“Nietzsche who called himself “the philosopher with a hammer”, relentlessly attacked the actual course of secular Western civilization precisely because he felt that it was betraying its promise. Instead of providing ideals and conditions for the full efflorescence of the human spirit, Western civilisation had become decadent. A decadent society, in Nietzsche’s lexicon, is a society which has become smug and self complacent, ever harkening back to its faded past glories, incapable of critical awareness of its present state of decay and therefore incapable of creative self renewal.”___________________________
Dr. Nalin Swaris
(May 07, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In last week’s essay, I problematized some of the unexamined implications of the modern secular, pluralist polity of liberal democracy. While recognizing that liberal democracy is is a liberative leap forward from monarchic despotism and religious bigotry, I also raised some serious issues which, in my view are not sufficiently addressed by some of our liberal political thinkers. The political project of secularism and liberalism has a specifically Western genealogy.
And one must grasp this specificity in order to understand their emancipatory liberative thrust as well as its limitations. Instead of offering an ‘orientalist’ critique I chose instead to present Freidrich Nietzsche’s fierce critcism of what he regarded as the culture of decadence into which he saw European civiliasation would be plunged after what he called “the death of God”. The separation of the Church and the State, divided a single unfragmented actuality into two separate and autonomous realms. It has produced a schizoid being who wants everything on earth and heaven too.
At the close of the thirteenth century the Church, centralized in the papacy, stood at the zenith of its power. Three centuries later, the church itself was divided and religion had become one interest among many. The Christian faith still stood. But other affairs made equal claims upon human interest: government, law, philosophy, science, medicine, the arts, the study of society, politics and economics were pursued without regard for ecclesiastical guidance or injunction. In the investigation of human affairs scholars subscribed to Alexander Pope’s axiom that, “the proper study of mankind is mankind”.
New inventions and discoveries in the fields of science and medicine enhanced the quality of human living. Life on earth was no longer seen as a brief preparation for the next, but as meaningful in itself. This new world-view gave birth to the philosophy of Humanism. The aim of humanists at the ideological and political levels was the emancipation of humanity’s potentialities from religious obscurantism and feudal biological and social division of labour into a religiously sanctioned hierarchy of ranks and ‘castes’.
Nietzsche who called himself “the philosopher with a hammer”, relentlessly attacked the actual course of secular Western civilization precisely because he felt that it was betraying its promise. Instead of providing ideals and conditions for the full efflorescence of the human spirit, Western civilisation had become decadent. A decadent society, in Nietzsche’s lexicon, is a society which has become smug and self complacent, ever harkening back to its faded past glories, incapable of critical awareness of its present state of decay and therefore incapable of creative self renewal. The human potential, he felt, was becoming increasingly atrophied. Having banished God from public life, post Christian Europeans, were adoring secular substitutes like ‘science’, race, the nation state, power over others and limitless pleasure. The death of God, he argued, will be followed by the death of the Man (he used the ungendered German term ‘Mensch’). To appreciate Nietzsche’s critique of secular humanism, one must understand Nietzsche’s perception of the course of humanity’s moral evolution, which he evaluates in terms of a growth towards greater individual freedom. Nietzsche characterized the most primitive and crudest form of morality as ‘a slave morality’- a moral based on narrow self interest. The slave obeys as long as the master’s eye is on him. Slave morality is based on fear of punishment and hope of reward. Most religions, Nietzsche argued, impose a slave morality. The quality of this morality, is not affected by the fact that people avoid what is wrong and do what is right through fear of punishment or hope of reward in an after life. The secular state emancipated human beings from the power of the Churches to impose their strictures by violent means provided by the State. The Age of Inquisitions was over.
What the secular rule of law grants is a negative freedom, it gives the citizen civic freedom and at the same time demarcates its limits. My right to self determination is limited by my fellow citizens right his or her self determination. The State is indifferent as what its citizens do positively to enhance their new freedom. Religious tolerance, in this value system, is at the same time religious indifference.
By granting religious freedom to the citizen, religion itself was turned into a commodity vendible on the religious market. Religions are free to set up their stalls protect their markets and solicit new clients as long as they do not use coerce people into belief or resort unethical market practices. Thus religion itself became subjected to the ‘higher law’ of the free and open market. Freed from constraint, Nietzsche feared people would follow their impulses and caprices, even in religious matters. One can pick and choose religions and religious devotions if they as they assuage one’s deepest anxieties and satisfies one’s infinite desires. The late twentieth century has seen a mushrooming of religious sects which offer quick fixes to humankind’s ailments. Called ‘success religions’ by sociologists of religion, these new religions, hold that earthly success is a sign and index of the depth of a person’s devotion to the spiritual, that he or she is among elected few who have earned God’s predilection. Such beliefs are little more than the religious reflex of consumerist culture which promises instant solutions to life’s problems. Instead of the old feeling of guilt before God, it creates a sense of personal inadequacy in terms of culturally determined norms of social acceptability and success. It provides pseudo solutions to artificial problems which it itself creates. Anxiety and desire are the twin flames which keep the fire of consumerism alive.
It is not without significance that Nietzsche’s madman could not find God in the Market Place. The people were dancing and rejoicing that God does not exist. On the Free Market God is dead. The people are free to indulge themselves. Subjected to the tyranny of the Market all our most cherished values, our most noble professions and even the ministrations of religion are turned into commodities: everything and everyone can be bought – and sold. In a consumerist culture, as the very word ‘consumer’ suggests, the sole purpose of human existence is to consume. The End of History realized under the - Sign of the Belly - a metonym for the New and Last Man. Increasingly people are losing the ability to think critically for themselves. People are bombarded by TV ads urging them to indulge their senses, and telling them what they should eat what they should put on and how they should look, to win social acceptance. This invasive culture of consumerism, not religion, dictates the practical ethos of our times. It is hell bent on producing a new type of personality with standard tastes and standard desires and standard life expectations. Globalisation of the free market is engineered by a globalisation of a culture of mass consumerism - a ‘MacDonaldisation’ of the world. Fast, easily digestible pap, for the body and mind. One may not ruminate.
Nietzsche foresaw the advent of a Western nihilism which would become global in its outreach: the loss of any socially binding organising principle of life or of life – values a culture which prizes material success above moral excellence. The moral vacuum created by the ‘death of God’ is being filled. The free play of market forces have become the determinant of life, the only values that truly matter are market values. Pablo Passolini observed that the culture of Consumismo is more insidious than the historical fascisms of Hitler and Mussolini, because it is able to mobilize and deploy the desire of the masses more effectively than those dictators ever could – the fascism within us, in the heart’s insatiable desires, which makes us adore the very things which dominate and diminish us. Instead of the much vaunted rugged and free individual, consumerist culture produces a supine creature, a herd animal, for whom Nietzsche reserved his greatest contempt.
(The Article originally published in the Ceylon Daily News 22 August 2002 is reproduced with the author’s permission.)
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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