And some more sketchy notes from the lecture by Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins on Nietzsche from The Teaching Company.

If anyone does happen to read these notes, please forgive the typos. I highly doubt I’ll go back through and proofread for a while. I primarily write these notes for my own understanding and future reference.

Morality

Nietzsche distinguishes between Morality with a capital M and morality with a lowercase m. Different societies have different moralities which is morality with a lowercase m and in the plural. To have an individual morality is to have a rank order of values.

Morality with a capital M, on the other hand, is Morality in the singular. This understanding of Morality is objective and writ large.

Nietzsche attacks singular Morality. He doesn’t attack individual plural morality.

There are no moral facts There are only moral interpretations of facts. Values are not facts in the world and if one appeals to a morality in which these are supposed to be objective, one is always going to be subverting oneself because this is not the nature of values. (The Commandments/facts about human nature are examples of objectified values.)

Values aren’t “in the world”. But they aren’t subjective or personal, either. The truth is more complicated and Nietzsche saw through this very clearly. He was probably one of the first philosophers to do so. To ask if values are in the world or in us doesn’t make sense.

Hume said the values were in us, not in the world. But Hume admitted that when we are worried about values, morality, human behavior, etc. - the question about whether values are in the world is of no interest whatsoever. This is where Nietzsche picks him up. What matters is is what is valuable for life. We experience the world in value laden terms and there is no way to get beyond that. That’s what makes us who we are. It doesn’t matter if it is subjective or objective. What are the values and how do we negotiate them given that different cultures have different values?

Values are culture specific. Different groups have different senses of morality. One of the big issues in the U.S. is always which of these singular moralities with a lowercase “m” are we going to make binding on everyone as a Morality with a capital M? This is what Nietzsche says we have to reject. We have to reject that values were given to us with a capital M from God.

“Thou shalt not” are prohibitions. Morality is seen in terms of what we should not do. Morality with a capital “M” is negative and prohibitive. God given morality is rejected by Nietzsche because the idea of an externally imposed morality is unnatural. We have to understand morality as coming from us.

The modern and most philosophical notion of Morality with a capital “M” is from Kant. Kant said there was a Moral Law and called it “The Categorical Imperative”. It is a command and it is absolutely unexceptional. “Thou Shalt” - no exceptions. Kant has in mind the singular sense of Morality (capital M).

Kant says that we should “Act always that others should act likewise.” We should ask: “What if everyone were to do what it is I am doing?” When you universalize in this way, you take morality out of experience and now understand it as a product of pure, practical reason. It is a rational phenomenon, not an experiential phenomenon. As you universalize as a test of morality, it becomes a rule for everyone. But this doesn’t work. Applying the rule to everyone almost always benefits some and disadvantages others. Universalization isn’t as fair as Kant wants it to be.

Nietzsche says applying the same rule to everyone destroys the exceptions. Nietzsche is always interested in the exceptions. We each have our own individual moralities. Morality (lower case “m”) must come from within - and those are the values worth defending. This is a defense of life in all it’s various forms. It’s the inclinations which give us morality. It is not a rational enterprise.

But even so, to say inclination is good and rationalism is bad is stupid. Some inclinations are healthy and enhance life. Others are stupid and drag life down. It is life itself that is the value. Life by it’s nature is confusing. It is diverse. The defense of life is a defense of diversity. The defense of the individual is a defense of vitality.

Are our values healthy or sick? Do they support life or drag it down? Nietzsche says externally imposed values are unhealthy. Asceticism is life denying. Rational principals are also life denying because they are externally imposed. Reason is opposed to nature in the way Kant uses reason.

Nietzsche likewise attacks modernity. He saw democracy and socialism as a leveling devices. American consumerism makes us all equal in that we have spending power. But it removes any sense of value but the market value.

Immoralism (Virtue, Self & Selfishness)

Nietzsche was a kind and gentle person. His last sane act was to hug a horse to save it from a beating. Nietzsche rejects morality as something universal. Nietzsche did not kill, steal, or commit adultery. He honored his mother and father. He obeyed the commandments but he objected to the idea that these commandments were externally imposed.

He doesn’t reject the content of the commandments. What he rejects is the idea that breaking the commandments relegates people to the realm of evil. That doesn’t explain anything. that they break the commandments consistently is a psychological, sociological problem.

Nietzsche doesn’t reject rational principals. What he rejects is the rationalization of rationality and morality. Kant separates inclinations from reason and says reason is the realm of morality. But once you do that, once you ascertain a person’s moral worth is based upon the moral law itself, you are pushing out of view the inclinations and saying they don’t matter - that we shouldn’t bother looking at them. This pushes aside the actual motives of our behavior in favor of doing the rational thing. But human beings are rarely motivated by what is reasonable, rational, or moral.

Kant says we are not in a position to know what the motives of our behavior actually are. Freud says philosophers before him introduced the unconsciousness. He just made it scientific. Kant was one of the philosophers he was referring to. In Germany, the idea of unconscious has a long picture of motivation as mysterious. Kant uses the unconscious as a way of remaining oblivious to the motivations Nietzsche wants to expose.

For Nietzsche, a kindly act that is understood as acting on principal may very well be motivated by an urge for superiority, a kind of contempt or self-defense. Kant doesn’t let us see this motivation. Instead he gives us a system of rationalizations.

A principal of morality may be perceived as absolute but it often involves all kinds of fiddling. If you have an abstract moral principal, the application of that principal is going to require some gerrymandering and fiddling to apply to the particular case and then it becomes a rationalization. It operates in such a way that doesn’t require we look at the actual motivations behind our behavior. It is possible to be a good person by not doing anything wrong. The focus is never on what you did wonderful - it’s on what you did or didn’t do wrong. For Nietzsche, this is a definition of the sickly. Being a good person and living a good life on those terms doesn’t amount to living a life at all. Existence requires commitment, passion, vibrancy, adventure.

Modern philosophy thinks of ethics in terms of Kant and John Stuart Mill. Kant represents rational principal; Mill emphasizes the general good. These are essentially the same because they are involved with rational principals.

Jesus present Kant with a moral problem. the temptation of Christ shows a person so perfect where the individual is not at war with universal morality. To say Jesus is a good person does not fit.

What ethics consists of are excellences (this comes from Aristotle). To think in terms of virtues is not about being good or obeying rules. It is about being excellent. To be excellent is to be exceptional - not to be like everyone else, The test of having a virtue is that you enjoy doing it. It’s not about being like everyone else.

Nietzsche the Immoralist; Genealogy of Morals

Even now what is sick may have once served healthy moral values. Morality is not just about doing what you want to do. It must also be noble. Mozart doing what he wants to do is noble because his creation of music benefits everyone.

Master morality is doing what you want to do. Slave morality is not doing what you want to do: asceticism, slavery, etc. It’s also following gurus rather than finding your own way.

Morality with a capital M comes about through slavery and persecution. It is a reaction to Master morality.

The term “good” comes from an ancient root which means warrior. It has to do with confidence and price - self-esteem. “I am my own ideal.” It is about pursuing a sense of excellence which is one’s own and that is what the word good means.

The term “bad”, on the otherhand,’ refers to what is pathetic, failure, weakness, pathos, vulgar, what is unsatisfying. Masters speak in terms of doing what they want to do and following this in a straightforward way. Slaves speak in terms of prohibition. “Thous Shalt Not”…. (Not doing what you want to do.)

Nietzsche considered the original development of slave morality a step in the right direction: “The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives births to values.” The way the masters behave, doing anything they want, is not something to admire. It is something despise . If the slaves were in the role of the master, they would not want to behave in that way. If you make masters evil, you can consider yourself good. This is the opposite of the Master view. Masters view themselves as good without question. People who are different from them are bad (unsatisfied, vulgar, etc.)

Master morality is about good and bad. Slave morality is about good and evil. Slaves have to conclude they are good by seeing someone as worse than them (the Masters). What good amounts to in the slave morality point of view is not directly asserting yourself. It involves having more self-control and they veiw the masters as people who haven’t learned these traits. They haven’t learned to internally disrespect what externally they might go along with. this internal move on the part of the slaves Nietzsche thinks is a brilliant bit of psychology. But the problem is that it later ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy that keeps the slave in a secondary position. there is no immediate view of self-worth without the view that someone else is evil.

Nietzsche calls it a transvaluation of values. Evil is doing what those guys do that they think is good. Good is not doing all that. Wealthy is viewed as evil. Strength, power, warrior virtues are flipped and meekness instead is what is seen as virtuous. In modern times, this is like saying ignorance is bliss when knowledge is the virtue of master morality.

How did slave morality become Morality with a capital M? When Constantine converted to Christianity and made Rome a Christian nation around 330 A.D.

Bad consciousness is the twist between master morality and slave morality in all of us. Where both exist, slave morality is likely to take over. Solomon offers an example. Consider a Baboon who exhibits Master Morality. He does whatever it is he wants to do. But he is placed in a zoo and is told stories about the Zoo Keeper who will do horrible things to him if he makes an exception of himself. The Baboon is master of the Baboon world, but the Zoo Keeper will become his Master. This presents a conflict. The Baboon will very likely give in and try and make himself seem like every other Baboon so as not to anger the Zoo Keeper.

Master morality lends itself to a Virtue Ethics. Slave morality lends itself to a Kantian/Judeo-Christian analysis where ethics is understood as universal and the rules are externally imposed and they apply in just the same way to everyone.

Slave morality was originally a good move. But it no longer serves us. Nietzsche doesn’t think we can go back to Master Morality. that’s not possible. But we can move beyond good and evil.

Resentment, Revenge and Justice

The French Ressentiment differs from the English Resentment. Resentment is a much stronger term. Ressentiment means irritation. Resentment seeks revenge. It is a viscous attack. Resentment is a strategy. It turns failure into virtue. It requires putting other people down and getting even with them for their superiority. Resentment is brilliant. The idea is kill someone without them even knowing you killed them.

Revenge is the original meaning of the world justice. Self-revenge is getting even with oneself for doing so well.

