.] There are the elaborate refutations of Epicureanism by Cicero and Plutarch. These inevitably outline and sometimes even quote what they are attacking. There are hundreds of other references to Epicurus in the surviving literature of the ancient world. Some of these are useful sources of information. Some are our only sources of information on certain points of the philosophy.
During the past few centuries, scholars have been trying to read the charred papyrus rolls from a library in Herculaneum buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Some of these contain works by Philodemus of Gadara, an Epicurean philosopher of the 1st century BC. Much of this library remains unexcavated, and most of the rolls recovered have not really been examined. There are hopes that a complete work by Epicurus will one day be found here.
Above all else, though, is the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius. He was a Roman poet who died around the year 70 BC. His epic, in which he claims to restate the physical doctrines of Epicurus, was unfinished at the time of his death, and it is believed that Cicero himself edited the six completed books and published the text roughly as it has come down to us. This is one of the greatest poems ever written, and perhaps the strangest of all the great poems. It is also the longest explanation in a friendly source of the physical theories of Epicurus.
Therefore, if anyone tries to say in any detail what Epicurus believed, he will not be arguing from strong authority. If we compare the writings of any extant philosopher with the summaries and commentaries, we can see selective readings and exaggerations and plain misunderstandings. How much of what Karl Marx really said can be reliably known from the Marxist and anti-Marxist scholars of the 20th century? Even David Hume, who wrote very clearly in a very clear language, seems to have been consistently misunderstood by his 19th century critics. For Epicurus, we may have reliable information about the main points of his ethics and his physics. We have almost no discussions of his epistemology or his philosophy of mind. Anyone who tries writing on these is largely guessing.
All this being said, enough has survived to make a general account of the philosophy possible. Epicurus appears to have been a consistent thinker. Though it may only ever be a guess — unless the archaeologists in Herculaneum find the literary equivalent of Tutankhamen’s tomb — we can with some confidence proceed from what Epicurus did say to what he might have said. Certainly, we can give a general account of the philosophy.
Sean Gabb, “Epicurus: Father of the Enlightenment”, speaking to the 6/20 Club in London, 2007-09-06.
May 1, 2018
QotD: The work of Epicurus
According to Diogenes Laertius, Epicurus himself was the most prolific of all the main ancient philosophers. His total original writings filled 300 papyrus rolls. If we take one papyrus roll as containing the equivalent of 30 printed octavo pages, his collected works would fill 30 modern volumes. His longest single work, On Nature, filled 37 papyrus rolls, which makes it about as long as Das Kapital.
To these original writings, we must add the various writings of his followers, both during his life and during the following six centuries or so. These also were substantial. Taken together, they must easily have filled a library.
Moreover, unlike its main rivals, Epicureanism was a proselytising philosophy. There were no hidden teachings — no mysteries too complex for the written word. There was no need for long preparatory studies in logic and mathematics and rhetoric before the meaning of the Master could become plain. No one was too old or too young to embrace the truths taught by Epicurus. He accepted slaves and even women to the courses he ran in the Garden. He wrote in the plainest Greek consistent with precise expression of his doctrines. He discouraged his followers from poetry and rhetoric.
For those able or inclined to study his doctrines in full, there were the many volumes of On Nature. For those not so able or inclined, there was a still substantial abridgement, and then a shorter summary. For the less attentive or the uneducated, there were collections of very brief sayings — whole arguments compressed into statements that could be memorised and repeated.
Nearly all of these works have vanished. Of what Epicurus himself wrote, we have three complete letters and a list of brief sayings known as the Principal Doctrines. Of other Epicurean writings, we have the Vatican Sayings, which is another collection of brief statements, some by Epicurus. We have a biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius, which summarises his main doctrines and also contains the only extant whole works already mentioned. We have more of the brief statements and a partial summary of the whole system inscribed at the expense of another Diogenes on a wall in Oenanda, a city in what is now northern Turkey.
Sean Gabb, “Epicurus: Father of the Enlightenment”, speaking to the 6/20 Club in London, 2007-09-06.
April 19, 2018
QotD: The Epicurean view of the soul
The purpose of the 37 volumes of his On Nature is to free us from the fear of death and therefore from the control of priests and from the internal fears of the religion that Plato and his followers had in mind. Epicurus says:
…[W]e must recognise generally that the soul is a corporeal thing, composed of fine particles, dispersed all over the frame….
…[T]he rest of the frame, whether the whole of it survives or only a part, no longer has sensation, when once those atoms have departed…. Moreover, once the whole frame is broken up, the soul is scattered and has no longer the same powers as before, nor the same notions; hence it does not possess sentience either.
The atoms that comprise the soul are immortal. They are passed on from being to being like the torch in one of the Athenian races. But the larger structure of atoms that is the soul of any one individual is itself mortal. Once we are dead, our atoms are recycled. Since there is nothing but atoms moving in the void, we as individuals are annihilated. After death, there is nothing; and because of that, death is nothing. Epicurus says:
Death is nothing to us; for that which has been dissolved into its elements experiences no sensations, and that which has no sensations is nothing to us.
After two thousand years of Christian spiritual hegemony, this may seem to many of us a gloomy doctrine. For Epicurus and his followers, however, it was a removal of the greatest barrier to happiness as they conceived it. That barrier was fear of endless punishment for the alleged sin of seeking their own happiness in life.
It may be, Lucretius says, that beating down religion is impious and the entry to a life of crime. Much rather, it is religion which has brought forth criminal and impious deeds. He lived before the most notable acts of religious mania. But he was poet enough to know the psychology of enthusiasm. In Book One of his poem, he produces one of the most striking of all denunciations of religion. He describes how, at the beginning of the Trojan War, the priests tell Agamemnon that a good passage across the Aegean required the sacrifice of his daughter. So a young girl was dragged to the altar for her throat to be cut by her own father.
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum he concludes — “Such are the evils to which religion leads”
He says later, in Book Three:
Some wear out their lives for the sake of a statue or a name. Religion and its resulting fear of death can induce one man to violate honour, another to break the bonds of friendship, and to overthrow all natural feeling. It has induced men to betray their country or their parents for the sake of avoiding hellfire. For just as children tremble and fear all in the darkness, so we in the light of day often fear what is no more real. This terror must be dispersed, not by rays of sunshine nor by the bright shafts of daylight, but by the sight and understanding of nature.
It is Epicurus, he says, who brought us into this light of understanding. Do not fear the priests. Do not fear death. Pay no attention to dreams or omens. These latter have a natural explanation. The former have neither a divine nature nor a prophetic power, but they are the result of images that impact on us.
Follow the ethical teachings of Epicurus, and be happy.
None of this means, by the way, that Epicurus and his followers were atheists. They did accept the existence of gods, and were willing outwardly to conform to whatever cults were established. They only denied that the gods were immaterial, and that the gods had any interest in human affairs. Confronted with evidence for any supernatural event, they were content with insisting on a natural cause, whether or not they were able to think of one that convinced.
Sean Gabb, “Epicurus: Father of the Enlightenment”, speaking to the 6/20 Club in London, 2007-09-06.
