Monday, December 31, 2012


71. Judgments of good and bad

 I insert this extra item to follow up on comments on recent posts

In a comment on my discussion of forms of identification (in item 70 in this blog), Noud te Riele proposed that judgments of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are a primitive simplification of the world around us. My response was that while I would not readily judge people as good or bad, surely we can judge actions. We need such judgments for the expression of conflicting opinions in debates that are the source of the good life. In the present item I want to look at this issue more closely.

What might be the basis for this debate? It seems straightforward to look for it in ethics. In item 39, discussing the good life, I aligned myself with the virtue ethics of Aristotle, as opposed to the consequentialist, most often utilitarian view and the deontological, duty based ethics of Kant. In a consequentialist approach an action would be good if it is effective, if it yields intended or desirable outcomes. That makes sense, I think, but it is not enough, there is more. I would not go so far, however, as deontological ethics to proclaim a certain type of action to be universally bad or good, regardless of outcomes or circumstances. I would look at the action from the perspective of virtues that are relevant to the situation.

Now Aristotelian virtues, or variations upon them, are multiple and not necessarily commensurable: depending on the specific conditions of action, one virtue can enter into conflict with another. I gave examples, such as the terrible choice that Agamemnon had to make between the army he commanded and his daughter.

This means, then, that there can be several, perhaps many, sometimes conflicting aspects of good and bad, and in that sense the simple-minded notion of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ is indeed crude, as Noud claims. But one can still, and in fact does, consider good and bad in the light of each of the relevant virtues. What would be good and what bad concerning Agamemnon’s responsibilities as a commander? And concerning his responsibilities as a father? And then the terrible choice: which of the two should prevail? Here there is indeed no indubitable, clear choice of good and bad. But judgments of good and bad still play a role in the quandary. Agamemnon's wife judged differently and had him killed for his choice.

I return to the example that Fransje Broekema brought into the discussion earlier, of the parent who in trying to protect and educate her child (in protective identification) imposes her norms and rules (in projective identification), which can fetter the child too much, robbing it of the opportunity to discover its way for itself. Here there is a mix of good and bad. Being a parent myself I know how difficult it is to find a good balance between the two.

I refer also to my earlier discussion (in item 7) of the spirit of geometry vs. the spirit of finesse. In human affairs one argues in terms of good and bad, but in the spirit of finesse. It is not rocket science. 

Saturday, December 29, 2012


70. Forms of identification

 In the preceding item I proposed that while empathy is needed for trust, identification can go too far, in that it may lock up or freeze the relationship, by being blind to conditions that require the relationship to be ended or revised. One reader of this blog, Fransje Broekema, indicated that there might be different forms of identification. I think she is right, and here I pick up that point.

Identification can become possessive or imposing, robbing the other of the freedom to go its own way. Fransje mentioned projective identification, where one imposes one’s own morals, rules or solutions on the other. This may be out of genuine concern, as a parent towards a child. Here projective identification is also protective identification. From emotional attachment and a feeling of responsibility it may be very difficult not to do so. That is why in puberty children sometimes have to take drastic action to wrest themselves loose to gain independence.

While in projective identification one tries to let the other align with oneself, it can also go the other way around, in submissive identification where one aligns with the other. This may be mimicry out of admiration or idolatry.

It can also be defensive identification. Here one identifies with someone who exerts negative power, in enforcement, coercion, or terror. A classic example is ‘Father Stalin’. His exercise of arbitrary, paranoid terror was too much to bear, and rather than facing it for what it was people convinced themselves that ‘the little father’ must have his good reasons for what he is doing, and his victims must somehow have deserved their fate. Out of this perverse identification, some people trusted Stalin to the end.

A similar case is the ‘Stockholm syndrome’, derived from a hostage situation in Stockholm, where hostages started to identify with the hostage taker, not only to placate him but also to convince themselves that he is in fact benevolent if only one understands his motives. This may have the beneficial effect of mollifying the hostage taker.

While empathy is necessary for trust, it is not sufficient, even though it should not go as far as identification. Feelings and words of empathy must be followed by commitment in deeds. It is not enough to say to someone in distress ‘I know how you feel’, but one should follow up with further discussion and suggestion what the other might do and how one might help. But one should not let this slide into projective identification.

I should also mention that empathy is not necessarily benevolent. By understanding how the other thinks, and ‘what makes him/her tick’, and perceiving the feelings of the other in reaction to one’s deeds, one is also better able to do him/her harm. Violent psychopaths can be very sensitive, very perceptive of feelings and emotions, apparently tender even, sometimes.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012


69. Sources of trust

Trust is emotional, since it is related to vulnerability, risk, fear, and hope. It depends on character. With less self-confidence one feels more vulnerable and less inclined to trust. It depends on experience. Disappointments reduce trust. Trust can also be rational, in an analysis of the motives and conditions for people to be reliable.

Trust depends on conditions. Under threat of survival trust will be less. If there is no alternative for partners, and they ‘are condemned to each other’, there is pressure to make trust work, as among marriage partners, and government departments.   