As we get used to judging on the basis of negating what is outside of us in order to feel good about ourselves (the blame game), we are constantly at war with ourselves about our excellence. the initially healthy move made by early Christians and Ancient Hebrews of turning the tables on Master Morality has become so internalized that there is almost no way we can get enough support to gain a good opinion of ourselves through our negative views of what is outside of ourselves. We are forced to drag our view down of everyone else in order to make ourselves feel relatively good. But this doesn’t work. It doesn’t provide us with self-esteem.

Nietzsche wages war and guilt and sin. The type of guilt he’s referring to is inward guilt - the belief that we are inherently deficient. Nietzsche says this is an unhealthy way of viewing the self and that it creates resentment.

Sin is judgment from another plane. It is not against oneself or against others but against God. It is impossible to live a sinless life based on the conventional definition of sin. Psychologically what this creates is a need to blame others for our faults.

We are so habituated to the Christian story and we are so obsessed with the need for a God that we will accept anyone who we think adjudicates across the board. This is how Nazism came to power.

Nietzsche calls slaves, not masters, brilliant and strategic. Hegel likewise has Master and Slave switch roles as a battle for recognition. The loser becomes the master slave. The slave becomes creative. The master falls into the slavish dependent position of having to be like others. Nietzsche wants those who are creative and talented but suppressed to turn that around.

Is there a difference between justice and vengeance? Another form of justice is the idea that goods are equally and fairly distributed. Nietzsche has mixed views about justice. He talks about herd morality and uses this term because Herd is considered to be the Christian flock of sheep that are difficult to distinguish but the good shepherd can recognize each individual one. What has happened to this notion of individual differences? Different individuals have different things to contribute to society. But people want to think of justice as an absolute, Nietzsche says it is better to think of justice as personal virtue. Forgiveness is important in this sense, but not as a strategem for getting even. If we have enough going on in our lives, then it becomes easy not to worry about what someone else has done to us.

Will to Power

Solomon and Higgins don’t think Will to Power is central to Nietzsche’s philosophy like other philosophers do. The Will to Power is systematically misleading. Nietzsche doesn’t mean will or power and he probably doesn’t mean “the” or “to”, either.

For Schopenhauer, the will is not individual, it is inside all of us. For Kant, it is individual, but it is external and lies behind our actions. We choose them - we will them. Nietzsche rejects both notions. He maintains Kant’s idea that the will is individualistic, but he rejects the idea of “the will”. He says it is a fiction. Will, in the Kantian sense, is nonsense. There is no agency or force behind “the will”. With Schopenhauer’s understanding, Nietzsche says the idea of a universal will is a metaphysical fiction. Will, for Nietzsche, is really more like motive.

Power is likewise problematic. It is often understood is political or military power. But the term for this in German is “reich”. Nietzsche uses the term “macht” which translates into English as the will to be alive, to feel vital and creative. In this sense, saying “the will” makes no sense. And “to” indicates a goal orientation that Nietzsche rejects. For Nietzsche, “The Will to Power” represents the present - not the future. It is never extinguished. No individual goal can satisfy it. It’s always a drive to enhance vitality and express oneself. The Will to Power cannot be predicted in advance. Any particular goal is a manifestation of The Will to Power. when one goal is fulfilled, another one takes it’s place.

Life consists of doing what you love. this isn’t imposed on you from the outside. It is discovered by trial and error. If you want to succeed, do what you love. The problem with goal setting is that if you set power as a goal, you make success far less likely. Likewise, to say “I want to be happy” is self-defeating.

Life is a process. It is ongoing. Life is exciting. It is dangerous. It involves taking risks. This thinking is in conflict with Darwin who talks about survival of the fittest. Goals should not be about survival. They should be about being a great “this” or a great “that”. It is the exercise of excellence.

Life is cruel. That’s the way ti is. To say we strive for pleasure and an avoidance of pain is likewise a faulty understanding. Creativity doesn’t offer a point of satisfaction. We are desiring creatures. To think in terms of complacency or contentment is to deny the kind of creatures we are.

The Ubermensch is an ideal. It is a full manifestation of “The Will to Power”.

Eternal Recurrence

The idea that time repeats itself over and over again is an ancient idea. Time as a wheel was an understanding in Zarathustra’s Persia; the Vedic Philosophy of India, Ancient Greece (through Heraclitus, the Stoics, and the Pythagoreans). But Christian Orthodoxy rejected it. The church insisted that history is linear. The atonement would be a linear event in time. The Church said that there is only one time and it is linear.

In his notes, Nietzsche plays with a proof for Eternal Recurrence. It goes something like this: Time is infinite. there is a finite number of energy packets (energy states) and consequently a finite number of sequences of energy packets. In the infinity of time, the number of sequences is going to have to repeat itself an infinite number of times.

This proof is obviously flawed and Nietzsche never intended to publish it. But that doesn’t mean Nietzsche doesn’t believe in Eternal recurrence.

If you were to take this thought seriously - that your life is going to be repeated an infinite number of times, then the weight it gives to this life and the moments of this life is incalculable compared to the Christian image that this life is but a blink and it is the next life, the eternal life, that gets all the weight.

Milan Kundera in his book The Unbearable Lightness of Being, played with Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence. If events repeat themselves an infinite number of time and consequently have a certain amount of weight because of this repetition, would we be able to tolerate the idea of that much weight on the way we live our lives instead of rationalizing our lives? The rationalization goes like this:

This will be over soon, then I’ll get what I want. If I just put up with the job now, I’ll get the promotion in the future. There is yet another world waiting for me that is more perfect than this one.

What if, instead, we took the moments of our lives seriously?

The Nietzschean alternative to Christian consciousness where we are always looking forward to the next life is this idea of eternal recurrence. We are so used to thinking of life as linear that it is difficult to understand the idea of time as circular in many cultures, current and ancient. The problem is that we can’t know the difference between on occurrence and a recurrence.

There is a deep prejudice against eternal recurrence in the Judeo-Christian world because of the belief in “free will” even though there is some evidence for it in physics. Nietzsche says that the idea of “free will” is often used as and excuse for blame. It leads to a general reinforcement of uglifying the world around you in order to feel good.

Nietzsche thinks our primary freedom is how we deal with internal drives. Freedom is to feel free to actively engage in your life. To deal with life in the present and fully be yourself. This is the only freedom we have and thankfully is the only one we really want because it is readily available to us all the time.

Nietzsche was clear that there is a sense of immortality for those who excel. Not as in an after life, but in the same sense Homer is immortal through his works.

Nietzsche gave meaning to his life by doing something that went beyond his life. Becoming who you are doesn’t end in death. Events after death deeply affect one’s flourishing. [Which makes me think of Solomon who is dead, but here I am watching a lecture by him as though he is alive.]

Nietzsche says “become who you are”. So who does Nietzsche want us to be? He won’t ofer concrete advice. Instead he says in The Gay Science: Give style to your character. Love who you are and what you have to work with and make something beautiful out of it.

The slave takes his flaws and turns them into weapons by re-describing them as good. Nietzsche is a sick lonely man. What do you do when you find yourself alienated from other people? Nietzsche gave shape to himself. The man with the mustache becomes irrelevant to the creation Nietzsche has become.

It’s an art of transfiguration. This is about taking your own traits and giving them a setting. Taking the resources you have and creating a masterpiece. Our endowments are not virtues until we figure out a creative way to use them.

The individual plays off other people and vice versa. If we becomes ourselves, we positively affect others.

Solomon and Higgins conclude the lecture with a quote from Nietzsche:

Whoever has really gazed down with an Asiatic and Super-Asiatic eye into the most world denying of all possible modes of thought (beyond good and evil) and no longer, like Buddha and Schopenhauer, under the spell of morality. Perhaps by this very act without really desiring it may have opened himself to this opposite ideal. The ideal of the most high spirited, energetic, world affirming man who has not only come to terms with and assimilated with what it is but wants to have it again as it was and is for all eternity - insatiably calling out, “Once more”.

More sketchy notes from the lecture by Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins on Nietzsche from The Teaching Company. (I may or may not proofread this tomorrow. Forgive any typos.)

Love Pity and Resentment

• There is a dichotomy that occurs between doing the right thing and doing what you want to do (self-interest). Nietzsche questions this dichotomy and says that very often that self-interest may be the right thing to do and the right thing to do may be self-interest. People do what it is they are motivated to do. When you practice benevolence you are often practicing a form of subtle revenge. Also, if someone is suffering and I feel pity for them, I’m not making them feel any better. By suffering with them, I’m not making them feel any better. I don’t reduce the suffering, I increase it. Pity for someone casts them into an inferior role. When you pity them, you no longer fear them. You are superior.
• How much can we actually empathize with another person? When we pity someone with insight and empathy we can understand that we share the world and are subject to the same plight. This is Schopenhauer’s stance. We realize we are all inferior and subject to the same plight. We are victims. Nietzsche says this is pathetic. To think we are all victims together is not a noble notion. He says the idea of compassion is a hypocrisy.
• Ressintement (Resentment) seems to be a justified and reasonable response to injustice but really it is nothing more than a sense of hopelessness.
• Guilt goes along with resentment. The major thrust of Christianity is to cure the problem of guilt. But Christianity created the problem of guilt; Christianity makes people feel guilty and then offers them a way out of the guilt. That’s hypocritical.

Love & Friendship

• Love is a longing for something far beyond oneself.
• Christian love doesn’t emphasize friendship and it de-sexualizes love. Nietzsche rejects this. Love always has a sexual element.
• Marriage is a long conversation.
• A friendship based on mutual enjoyment is much different than a friendship based on mutual advantage. Enjoying someone is much better than using someone for advantage. But even more important is friendship based on mutual admiration - one that makes us want to be a better person because of the relationship. Aristotle said this was the key to friendship.
• Friendship is also about mutual inspiration.

Women

• Nietzsche is often thought of as sexist. Some of his comments do seem very sexist but when understood in context, they aren’t as sexist as they first appear.
• Nietzsche says “Supposing truth is a woman, what then?” Truth in German is a feminine noun. People think this is a sexist comment but it isn’t. Nietzsche assumes women are psychologically complex and suggests by this aphorism that truth, like a woman is reticent to be known. It has to be wooed. (Women are resistant to male demands.) Like a woman for a desiring man, truth cannot ultimately be had.)
• In Beyond Good & Evil (pp. 231-239), he prefaces his comments about women as the comments being “only my truths”. He recognizes that women may not agree with his ideas about them. (That the female perspective is very likely different than his perspective.) He says that women want to debunk fantasies men have had about themselves and that this is not a persuasive approach. It’s giving control to consciousness what is better left to instinct. They are buying into a game men have been harmed by. Nietzsche tries to understand an alternative consciousness - that of women. In doing so, he upholds perspectivism. He doesn’t think women should be more like men. They have will of their own. They have a different perspective than men and this perspective is beneficial.

Top 10

This lecture provided a list of Nietzsche’s top 10 favorite philosophers and top 10 least favorite philosophers. I didn’t write them all down, but a few definitely caught my interest.

• Spinoza is on the list of favorites. Nietzsche recognized himself in Spinoza. They had much in common: Love of fate; the rejection of pity; naturalism; the attempt to understand the individual in the context of the whole
• Emerson is also on the list of favorites. (He’s the only American on either list.) Some of Nietzsche’s ideas have names that come from Emerson. Emerson talked about the Oversoul, Nietzsche’s Ubermensch (Overman) is a very similar idea. Emerson talked about the joyous science. Nietzsche uses the term “gay science”. Emerson talked about the “death of God and, like Nietzsche, he rejected orthodox theology for religious reasons.
• Kant is one of Nietzsche’s favorite and least favorite philosophers. He greatly admires Kant but he also criticizes him because he doesn’t propose something naturalistic. He proposes something dictated to us - even if it is reason doing the dictating.
• Martin Luther is one of Nietzsche’s least favorite philosophers. Much of Nietzsche’s thought shows clear Lutheran underpinnings. But Nietzsche sees depravity in Luther that he rejects.
• St. Paul is one of Nietzsche’s least favorite philosophers. He is an opportunist. A propogandist. Paul had no use for the life of the redeemer. He needed the crucifixion. Paul was resentful and had no use for life.
• Absurd rationality leads to the idea that life is worthless.

History

• Hegel said that spirit is this worldly. It’s a sort of cosmic consciousness. It’s isn’t otherworldly. Nietzsche agrees with this understanding of spirit.
• Hegel invented history. The question of whether truth changes through time were not questions actively raised until Hegel. He makes this question a central focus and this thesis is very close to Nietzsche’s. The truth of history is the truth of change. There are many truths and these truths can contradict each other. It isn’t a matter of which ones are right and which ones are wrong. It’s a matter of which are more developed, which are more naive, which are one sided, which take account of others.
• Hegel said Bacchanalian revel was the truth of philosophy in general. this is very similar to Nietzsche’s Dionysian metaphor. Philosophy is not a neat linear progression. It is not a matter of rational thinking. It is a passionate mess. It is complicated and unresolved.
• Philosophers conflict and they build on one another in a patterned way. (Not that there is a purpose behind it all - a teleology). Something emerging in a patterned way is what Nietzsche’s genealogy is all about.
• Darwin said that man is not the ultimate stage but a stepping stone to something else. Nietzsche was against the idea of “the survival of the fittest” because he said it had not been fully established. He says it is about a struggle for power. Nietzsche interprets Darwin as an English theologian - that we are at the end of evolution and man is the result. Social Darwinism says only the fittest societies survive. It is a moral philosophy. Those that perish were meant to perish. those that survive were meant to survive. It’s harsh doctrine and Nietzsche rejects it. Nietzsche’s had a far more artistic sense. For Nietzsche, it’s not just a matter of simple survival, it is a matter of creativity and imagination. Those who survive are the most creative. What comes out of natural selection in terms of society isn’t the best, it is the weakest; the most common; the most repulsive. The cockroach is most likely the most fit. But is this the best?
• Nietzsche’s Last Man is most likely the fittest in terms of natural selection. But if it is up to us to choose through our ability to create, is this what we want to choose? Do we want to be the ultimate couch potato living safely and comfortably. Or do we want to live a more risky, creative existence?
• What we call truth are those things that best lead to human survival. Evolution tells us why we believe what it is we believe not by justifying belief but by showing the place beliefs play in a flourishing life.
• History can be a form of the “other-worldly” because it is based on the past. But you can’t just go back to the past. You have to live in the here and now.
• History is essential for many things, but it is not an ends in itself.
• How do we find a perspective where history affirms life? Antiquarian History is a way of appreciating our past that doesn’t involve white washing. Greece was a culture steeped in cruelty. It’s not enough to just look at the nice parts but as it really was. Our history, ugly or beautiful, is part of what makes us what we are.
• The underlying value must always be life itself.

Nihilism

• Nihilism was originally understood as something akin to teenage rebellion. It was a rejection of tradition. Nietzsche rejected German Society so in this sense he could be called a nihilist. But he didn’t reject society altogether.
• Nietzsche defined nihilism as the highest values devaluing themselves. He’s talking about two values in particular: moral values and the values of the Judeo/Christian tradition. Religion and morality are his focus.
• Skepticism is healthy. Cynicism is an unhealthy denial of life. Trial and error is skepticism. Cynicism is being tired and weary - being so skeptical that you aren’t open to anything. It doesn’t allow for possibilities. It is closed rather than open.
• Nietzsche is against Nihilism. But he refuses to take “the truth” as something fixed, absolute and easily accessible. We create the truth through our experience and our living. He is a nihilist in terms of knowledge.
• If Christians are honest, it doesn’t take much to realize that God is not central to their conception of the real world. Realistically, the Christian God no longer played a major role. Our culture is no longer centered on this God - whether we uphold the idea or not.
• Are the values we once held valuable? Values change. Perhaps they were reasonable moves at one time but they are no longer valuable.
• Schopenhauer said asceticism was a way to make life good - renounce the will and maintain peace. Nietzsche rejects this. To fast for the sake of fasting or to sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice makes no sense to him. Is there a deeper motive for asceticism? Someone able to control impulses often feels superior and self-righteous.
• Nietzsche sees science as having been pursued as a sort of Goethean selling the soul to the devil. The desire for truth is a desire to align finite powers with the infinite. With this thinking, one becomes a representative of humanity rather than an individual. Nietzsche says the scientific world view is a shadow of God that still lingers with us. It’s important not to transpose habits of the past to a scientific world view. We need to resuscitate our powers and not transfer them to the Christian God or some dream of nature we know nothing about.

I posted my notes on Lecture 12 yesterday from the lecture by Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins on Nietzsche from The Teaching Company. The notes were fresh on my mind so I took the most notes on that lecture because it was primarily new to me. The earlier lectures were primarily review, but I did jot down some notes from lectures 1-11 for future reference…

• Nietzsche very often makes references to images Luther used.
• I thought this was very cool! Nietzsche thought Christianity had served an important historical function for people. In the passage about the madman, it’s not people who believe in God who the madman assaults. The madman assaults those who think they can eliminate the need God once filled in society. By simply focusing on science they can ignore the needs of humanity for something like myth. Nietzsche thinks this is ungrateful. The way to show gratitude is to think beyond the historical function.
• Nietzsche says we shouldn’t throw out our desires. What we should throw out is the idea that we can reach perfect contentment and that the attainment of perfect satisfaction is even desirable.
• Nietzsche is far more optimistic that Schopenhauer. Life involves the negative components, but we can become something that takes joy in.
• The meaning of life is not in reason, rationalism, or theology. It’s to be found in the passions.
• Camel stage - treats tradition with reverence. Says “yes” to it. Lion stage - evaluates tradition and asserts individuality by challenging what has been handed down. Say “no” to tradition. We have to fully make our way through the camel stage before the lion stage makes sense. The Child stage is a new affirmation of life. It is boundless energy for what is new. Experimentation. Creative energy - full creative response and full vitality.
• The Ubermensch is an idea. It is a way of being that involves risk taking. This is contrasted with the Last Man which seeks nothing but comfort - the ultimate couch potato.

Rationality, Romanticism, Consciousness

• Rationality has several meanings: 1) thinking ability, to reflect; 2) mathematics; 3) instrumental reasoning, to think; 4) having the right goals (Aristotle); 5) reason is the royal road to truth (modern understanding/Enlightenment)
• Nietzsche, like Aristotle, thinks reason involves having the right goals. He says that reason becomes a tyrant when it is thought of as the royal road to truth (contra-Kant).
• Kant preached a faith in reason and even brought religion into the realm of reason. Nietzsche felt this idea that reason is universal was a pretension. While France and Britain were moving toward the age of reason, Germany was involved in Romanaticism which puts its faith in the passions and not in reason. Nietzsche saw much wrong with Romanticism, too. He said it was a pretense of passions.
• Nietzsche says we are animals motivated by drives and instincts. We are natural, biological beings. The meaning of life is to be found in life itself. Not in the upper realms of reason. Like Freud, Nietzsche understood that what drives us are very often things we are not conscious of.
• Nietzsche asked where does consciousness come from? And he comes up with a theory: It developed because of the need for communication. Consciousness was created in our interactions with others (rather than the traditional view that consciousness was somehow already in the mind). If you live alone, consciousness becomes superfluous. We have cultured, sophisticated, individual instincts.
• Thinking, for Nietzsche, can be a sort of disease. It can be dangerous because it blinds us to our creativity and uniqueness. Therefore consciousness is dangerous. BUT!! It’s an important stage in our evolution. When a faculty is new (like the advent of language/consciousness), it is always dangerous at first. But as it matures, we learn to make better use of it.
• Nietzsche was very interested in how language (the new faculty which gave rise to consciousness) expresses the truth.
• Nietzsche was very critical of the romantics of his time. He said they pretended passion. He said that romanticism is a mask; an act. The reality is that passion contains a quantum of reason and reason contains quantum passion. Both reason and passion contain an amount of both the Apollonian (reason) and the Dionysian (passion).
• Nietzsche uses aphorisms because he doesn’t want followers. He knows the reader won’t understand the whole picture by reading a single aphorism so it will take some work to understand. An active readership achieved through a sort of companionship with Nietzsche.
• Most of philosophy is centered on formal deductive reasoning. Not Nietzsche. Some would say he doesn’t do philosophy at all. He uses a sequence of fallacies; aphorisms, rhetoric, literature and ad hominem arguments. He wants to stimulate our emotional experience.
• Sophistry is an appeal to emotions and understands argument as an art form because the use of strict rational argument convinces no one. Philosophy is a sort of rhetoric. Socrates was a great rhetoritician. This is what made him so powerful even though his arguments would be readily dismissed in institutions today. So it is no dis-service to say that Nietzsche is doing rhetoric rather than logic.