Rational analysis goes as follows. As indicated in the previous item in this blog it is useful to distinguish between reliance, which includes both control and trust beyond control. Control can be based on formal hierarchy (the trustor is the boss), a contract, dependence of the trustee on the trustor, or the need for the trustee to maintain his/her reputation. In one-sided dependence the most dependent submits to the power of the least dependent, and while this is not necessarily fatal, it is wise to aim at a balance of mutual dependence. 

There is also the possibility of a hostage: the trustor has something of value to the trustee and can threaten to treat it badly unless the trustee acts reliably. In old times that took the form of family or nobility surrendered to the trustor. Nowadays it typically takes the form of information that is sensitive to the trustee, such as knowledge concerning a product or technology. The trustor can threaten to make information public or to pass it on to a competitor of the trustee. Ït is a form of blackmail.

Beyond control, trust can be based on norms, morality or ethics, or on personal empathy or identification, or simply on routine: a relationship has become habitual and the question of reliability no longer comes up. Empathy is the ability to put oneself in the shoes of the partner, to understand his/her position and how he/she thinks. Identification goes further, in feeling a bond, thinking like the other, or making his/her fate part of one’s own. Empathy is needed for trust, but identification may go too far, locking a relationship up.

Trust and control are both complements (they go together) and substitutes (they replace each other). Control can never be complete and where control ends one must surrender to trust. And vice versa: trust can hardly be absolute, trust should not be blind, and where it ends one may want to have some control. But the more trust one has the less control one needs to exert, which gives more room and flexibility for the relationship.

The greater uncertainty is, concerning behaviour and conditions, and the more difficult it is to monitor conduct of the trustee, the more difficult it is to exert control, and the more one needs trust. That is the case, in particular, in innovation. There, one must leave room for the unexpected. And uncertainty limits the scope and force of contracts and monitoring of compliance.

I remind the reader that you are very welcome to post a comment, to which I will then respond. 

Friday, December 21, 2012


68. Trust: what is it?

Here I start a series in which I try to clarify the rich and slippery notion of trust: what is it, what is the basis for it, what are its limits, how does it work? Much is derived from my book Trust: forms, foundations, functions, failures and figures (Edward Elgar 2002).

Trust is a psychological state, a disposition that can lead to trusting behaviour.

What can one trust? The subject of trust is the trustor, the object is the trustee. One can trust things (the car) but it becomes interesting and more difficult when the object has a will of its own. One can trust a person but also an organization (e.g. on the basis of its reputation) or an industry (banking) or an economic system.

To trust one needs trust on all levels. People with good intentions may be caught in larger, countervailing interests. One needs trust in the people, the organization they work for and one has to take into account the pressures of survival on both. Will teaching ethics to bankers eliminate their misconduct? Bankers claim that they would prefer not to misbehave (taking too much risk and hiving it off on society; paying exorbitant bonuses) but can afford to do so only if other banks go along, and since all banks argue like that they lock each other up in their misconduct (in a prisoners’ dilemma). Thus one will either have to impose a way out of that dilemma or change financial markets to eliminate the incentives for misconduct. Ethical reform may help but does not suffice.

A distinction has been made between confidence and trust. With the first, one has no choice; one cannot regret to have become dependent, it was inevitable. Thus one speaks of confidence in the economy, or God, or the legal system.

Another important distinction is that between trust in competence, the technical ability to act in line with agreements, and trust in intentions, the will and commitment to do so according to the best of one’s ability, and not to cheat. Failure in competence requires a different response from failure in intentions.

A preliminary definition of trust may be: one is vulnerable to actions of an other and yet one feels that no great harm will be done. That leaves open many reasons to have trust.

A useful notion is that of reliance, which includes trust and control. The trustor may exert control over the trustee, for example with a contract, or as ‘the boss’. Trust goes beyond control, where the trustee is trustworthy on the basis of morality, ethics, friendship or custom or habit.

A narrower, tighter definition of trust then is that one expects no great harm to be done even though the trustee has both the opportunity and the incentive to cheat or to neglect the relationship, because his ethical stance will prevail. However, it is too much to expect the trustee to be loyal even at the cost of his/her own survival. The extent to which the trustee foregoes advantage at the expense of the trustor depends on his/her moral strength and on pressures of survival.

In sum, trust is a four-place predicate: the trustor (1) trusts the trustee (2) in some respect (3, competence, intentions), under certain conditions (4, pressures).

I will elaborate on these points in upcoming items.    

Wednesday, December 19, 2012


67. Problems of collaboration

 What are the risks of collaboration? First, there are risks of dependence. Collaboration is no problem as long as partners do not become dependent on each other and can easily step out when dissatisfied. But relationships without dependence are usually shallow. Dependence can arise from unique value of the partner, for which there is no replacement, from specific investments that have value only in the relationship, or because one is not allowed to step out (as in public administration). When dependence is one-sided the least dependent partner is tempted to use the resulting power to exact a greater share of jointly created value.