Truth

• Nietzsche says there is no truth, there is only interpretations. But he praises truthfulness. This idea is not antagonistic toward science. Science is experimental and Nietzsche is willing to allow any hypothesis which says “let’s try it”. Experimenting with ideas and philosophical view points is kindred with science. Nietzsche says it isn’t good enough to say God created it this way.
• Science is non-dogmatic. Most beliefs people have held turn out to be false eventually. So why think current theories are the truth? Theories are always tentative. Philosophy should be undogmatic like science. But Niezsche also sometimes opposes science. This opposition is based on the aesthetic perspective. The aesthetic view has ways of seeing that are non-scientific. If science and aesthetics are opposed, Nietzsche says that aesthetics always get the upper hand. If it doesn’t, science easily becomes dogmatic. And when it does, it loses it’s virtue.
• Nietzsche asks “Why is truth important? Why must we have truth at any cost?” Individual lives are ruined. People have been excommunicated for the truth. The truth has upset entire civilizations (Freud). Why are we willing to pay the cost?
• Nietzsche comes up with several reasons. Truth isn’t necessarily pursued for itself. It is very often pursued for other goals. The main motivation for searching for truth is sometimes status. Status is the primary objective, not truth. Truth is a means to an end, not the end in itself. “The truth shall set you free.” Truth as a means to an end is based on the idea that truth is rock hard and immovable. If you get the truth, you gain power because claiming to have the truth puts you in a privileged position.
• But Nietzsche says there is no way of getting to the bottom of things. All we have is our experience which is an interpretation based on other interpretations. It’s all experience and experience is always an interpretation of something else.
• Appearances depend on being some thing of which there are appearances. There is a gap between the experience and appearances on the one hand and what they are experiences and appearances of on the other hand. There is no way of getting around or behind the appearances and experiences to see reality itself. This is something Nietzsche struggles with. Traditional philosophy, science ancient times, makes a distinction between reality on the one hand and appearances on the other. Nietzsche thinks this is a bogus distinction. There is only the world of our experience and it doesn’t make sense to talk about anything else.
• But what do we say about our experience? Kant talked about “world in itself” which is the world as God might see it. Kant admitted that we can’t have a conception of “the world in itself”. But Nietzsche says there is no such thing as “a world in itself”. There is no God’s eye view. Even if there were a God, this God would have to see it from a god’s perspective which remains a perspective.
• What is truth from once perspective is not the truth from another perspective. But this doesn’t mean that one truth need exclude the other.
• Nietzsche holds what is now called “perspectivism”. There are lots of different viewpoints we can take on things. This does not rule out argument, debate or pursuit itself - just the understanding that it must always be perceptualized. Science, for instance, is a difinitive perspective.
• Perspectivism is not the same as relativism why says that every view is as good as any other. But it is always a matter of not taking one position and digging in. Philosophy is about shifting perspectives.
• Where is the truth? It doesn’t lie behind appearances. Philosophical truth is getting a sense of how all the perspectives tie together. You have to be able to entertain different truths at the same time.
• Nietzsche was a quasi follower of Darwin. The Darwinian notion of fitness as a pragmatic theory of truth fits with Nietzsche’s theories. Imagine a species of creatures who have built into their brains that the future will be unlike the past. If you see lightening strike a tall tree, you rush under the tree during the next storm expecting that lightening won’t strike in the same place twice twice (or having struck this tree it will strike elsewhere next time). It’s easy to see how such a species would be short lived. A species that developed and inductive mind and learns by experience is much more likely to survive and flourish.
• What are our truths? They are the indispensible errors of mankind. They are the truths without which we as a species would not survive. To ask if these truths exist apart from reality is nonsensical.

I’ve been watching the lecture by Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins on Nietzsche from The Teaching Company. (It’s currently on sale.) I’ve made my way through the first twelve lectures so far. I didn’t take many notes on the first 9 lectures or so because they were mostly a rehash of what I’ve already written about. But I did end up taking far more copious notes on lectures 10 through 12. These are my notes from lecture 12. I’ll have to back up and provide earlier notes later, but this lecture was of particular interest to me.

I find some of the concepts within Existentialism interesting although I must admit my main interest as far as Existentialism goes are people who aren’t necessarily existentialists - Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. The main thing that distinguishes Nietzsche from the existentialists is that he rejects the existential notion of freedom. Sartre’s understanding of freedom is that it is entirely up to us what it is we become. It’s almost as though we are given a blank slate and can write upon it (besides where we were born, how old we are, etc.) whatever it is we choose to write upon it.

This is not how Nietzsche understands freedom. Nietzsche’s idea of freedom can be summarized in one phrase: “Become who you are”. This is not the same thing as the meaningless comment parents often tell their children - “Be who you are”. Being who you are suggests an unchanging event. Becoming suggests something in process. We are born with talents, abilities and potentialities. But we are rarely thrown into circumstances that cultivate these abilities. It is up to us to cultivate them.

In England and France, a negative conception of freedom, Laissez Faire, had become popular. To be left alone was freedom. But in Germany, the idea of freedom was a positive notion - “freedom to”. Freedom to have a career, freedom to participate, etc.

Nietzsche had a totally different idea of freedom. He said freedom was to become who one is. He believed the idea of freedom as freedom from constraint was a fantasy - especially a fantasy of the oppressed. Great art and great things in general are not freedom from constraint. It’s the limits which define greatness and make for creativity. (For instance, the creativity that emerges through Haiku or the Japanese art form that requires a single brush stroke. When the paintbrush is lifted from the page, the drawing is finished.)

We are constrained by culture, biology circumstances of history, etc. For Nietzsche, freedom could only be understood within these constraints. He summarized freedom as “freedom to create”.

Nietzsche is an individualist, but not in the modern sense which emerged in the 12th century.  The 12th century is when the notion of individual first became prominent. The idea of the individual found even more prominence through the Enlightenment and Romanticism. What gets left out of this notion is family, community, etc.  But Nietzsche’s idea that freedom is an individual’s ability to create is not the same as an individuals ability to choose. There are always constraints and determinants on our behavior (something Sartre completely denies).

Nietzsche was a biological determinist. He said that often what appears to be choices aren’t choices at all. But we can “become who we are”. We have to spend our lives creating ourselves - not on a blank canvas saying anything goes - but within the limitations and restrictions of our individual circumstances. It’s similar to the idea of self-realization if you can drop the new-age baggage that goes along with that idea. We are born into a tradition, a culture, etc. that defines are limits.

Nietzsche would not agree with Sartre that it is our choice who it is we become. But he does say that there are many choices along the way that are already in accordance with a shape that has been given to us, from the most part, from birth. In order to become who it is we are, we have to trust our instinct. We are much more in tune with the person we can become through instinct than we are through reason. This is because reason is very often based on compliance with the culture.

We each have our own idea, our own character, our own destiny to fill out. Nietzsche rejects universal will. He asks, “Do we have a will”? Do we decide to do something or is it done through us? How much do we choose to do and how much is an expression of our natures?

This makes agency a subtle problem for Nietzsche. What makes us think we are the agents of our own actions?  Take thinking, for instance. Why are we so sure we are thinkers? Nietzsche says a thought comes when it will, not when “I” will. Nietzsche therefore thinks we overemphasize agency, freedom and choice. There is a sort of fate and it is important that we love our fate (amor fati). But we can and will be something if we work hard enough to cultivate it.

So while he definitely rejects the existentialist notion of freedom, he emphasizes what all existentialists emphasize - the imporance of individual existence and seeing to it that we take responsibility for who it is we are.

It seems true to me that we are born with a certain conditioning that limits our choice to an extent. We are interconnected beings. We don’t live in a vacuum.

I’ve been listening to bits and pieces of Wapnick’s lecture on Nietzsche & ACIM the past few months and finally listened to all of it on a road trip to Dallas a few weeks ago.

He compares Nietzsche’s three metamorphosis with ACIM’s stages of the Development of Trust (Manual for Teachers, Chapter 4) and other teachings within ACIM. It’s very interesting. I’m not always sure I agree with how he has interpreted Nietzsche’s stage (especially the Child stage), but for the most part, his understanding works with my own.

Wapnick claims ACIM is an atheism. He says that the Jesus of ACIM is likewise an atheist because any God we could possibly conceive of doesn’t exist. God is beyond any image or idea we could possibly have. That, of course, works for me

Wapnick says that ACIM primarily discusses Nietzsche’s Lion stage and does not discuss Nietzsche’s Camel stage because it assumes we have already made it through that stage. ACIM assumes we have successfully gone through the dutiful stage so have fully recognized ourselves as an ego. We’ve said “yes” to the world and we now realize the world is a desert. We cannot transcend what it is we haven’t accepted so if we haven’t fully accepted our ego, then any attempt to study ACIM will be disastrous. A certain psychological maturity must be reached before we try and undertake ACIM teaching, otherwise, we’ll forever be claiming “the world doesn’t exist” as a means to deny the ego rather than to accept it.

I really appreciate this because I remember going to ACIM study groups and being appalled by what several of the members were claiming. There was a standard question that was frequently asked - if you stand in front of an 18 wheeler and believe you won’t get run over, does that mean you won’t get run over? Several said this was true. Others said that it wasn’t. But the bigger question is this: Why ask such questions in the first place? That’s psychotic and proof you haven’t yet made it through the Camel stage! We have a physical body that is subject to physical laws. What ACIM teaches is not a way to make our physical body transcend the physical laws. It teaches us a way to change our thoughts about ourselves. It’s psychologically based, not physically based. There is a mind/body connection so when we change our mind, we very often change our attitudes toward our body, too which can change our physical circumstances. But to want to somehow make our bodies immune to physical laws is based on fear, not acceptance or love. It’s to be stuck in the Camel stage.

We must first say “yes” to the world. The Camel stage is the “yay-saying” stage. It is only once we have been somewhat successful in the world and somewhat pyschologically balanced that we can begin to say “no” to the world. That’s the lion stage. The “nay-saying” stage”. We come to realize that everything that the world told us was true was actually false. But we can’t understand this if we never accepted it in the first place. We have to fully go through the Camel stage first otherwise we will be forever stuck in the Camel stage without realizing it.

The lion lives in the desert. Nothing physical has changed, what has changed is our understanding. Psychologically, the world is now a desert. Everything that once had meaning for us no longer holds that meaning. We must slay the dragon. We think the dragon is a treasure because it has a thousand golden scales that distract us. So we begin to slay those scales one by one and realize, the thousand scales are only one. And when we realize this, there is no need to slay the one scale because we recognize the illusion. When Zorathustra reached this stage, he sang and he danced. That’s the appropriate response. We can’t slay the ego because it doesn’t exist. We have to see it for what it is so that we can transcend it.

Wapnick equates the Child stage with Enlightenment (I guess). He kept saying that Nietzsche never got “there”, but I’m not sure where “there” is supposed to be. I don’t think Nietzsche saw the Child stage as an end destination and this is what I liked so much about Nietzsche’s three metamorphosis. It’s a never ending cycle. We go through the camel stage, we slay the dragon, we return to the innocence of a child, and the cycle continues over again. There is no end destination. No place to arrive. No beginning or end.

To me, that is always the problem with spirituality - that we go through all of this in order to achieve something like enlightenment. In Buddhism, the desire to be enlightened is egoic and is yet another scale that must be slain. To do in order to get misses the point.

There is something kind of tricky about individuality that Nietzsche, ACIM and Buddhism all point to. When you hear Wapnick talk about Nietzsche, it sounds almost as though he is saying give up your individuality. But Nietzsche (as all Existentialism) is pro-individuality. We Americans tend to think of ourselves as individualists and we are in a sense in that we demand and obtain what we want because we think we are entitled. But we are still heavily driven by herd mentality. Our public schools are primarily geared to teaching our children to become active consumers and producers which makes marketing extremely effective in the U.S. Creative individuals are very often outcasts. They exist on the fringe of society unless they can figure out a way to successfully mass produce their creativity to mainstream America. And of course, as soon as it is mass produced, it’s part of the herd mentality and no longer creative in the individualistic sense.

ACIM, Buddhism and Nietzsche all say we need to get to a point where we can see the world for what it is - basically a narcissistic hall of mirrors driven by the ego. But until we are able to fully recognize ourselves as individuals (which requires being able to see the other as truly “other”); until we are able to fully appreciate our “God given” talents and personal creative abilities, we’ll have difficulty even recognizing that we have an ego. So while it seems ACIM and Buddhism suggest that we get rid of our individuality in favor of some sort of universal, that is not what either is saying at all.

It is true that in Buddhism, there is no indivisible thing. We can only ever truly know ourselves through others. As Robert Thurman says, if there was an individual that was the real you, not only would you not be individualistic, you wouldn’t even be there because in order to be there you have to be related. But if there was a part of you that was non-relational, then you couldn’t relate to other individuals. You couldn’t exist. Only because you are infinitely divisible are you nothing more than your infinite connections. We are therefore entirely responsible for our part of the interconnectedness. Therefore, every individual is the supreme purpose of the life of the whole. In that way the whole flourishes individual by individual. This flourishing of the whole individual by individual is what Nietzsche is talking about!

What individual talents do we have to offer the whole? What projects bring us the most joy? The stuff of the world isn’t what brings us joy, it’s our passionate engagement in the world that brings us joy. But passionate engagement is very difficult to come by if we are driven by nothing more than egoic desire.

Thomas Jefferson wrote of future U.S. generations: “Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction.”

Freedom isn’t the ability to do whatever it is we want to do or buy what it is we want to buy. That’s a belief in entitlement and has nothing to do with freedom at all. As Goethe said, “None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.”

I’ve been simultaneously listening to Solomon’s lectures on Nietzsche and one thing that really struck me was the idea of “will”. Will to power is not about having power over others, it’s about having the courage to live an authentic life. Really, that is what ACIM is saying when it says we need to let go of the ego so we can accept the will of God’s as our own. The values of the world drive us to be something that we are not because we conform to expectations - our own and others. We aren’t open to possibility or to who it is we truly are because that’s a scary and vulnerable proposition. We’re afraid of being punished through solitude. But Nietzsche says it is important to get over our fear of solitude so that we can live a passionate life. And the way to live a passionate life is to be open to our talents and what moves us as individuals rather than what is expected of us socially.

Just a few other thoughts…

Nietzsche’s idea about romantic love is very similar to that of ACIM. He wants us to look at what motivates us. And if you look at romantic love, it’s all about asserting our power over another. It’s very selfish. It isn’t love. ACIM calls it a special relationship as opposed to a holy relationship.

Nietzsche wanted to get rid of guilt and sin. Guilt and sin are metaphysical. So is the concept of evil which ties them together. It’s not just a function of human projection. Guilt and sin are perceived as essential features of the world. Guilt, in particular, is understood as an acquired property of the soul. It’s a metaphysical blemish. Take this with the idea of Original Sin and what it says is that we all have blemished souls. Nietzsche doesn’t think we are perfect, but he says we should not accept the idea that we are flawed from the outset. The idea that we are guilty in some sort of fundamental way is something he totally rejects. He has the same attitude toward sin. To me, this is likewise very ACIM. Nietzsche rejects the notion of evil as it is attached to metaphysics, theology or as a set of absolute values.

A Passion for Wisdom: A Very Brief History of Philosophy is another excellent overview of Philosophy from Solomon (and also his wife Kathleen Higgins).

I’m not going to summarize this book - there was far too much information. But I do have to mention a few things I found to be very interesting. The book starts with Abraham, makes its way through Thales who is often considered to be the first Greek philosopher, and ends with Martin Luther King, Jr. Well, really it ends with Postmodernism which claims Philosophy is now obsolete, but Martin Luther King, Jr. is the last person listed on the time-line. It covers all the continents, too and it’s a short little book.

What’s interesting is to see how all of these ideas fit together. We all stand on the shoulders of our ancestors - the ideas don’t just come out of the blue. They develop.

A few points of interest:

• Peter Abelard (1079-1142) was the first to use the term theology in the modern sense. It refers to a rational investigation of the mysteries of religion.
• John Calvin (1509-1564) took the idea of fallen man and Original sin one step further and came up with the doctrine of predestination which became standard within Protestantism. Only those God chose, the elect, would be saved. Election couldn’t be earned. But despite the Protestant de-emphasis of human efforts and good works, Protestants became obsessed with work. Max Weber (1864-1920) argued that the harsh Christian philosophy o Calvinism condemned millions of people to unresolvable anxiety. They felt it necessary to “prove” their worth in this life, working feverishly and living ascetically. No amount of success could quash the anxiety but one could at least make a lot of money which offered a nice distraction from the anxiety. Weber’s most famous thesis is that capitalism and the very structure of modern Western society is the product of Protestantism. [I most definitely grew up with that Protestant work ethic. When I once dared to mention that happiness was the purpose of life, I was quickly put in my place and told in no uncertain terms that it is work that is the purpose of life.]
• Descartes created a problem that troubles scientists and philosophers to this day. It’s called “Cartesian dualism” and refers to the thesis that the mind and the body are separate substances. However faulty and problematic, this dualism was the product of many centuries of intellectual development and the progress of science. At the time it came about, it created a new-found respect for individual autonony. Religion was in the way of science until this idea came about and this provided a way for science to proceed unhampered by religion because it likewise provided a way for religion to not be threatened by science. At that particular time in history because of the authority of the church and the threat of science, it was much more important to get the mind and body apart than it was to get them together. [But as Mindwalk says, Descartes was wonderful because he provided something very necessary in his day, but it's time we got over our Cartesian mechanized world view. It no longer serves us.]
• Feminist philosophy challenges the entire Western tradition. While claiming to be universal and all-inclusive, philosophy has not even included or taken account of the woman next door. It certainly has not asked whether she sees things differently or whether she would ask the same questions in the same way as male philosophers. Thus one of the most radical changes that feminism has provoked in contemporary philosophy is the centrality of the notion of a personal “standpoint” - what Nietzsche called a “perspective”. Different people, in different positions, might “see” the world very differently. Thus, a plurality of perspectives might replace the competing demands for a singular “objective”. [I've often wondered about this. How often do you learn about theology or philosophy from the perspective of a female? I think it is very likely that we'd offer an important alternate perspective.]
• Solomon & Higgins conclude: Philosophy has always been representative of what is most human about us. Perhaps what we need is not more sophistication but more openness. We need to be not more clever, but, rather, better listeners. What philosophy is, after all, is a thoughtful openness to the world, a passion for wisdom.

Spirituality for the Skeptic is an interesting little book by Robert Solomon defending what he calls a naturalistic spirituality (spirituality for the atheist). I took lots and lots of notes for future reference…

Naturalized spirituality is the thoughtful love of life and is based on these presumptions:

1. the idea that spirituality has a lot to do with thoughtfulness;
2. that spirituality is not at odds with science but in cahoots with it;
3. that spirituality is by no means limited to religion much less sectarian, authoritarian religion.

Solomon grew up with a nominal affiliation to Judaism in a Protestant neighborhood so always saw religion as a hateful threat. But over the years, he became increasingly frustrated that the notion of spirituality had been hijacked by organized religion, New Age eccentrics and divisive sectarian. Instead of being thoughtful, it had become associated with something mindless. For Solomon, spirituality is what philosophy (the love of wisdom) is all about. If spirituality means anything at all, it means thoughtfulness. The self is a process and spirituality is the process of transforming the self, not an abandonment of the self.

Spirit is social. It represents our sense of participation and membership in a humanity and world much larger than our individual selves. The spiritual world is “here”. We are Spirit. The spirit is in us when we have drunk our lives to the fullest. Spirituality is all-embracing, including much (if not all) of Nature and the natural world. It is the passionate sense of self-awareness in which the very distinction between selfishness and selflessness disappears. Spirituality and wisdom are one and the same. (”Science is the organization of knowledge, but wisdom is the organization of life.” Kant)

The meaning of life is life itself. Life’s purpose is not the pursuit of some further life. Nor is life the meaningless struggle for survival and existence lamented by particularly sourpuss Darwinians and pessimists like Arthur Schopenhauer. For Nietzsche, the larger purpose was the transcendence (self-overcoming) of the individual in the realization of higher goals and ideals. Rather than thinking in terms of transcending life, think in terms of transcending ourselves in life. Life is an ongoing work of art.

Without spirituality, philosophy is nothing but tantalizing puzzles alienated from its larger audience and devoid of personal feeling. Philosophy, like theology, needs to regain some of the personal charm of myth and mythology.

Spirituality is neither rational nor emotional but both at once, both Apollonian and Dionysian (as Nietzsche puts it). Spirituality is living beyond oneself, discovering a larger self or the “no self”. What opposes spirituality is not naturalism or secularism. It is petty egoism, vanity and vulgarity. Philosophy becomes spirituality when it learns how to listen.

Reverence, trust and love are the very essence of spirituality. To be awe-struck is to be paralyzed. To be reverent is to be moved to action. Reverence is not an awareness of one’s insignificance. It is the contrary. To be responsible is to be significant. The opposite of reverence is hubris. Reverence is a kind of confidence in our limited powers and our ability to use them wisely.

The guiding metaphor of Nietzsche’s spirituality is overflowing. The more one has to struggle to give, the less virtuous one is. Nietzsche, like Aristotle, insists that the performance of virtues is always pleasurable. Too often we think of forgiveness as a sort of personal sacrifice. But for Nietzsche, forgiveness is likewise a sort of overflowing. It’s not a sacrifice at all.

If our trust is based on entitlement, it isn’t trust at all. The opposite of trust is distrust and alienation. Trust is a way of being in the world. It is a stance to conceive of the world as trustworthy. Trust includes the acceptance of a lack of control and the acceptance of one’s own vulnerability. (It is well-confirmed in the social science literature that people who have a more accurate estimate of the likelihood of failure and betrayal do far worse than people who are overly optimistic.)

Authentic trust is a wizened confidence in the world and one’s role in it. It is not simply trust or naive trust that has been unchallenged or untested. And it is not stubborn trust. It is trust that has been reflected upon - distrust held in balance. To trust the world is to take responsibility for one’s role and actions, in part by acknowledging that the outcome is never wholly in one’s hands. Trust is something we do and for which we must take responsibility. Authentic trust is primarily concerned with the integrity of relationship, not with personal advantage.

Resentment reduces the world to our own impotence. This is the problem with Camus’ Sisyphus who slides from happy existentialism to shaking his fists at the gods. Nietzsche says however clever resentment may be (and there is no emotion more clever), from the point of view of living well, it is a stupid emotion. Forgiveness is the way beyond resentment. But to forgive thinking God will take care of the punishment is not forgiveness. That is doubly not to forgive. It’s like hiring a hit man to keep your own hands clean. Forgiveness is instrumental for spirituality. What we forgive is the fact that the world did not meet with our expectations. This was where Camus went wrong with Sisyphus. He had an unforgiving view of the world. To say, “I forgive you, world” is a surprisingly effective ritual.

Forgiving is not the same as forgetting. Forgetting involves denial. Forgiving is about putting the betrayal behind us but not out of mind. We forgive the world for the misfortunes it inevitably inflicts upon us. Spirituality is about moving on, not forgetting.

Emotions constitute the framework (or frameworks) of rationality itself. What is rational is what fits best into our emotional world. Rationality is not the defining structure of human experience, and emotions are not just reactions. Rationality is the product not only of thought but of caring, and although the emotions undoubtedly have an evolutionary history that precedes the arrival of the human species by hundreds of millions of years, they evolved not only along with but inseperably from the evolution of reason and rationality.

Aesthetic attitudes are essential to science at its best. Scientific experiments and mathematical formulas are celebrated as elegant and even beautiful. A conception of science that rejects such values as unscientific opposes itself to spirituality. This is not only contrary to the view of the very best scientists, but cold, corrupt, and self-defeating. But any form of spirituality that rejects science (but not scientism) is an impoverished quest.

Solomon wants to get away from Camus’ and Unamuno’s opposition of philosophy/reason with spirituality/faith and the mock-heroic stance of rebellion that is associated with this forced opposition. He agrees with Unamuno’s line on personal responsibility and the importance of personal commitment. We make meaning by way of our commitments. This suggests that by refusing to make such commitments we can avoid tragedy. But Solomon says the opposite is the case. It is by making meaning in life that we free ourselves from the meaninglessness of suffering. Tragedy is real and undeniable. Our lives are not entirely in our hands. Unamano is right, passion can never escape or eclipse our reason, but not for the reason he supposes. There is no passion without rationality. Camus is right, too. There is no viable alternative to the absurd confrontation between our rational, demanding minds and an indifferent universe. But confrontation can be turned into acceptance. We are even capable of embracing the opposition. Spirituality begins with that acceptance.

We tend to think we are entitled, but none of us is entitled to anything. We’re not even entitled to happiness (which is not to say happiness is not worth having - even the Declaration of Independence only says we are entitled to the pursuit of happiness, not happiness itself). That we expect fair play is what creates the problem of evil. This doesn’t require a belief in God or an after life. It’s the problem of evil that created Camus’ idea of “the Absurd” and Camus was an atheist. There is a problem of evil only for those who expect the world to be good.

In Western culture, blaming the victim is a long-standing, popular metaphysical and theological doctrine based on the idea of free will. It is important that we take responsibility for our own flaws and failures, but it is medieval to blame the victim. An example is illness - we have a medieval tendency to interpret all illness as a sign, a punishment or a payback. (The person didn’t eat right, was too fat, was living an indecent lifestyle, etc.) But sometimes people just get sick. It isn’t necessarily a punishment. The same is true of tragedy. Sometimes bad things just happen. Anyone who reduces tragedy to blame lacks wisdom.

It’s important that we don’t deny tragedy, but embrace it as an essential part of the life we love and for which we should be grateful. Spirituality at its best is a combination of gratitude and humor, a dash of that mock-heroic Camusian confrontation with the Absurd, and a passionate engagement with the details and the people in our lives. Suffering has meaning because life has meaning. We have no right to demand any more than this from the world.

Belief and acceptance of fate has to do with embracing a larger narrative in which one’s actions and fortunes have meaning and make sense of one’s life. Part of that meaning and making sense, an essential aspect of that acceptance, is our willingness to feel and show gratitude. Whenever we ask “Why me?” we should go one step further and ask, “Why is there a me at all?” We should feel gratitude for, if nothing else, life itself.

Death is not the ultimate tragedy. Nietzsche said the great virtue of the Greeks was their fatalistic acceptance of death and suffering as the ground of human existence. It was this acceptance that made him proclaim the Greeks were beautiful. (Those before Socrates and Plato, of course.) The belief in an afterlife, any afterlife, is a denial of death. Even if there is an afterlife, to wonder “What happens after death?” is no substitute for “What is death and how should I think about it?” To think that life after death answers our questions of death is just a denial of death, whatever it is that happens after death.

Death is not the focal point of our existence. We often hear that death is nothing because when we die, we no longer have sensual experience. But this is problematic because if we view life as suffering and pain, then death becomes a sought after release from life which is life. To think of death as nothing implies that life is nothing, too. The real question is this: “What is my death to me?” Ultimately, the meaning of death comes down to the meaning of life.

We fear death because it brings an end to our lives. But we can appreciate death insofar as we identify with the people around us, with our culture, with humanity and with life. To the extent to which we can do so, death is not the end at all so long as we do not cheapen our spirituality with the idea that as individuals we will in the end cheat death and gain some sort of eternal personal life.

The most important reason to “believe” in the soul is not the possibility of life continuing after death but rather the posibility of an essential transformation of the self during life. The self that is too caught up in its personal ambitions and interests isn’t the real self. It’s a deluded self - one that isn’t at peace with itself. It’s a mistake to say that this self should be sacrificed or replaced with another self. But it can be transformed through discipline and spirituality.

I found Camus & Sartre: The Story of the Friendship and the Quarrel that Ended It at the HalfPrice Bookstore. Couldn’t even believe it. I had wanted to read it since I first started researching Sartre and Camus but it wasn’t available through our library and was quite expensive so I decided to forgo it (especially since there are so many other books I’ve read that I haven’t gotten to yet.) Glad I found it because it was quite helpful.

Doing a decent summary of the book would be far too time consuming because it involves a lot of history. So here is a quick and dirty summary…

Camus and Sartre were great friends. They were both becoming famous about the same time and shared philosophical and literary interests. There were definitely differences, but nothing friendship threatening. For the most part, they were able to laugh with each other about them. With the occupation of France, Camus swung into action and joined the Resistance movement. He took huge personal risks. Sartre admired this in Camus and tried to do the same but couldn’t quite bring himself to do so. It took him several years to work through his philosophy before he could figure out how to act on it.

Both he and Camus became involved with the Communist party because it seemed to be the only means of supporting the working class. But Camus became disillusioned early on because of it’s violent nature and decided that he did not want to be a part of a system that used violence as a means of control. Sartre, on the other hand, became a spokesman for the Communist party saying that Camus no longer knew what it iwas he stood for. Passivism wasn’t a stance.

The problem was the Cold War. It drew a line in the sand and people had to choose - are you Communist anti-Communist. Camus and Sartre had both desperately attempted to come up with a third option. But there was no room for that third option at that time so the choice was either/or. Camus chose anti-Communism (although at one point he spoke harshly against anti-Communism) and Sartre chose Communism.

But Sartre wasn’t actually a Communist and Camus wasn’t actually an anti-Communist, either although those were the sides they chose. What it boiled down to was that Camus didn’t want to get his hands dirty and Sartre did. Camus had been born into a working class family in Algiers and already felt that his hands were dirty. He wanted to do the humane thing and could no longer condone violence. Sartre had been born into a well-to-do bourgeoisie family. What Sartre wanted to do was “come down” and be a spokesman for the working class. He felt the only way he could do this was through Communism because anti-Communism wasn’t speaking for the working class.

The division began after Camus published The Rebel which was his bomb dropped on Communism, linking it with violence and pointing it at Sartre. Many took the book to say that if Camus was right, Sartre was wrong. Camus expected to see Sartre’s review in Sartre’s Magazine but it didn’t come for months. When it finally did come, the review wasn’t by Sartre, it was by one of Sartre’s assistants and it slammed Camus’ book. This was insulting to Camus (because of the condemning review but primarily because it was not Sartre who reviewed the book.) Sartre replied to Camus through his newspaper and a very public quarrel was on with each man representing one side of the two sides of the Cold War division. Infact, they each became the main spokepersons for anti-Communism and Communism in France.

By keeping his hands clean, Camus’ completely lost sight of the Algerian struggles even though he became a spokesperson for Algerian issues. He was more hindrance than help. By wanting to get his hands dirty, Sartre got in touch with the people he wanted to get in touch with, but failed to notice the horrors that were being committed in the name of Communism.

It is very likely that without the divisive nature of the Cold War, Camus and Sartre would have remained friends despite their differences. But the world had moved into “either/or” thinking and it didn’t allow for dialogue. It demanded a militant stance. Aronson contends we are still living with that “either/or” thinking from the Cold War and that it is time we find a way out of it.

Both Camus and Sartre were ultimately in bad faith. Both were concerned ultimately with France - even Camus, who claimed to be so interested in Algiers, always made France the audience for his books. (He wrote to be read in France, not in Algiers.)

Aronson writes: “The deepest issues motivating and dividing Camus and Sartre are still with us…the time is ripe for a new type of political intellectual who might bring together each man’s strengths and avoid each man’s weaknesses. We can imagine someone speaking the truth at all times, and opposing oppression everywhere, uniting each man’s characteristic power of insight under a single moral standard. Such an intellectual would illuminate today’s systemic violence while accepting the challenge of mounting an effective struggle against it without creating new evils.” Aronson admits this might be like asking for an angel (as Sartre once said). “Angels do not exist, but they can be a yardstick for human beings.”

These are notes from Solomon’s last lecture from No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life.

Is Existentialism just a fashion? Something that came from France and struck the American fancy and then passed on? Does it just belong the ’40s and ’50s? Is it passe?

Solomon says it isn’t passe - that it’s just what America needs right now. We need to recover our sense of personal responsibility. Existentialism is a welcomed antidote to the wave of victimization and the sense of blame manifested in our legal system, tort law liability suits and every day life.

Existentialism started as a European movement but it’s real home is now in the U.S. Americans are staunch individualists but are keenly aware that there is a strong sense of community that lies at the basis of American society. Americans are very concerned with the idea of self-realization and self-improvement. The idea of making something new of oneself; self-improvement; trying to pick yourself up by the bootstraps defines a good deal of American society. Social mobility is distinctively American and also distinctively Existentialist.

Existentialism is considered passe in the climate of Europe and in American Universities because it is eclipsed by two generations of philosophers sense Sartre. The first generation is dominated by Claude Levi-Straus (1908). He came up with Structuralism which is an anthropological insight. He was concerned with the structural similarities which all societies shared in common. He says Sartre is not the universal picture of humanity, but a hyper-intellectual Parisian who is taking his phenomenology as an unwarranted generalization of what human consciousness and human life is like. For instance, could someone who comes from a totally different culture, perhaps a deprived culture, be expected to make the same choices of someone who is already familiar with more choices? Levi-Straus hits an important point here.

But Sartre’s second generation critics are more problematic. In particular, these critics are Michel Faoucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Roland Barthes. They have a number of theses in common, two in particular:

1. “The Death of the Author”. This is the idea that when we read books, the idea that books are written by an author is an absolute way of misunderstanding what a book is about. We shouldn’t confuse the writer of books with the author.
2. An impersonal play of forces replaces an emphasis on agency and responsibility.

These notions together intend to kill subjectivity - especially the notion of subjectivity as Sartre understood it. There is a sort of conspiracy of silence going on here because clearly, this philosophy is based upon Sartre’s philosophy. Whether he is the model or the target, Sartre’s importance in philosophy since his death has been a well-kept secret.

The Postmodernists want to reject subjectivity and phenomenology and say that there is really only a third person way of looking at ourself. The first person way is corrupt. But this is something that Sartre anticipated. He makes clear very early in his philosophy that there is a distinction between consciousness and subjectivity on the one hand and the self on the other. But the Postmodernists reject consciousness and the self altogether.

Postmodernists also reject rationality, objectivity, truth and knowledge (although this has to be carefully stated). The rejection of rationality goes back through the history of Existentialism - that rationality is not adequate to answer the substantial questions we have about life and this pervades all the authors of
Existentialism. Sartre is the most rationalistic of the Existentialists discussed in the lecture series, but even he says that when it comes to fundamental choices, there is no ultimate criteria or rational standard or rational guideline to deal with. Rationality doesn’t have the privileged place that it has had throughout history.

Foucault and Deleuze both reject what they call Sartre’s “Enlightenment Project”. It is clear that in Sartre there is a raging sense of rationality and monism - of fitting things together. Sartre says that each of us has a fundamental purpose in life. To understand our fundamental project is to understand why we act the way we do so it has a sort of liberating affect. The Postmodernists seek liberation, too. But they seek it in a very different way. Instead of the monistic gathering together, the Postmodernists seek to get rid of “totalization” or the “rage for unity”.

What the Postmodernists are referring to in terms of Sartre’s “Enlightenment Project” is his idea of Purifying Reflection as a way of thinking about ourselves, personally and politically, which removes us from prejudice and takes us into the realm of pure freedom. But Solomon says a purifying reflection is absolutely essential in understanding the sense in which we must try to get ourselves up by the boot straps and to understand what it is we are doing and why. In an age of mindless consumerism, it becomes essential to ask ourselves what we are doing to our planet, our world, our selves.

Sartre is the last Existentialist Solomon covers in his lecture series, No Excuses (Lectures 19-23).

Sartre is the ultimate existentialist. He named the movement and when people talk about existentialism it’s usually Sartre’s philosophy they have in mind. Emphasis on freedom and choice and responsibility are the center of Satrean philosophy. (These are not central for Nietzsche or Heidegger. They are problematic.)

The title of Solomon’s lecture comes from Sartres idea of “No Excuses” and is based on the idea that one is always responsible.

Sartre denounced his fellow French men for their cowardice, their collaboration, cooperation, etc. He questioned their choices and motives. If you want to understand human nature, you have to look at humans under stress and so he watched his fellow citizens while being occupied during one of the most brutal wars in history.

What he noticed is that their answers all came out as excuses:

• What can I do? Impotence.
• I didn’t start the war. Innocence.
• Everyone else is doing it. The herd instinct.
• I’m just looking out for myself. Self-preservation.
• I had no choice. Helplessness.
• I was afraid. The appeal to emotion.

We are absolutely free, so we don’t have any excuses. We are responsible for what it is we do. We aren’t free in the sense that we can choose anything we want to do - but that we always have choices.

Absolute freedom is the absence of ultimate constraints. It is our responsibility to recognize our choices even in the most limited circumstances. One is always responsible for what one makes of what is made of one. Also, one is not caused to behave by his or her emotions or motives, but rather emotions and motives are part of the situation in which one chooses what to do. We have a picture of emotion being inside us but intruding upon our rationality. We say, I didn’t really mean it. I was just very angry. But the friend you insulted and you know yourself, that what you said was not just the product of anger but a deep and cutting insight about something you really feel. There is a sense in which the anger is a choice. When we get angry, we make a decision. We feel that flush and we have to decide - keep our mouth shut or act on it?

We are as responsible for what it is we do as well as what it is we don’t do. We make choices to the exclusion of other choices we simply choose not to think about. We are not just responsible for deliberate choices, we are responsible for choices made out of default, or out of neglect. No excuses.

Emotions are choices; they involve alternatives and options; and they involve purposiveness. They are “magical transformations of the world.” He wants to move away from the idea that emotions are bodily upsets of physiological intrusions. They are our responsibility and not a source of excuse.

William James, an American Philosopher, wrote an essay called “What is an Emotion?” in 1884. He said an emotion is an upsetting perception which causes in us a physiological disturbance. This perception of the physiological upset IS the emotion. Sartre says James ignores two important features of emotion. 1) Emotions are necessarily intentional. 2) Emotions are always about something. You can’t just be angry, you have to be angry about something. You can’t just be afraid, you have to be afraid of something. All emotions are intentional in that they are always about something. They can’t be mere sensations or feelings because sensations and feelings aren’t about anything. A headache is not about anything. It might be caused by something, like your mother in-law coming to visit. But your mother in-law didn’t cause the headache. A pain in your toe might be because you stepped on a nail. But the pain is not about the nail. But we are sad or joyful or depressed or angry about something.

Emotions have finality. Emotions are purposive. This is a bold thesis because we typically think of emotions caused in us and if they have a purpose, they aren’t our purpose. An emotion is a strategy, a way of dealing with the world. It is chosen and chosen with a purpose for a reason.

There is a story that comes from Aesop called Fox and the Grapes from Aesop that explains this. A fox sees some yummy, delicious grapes and craves them. But with all of his ingenuity, he can’t reach them. So he says, they are probably sour anyway. What Sartre says is that the fox has made a magical transformation of the world. The grapes haven’t changed. But the fox has changed his attitude - he comes to see them as sour. What has changed isn’t the world. What is changed is the fox’s way of seeing the world. This makes sense from a phenomenological point of view. But what about the magical? The fox refuses to accept himself as a failure. He refuses to see himself as up to the difficulty of getting the grapes. He’s not willing to expend anymore energy on a wasted project. This is using emotions to escape from the world. Emotions are a mode of escape behavior. We have our emotions not because they are caused in us. We have them because they are a way to deal with the world so that we can see ourselves as better off than we would otherwise be.

Sartre rejects Freud’s idea of the unconscious. Unconscious mental events are not just unconscious, but those that cannot be made conscious. They are repressed. Sartre also rejects Freud’s idea of psychic determinism. Sartre thinks they are strategies rather than forces within us as Freud says they are.

Part of the magical transformation of the world is the transformation of the body. For instance, fear could be seen as “getting ready to flee” and the bodily sensations follow from the emotion and are not causes of it.

By separating the discussion into two terms, consciousness on the one hand and the world on the other, Sartre puts himself in the French tradition in which he was raised (Cartesianism). But he had read Heidegger and was convinced by the argument that there is nothing to distinguish consciousness and the world at all.

Sartre says consciousness is freedom. Freedom is consciousness. Responsibility is the idea that we are the incontestable author of our actions. Consciousness is nothingness. Consciousness is intentionality. It is always about things. We don’t have to look at it as a transcendental ego. We can look at it as an activity. It’s like looking around a room with a flashlight. Consciousness is the beam of the flashlight (without the flahslight). It is nothing but an awareness of things in this world. Consciousness is outside of the causal relations of the world. Kant says that consciousness imposes causal categories on the world. It is by seeing the world in a certain way that we see things in terms of cause and effect relationships. But when we examine ourselves, that is not how we see ourselves. Consciousness is not an object of consciousness. It is not a thing. And consciousness is not a thing.

The idea of Spontaneity allows Sartre to carve out a middle range between indeterminism and determinism. Much of what we do is pre-reflective. We don’t think about it, we just do it. Consciousness acts and it acts without prior causality.

Sartre eventually gives up the idea that all emotions are a mode of escape behavior. Emotions are still not causes of behavior, but they are spontaneous outpourings of consciousness in which one takes the world in a certain way. Not emotions in consciousness, but emotions as ways of structuring consciousness as one way among many.

Consciousness has the power of negation. What I see is always more than what I see. When we see, we are never passive receivers. Consciousness is an activity not only of receiving, but also of shaping. Desire isn’t just seeing the world. It’s seeing the world in terms of what it is we want. We see things in terms of what we can do with them and how they fit in our plans. Consciousness is also able to perceive lack. If we are expecting our friend at the bar, we notice our friend isn’t there. We construe it in terms of what’s not there.

Sartre tries to focus on the key, essential experiences that define our experience in general. He wants to use this in place of the kinds of arguments philosophers have often given. Nausea is a dissatisfaction and revulsion with the meaninglessness of the world. The status of the external world or the status of our knowledge of the external world is in question. The broader philosophical idea is that somehow we are stuck inside our own experience or own consciousness. It’s a philosophical fabrication that comes out of the Cartesian split. But is the world “out there”? Or is it just an idea? Sartre says existence is not inferred from other experiences it forces itself upon us in a way that is undeniable. Anguish is the sudden spontaneous realization that I could, at any moment, take a step and go hurtling to my death if I’m standing on a cliff. Anguish gives one the basic experience of one’s own freedom. “Nothing stands between me and my self-destruction.” [except my own decision].

Philosophers ask, how do I know that other people exist? Sartre says we know other people exist when we notice someone looking at us when we are doing something embarrassing and we feel embarrassed.

His Being in Nothingness is a Phenomenological Ontology. It is phenomenological because it is from the first person standpoint. It is an ontology because we are describing things in this world.

He uses three concepts: 1) Being-for-itself. When we reflect, we recognize that we are conscious. Consciousness is aware of itself aware of objects all the time. 2) Being-in-itself. 3) Being-for-others. Shame and embarrassment.

The self is out there in the world like the self of another. It is an accumulation of actions and experiences. To find out who we are, we have to look back and see what it is we’ve done. Consciousness is an activity directed towards the world and its objects. Sartre also differentiates between self-consciousness (reflective sense) and consciousness (pre-reflective). We shouldn’t always think of consciousness as self-consciousness. Consciousness does not contain the “I” or the “self”. We are both being-in-itself and being-for-itself. We are both body and mind. We have two different sets of attributes. Facticity is the sum total of facts that are true about us. (That I was born on a certain date in a certain year.) Facticity is contrasted with transcendence. This is the sense in one overreaches the facts of ones life. This is also a transcendence of the present. We transcend the present into the future all the time. I am what I am not and I am not what I am.

What we all want is to be pure facticity and pure transcendence. What we really desire is to be God. (God as described as complete in himself. Everything that God can be, he is. God can do anything he wants.) On the one hand, we’d like to determine exactly who it is we are. But at the same time, we have a desire for negative freedom - to be free of constraints. But when you put these together, you get a contradiction. You can say, this is my birthday. But you may think it is too early, or too late and not accept it about yourself and replace it with another fact. How the date plays in his life is subject to transcendence.

Bad Faith: Self-deception about oneself. We can live through our hopes or our fears and deny the facts that are true about ourselves, or simply reject them (like pretending to be 29 rather than 39). Freud says there is a psychodynamic - we cannot take certain positions. Sartre says it is really, “we will not” take certain positions. When we are in bad faith, we misperceive and misjudge ourselves and we do this for a purpose. We don’t want to take responsibility.

Sartre says he is not doing ethics. But bad faith is bad. It is something to be avoided. Sarte is after a theory of integrity.

Being-for-others: Has a paranoid ring to it. Heidegger used Being-with-others which is much less paranoid and non-conflicted. When we say “being-for-others” we think of being used by others, being an object for others, or others being there to manipulate. We are only aware of our own consciousness. We cannot be aware of the consciousness of others. Philosophers sometimes suggests that taking people as other people requires a leap of faith because we cannot prove that other consciousnesses exist. What Sartre says, following from Hegel, is that we can know ourselves only with the recognition of other people. Self-knowledge is not captured by Descartes’s “I think therefore I am.” We become conscious only through our confrontation with others. Knowledge comes, not from observation, but from the experience of being looked at. Being for others is being objectified. We are always on trial in the eyes of others. Sartre says we cannot be indifferent to what other people think of us because this is as much a part of our identity as a clear determinant of who we are.

This leads to another dimension of bad faith: to accept what people think of us as the truth and to define ourselves as who we are for others. (What Heidegger talks about in terms of the Das Man self.) You could be in bad faith in the opposite way and say you don’t care what other people think. This isn’t psychology. It’s part of the essence of being human. We are social creatures in the perverse and disturbing sense that we are the objects of other people’s judgments and how we judge ourselves is very much defined by how we are judged by others.

There is a sense in which we are all guilty: for not living up to others expectations of us or living up to the expectations of others but not living up to our own expectations.

For Sartre, our relationship with other people is basically conflict. It’s always about setting aside their judgments of us or trying to get them to have judgments of us that are in line with our judgments of ourselves. Sartre explains this best in No Exist which is one of philosophies greatest contributions to the theater. The main theme of the play is “Hell is other people”. Our conceptions of ourselves are always compromised by and determined by other people,

It’s not enough to look at the facts about ourselves and what I think about myself, but we have to also take into consideration what others think of us. Even relationships like love and friendship are struggles. Love is a struggle for authenticity. We choose our friends on the basis of our conception of ourselves - those who reinforce the conception of ourselves. If we think of ourselves as not very intelligent, we might take up with someone very intelligent, etc. Friendship is a kind of agreement or contract. “I’ll approve of you in your terms if you will approve of me in my terms.” Friendship involves a mutual identity.

But when we talk about lovers, the picture becomes very different. Sartre introduces love as a seductive strategy. It’s an attempt to win someone over - a sort of control. When this love fails, it results in sadism (a desperate attempt to take control). Or, we can also take a submissive role where the other must please me. When this fails, it results in masochism (a manipulative attitude toward the other). Other possibilities of failed love are indifference (profound indifference - the other doesn’t exist) which can lead to hatred (on the part of the person who wants to exist). Love is a dynamic in which a kind of mutual manipulation is essential.

Sex, like love, is a kind of manipulative strategy in which we try to win over the other to our own self-conceptions. Pleasure is not the aim of sex, but rather a kind of vehicle one uses to control the other person. If you take too much pleasure in it yourself, the pleasure gets in the way and you are very likely to eliminate sex as the power you are trying to attain. Sex is about power. It’s a powerplay.

Hegel uses an example of two people fighting it out until one becomes master of the other and the loser becomes slave. But it’s not a stable relationship. Both parties leave quite unhappy. This is the same sort of view Sartre wants to give us. It’s not benign. Sex and love are much more complicated, threatening and dangerous than we tend to think. He’s trying to dig us out of the nonsense about love that has been piled on us for 2000 years.

And example of a traditional myth comes from Plato’s Symposium which is supposed to characterize the true nature of love: Aristophenes tells us love is the product of an ancient history. We were double creatures, two sets of legs, two sets of heads, two sets of arms. Zeus threatened to split us in two and he did. Ever since, we’ve been running around trying to find our other half. The other is a completion.

The idea of completing ourselves with another person is at odds with Sartre’s view. There is no such perfect fit. Even in the best relationship, there is a kind of struggle going on. If you pay any attention to your relationship, what becomes clear is that there is a struggle going on and there is an accommodation over the years that makes it seem like less of a struggle. Sartre says we are trying to maintain our own conception of ourselves in the face of the judgments of the other person.

Solomon corrects Sartre because he says that what he doesn’t take seriously enough is the fact that very often our conceptions of ourselves are not only in the face of the other, but there is a kind of cooperation that takes place on the level of actually trying to think of ourselves in mutual terms. But it is true that the way we think of ourselves is always at risk because of the other person.

Relationships, however stable they may seem, are never truly stable. They are exist in metastability - any situation which appears to be perfectly in balance can fall into disarray from the slightest imbalance. The same is true about our conceptions of ourselves. It may seem stable, but it is metastable. One thing can throw the entire thing into catastrophe.

Solomon says he doesn’t endorse Sartre, but what he does is opens our eyes to all the complexities of relationship. Sartre had a life long relationship with Simone de Beauvoir. Despite a few infidelities on both their parts, they maintained an intimate closeness until Sartre’s death. They were one of the main couples, in fact the premiere philosophical couple, of the 20th century. Contrast this with Bertrand Russell, who despite all of his many words, went through quite a few marriages and found none of them satisfactory.

Sartre claimed that true being with others was something people found together under threat. You only learn to be with others in extreme circumstances.