One remedy is to equalize dependence, in shared ownership of specific assets, offer of unique quality, or market position. One-sided dependence may also be mended by building coalitions with others to build countervailing power.

A second risk is that of spillover: unintended transfer of knowledge or competence that is expropriated or imitated and used to compete. This risk can be direct, in the partner becoming a competitor, or indirect, in spillover through the partner to a competitor with whom the partner collaborates. This risk has often been overestimated. The issue is not only whether sensitive information reaches a potential competitor, but also whether he then has the absorptive capacity for it, and the resources needed to exploit it, and the incentives to do so. If by the time all those conditions are fulfilled the information has become obsolete, the risk disappears.

One instrument of control of spillover is to demand exclusiveness: to forbid application in collaboration with third parties. For this one pays a price of locking the partner up in a conceptual prison. It is important for oneself that the partner keeps on learning and improving, and it is by engaging in relationships with others, also one’s competitors, perhaps especially one’s competitors, to tap from more varied sources of knowledge and competence, that the partner learns.

An important factor is reputation: partners are withheld from doing damage because it will affect their reputation and thereby options for future collaboration, also with others. . For this, it is important that a reliable reputation mechanism is in place.

Beyond control, one can aim for trust on the basis of values, ethics, morality or empathy, identification, friendship and routinization. Trust is a slippery and complex notion that I will discuss in some detail later in this blog.

In view of the problems it is tempting to integrate the collaborating parties under an overarching management with the authority to demand information, resolve conflicts and impose sanctions, in ways that would not be possible between separate, autonomous organizations. However, unified hierarchy mostly reduces variety as a source of ideas, reduces speed of decisions and implementation, and reduces the motivation to perform that comes from independence and one’s own responsibility to survive. The challenge is to resist this reflex of integration and to learn the art of managing the risks of collaboration between autonomous parties.

66. The value of collaboration

In preceding items I indicated the cognitive, ethical and spiritual value of collaboration. Here I go into its economic value. Contrary to common opinion, markets are not only about competition but also about collaboration. Conversely, collaboration is seldom free from rivalry and tension of conflicting interests. Here I discuss the advantages, in the following item the problems of collaboration.

Organizations, including firms, must have some focus of knowledge, competence, purpose, and governance (as I discussed in my book A cognitive theory of the firm, 2009). One should not aim to do everything. The task of organizations is to achieve efficiency in performing a set of specific tasks. For that, one cannot afford, to have to learn to understand each other, negotiate goals and procedures at every step. Some things need to be taken for granted. As a result, cognitive distance within organizations must be limited. However, that yields a form of myopia. To avoid that, in order to identify all relevant threats and opportunities, especially for innovation organizations need collaborative relationships with other organizations at a larger cognitive distance, to repair their myopia, in complementary cognition.

However, between organizations that need each other, in complementary cognition, mutual understanding and adjustment needs to be built, and as discussed in items 57 and 59 that requires so-called relation specific investments that require some minimum duration of the relationship to be recouped. Therefore I argued for optimal, not maximum flexibility of relationships. As a result, partners become mutually dependent, and a system of governance is required to deal with it, and that must be a system of give and take, acceptance of difference, and empathy for each other’s position and problems.

All this is far from the usual rhetoric of competition in markets that demands that one take every bit of advantage from others that one can. Rather than ensuring one’s survival it can jeopardize it. This does not mean that there is no competition, but that a trade off should be made between one’s own advantage available in isolation and one’s share in a greater advantage achieved in collaboration. Admittedly, the latter requires give and take, and reciprocity, which entails that at times one gives more than one takes, and when competition is so fierce that in order to survive one cannot afford that even for a moment, then indeed this type of collaboration becomes impossible.

However, competition is seldom so fierce. Especially when collaboration yields specialty products with high profit margins that competitors find it difficult to replace. That reduces competitive pressure, allowing for the give and take of collaboration to take place. 

That has consequences for prosperity. The usual argument for markets is that competition enforces maximum efficiency. But the other side of the coin is that it excludes the collaboration that is needed for innovation. Since so much emphasis is now laid on innovation the option of collaboration may contribute most to prosperity.

Saturday, December 15, 2012


65. Otherhumanism

Traditional western humanism is focused on the self. I turn to another humanism that is oriented more towards the other, which I call otherhumanism. In this blog I developed arguments for it and I now bring them together.

In item 49 on freedom I argued that the self needs others to achieve the highest possible level of freedom: the freedom to escape from the prejudices of the self about what it should want.

In item 57 I argued that there is more or less cognitive distance between people, and that this difference yields a problem, in lack of mutual understanding, but also an opportunity for learning. If objective knowledge is impossible then testing our insights on what ‘others have made of it’ is the only chance we have to correct our errors.

In item 31 I summarized a cycle of invention in which application of existing knowledge and competence to novel contexts, with new challenges and opportunities, can lead to new knowledge and competence. In item 58 that insight was applied for a deeper insight into how communication, by fitting each other’s different insights into each other’s cognitive structures can lead to their transformation. That yields deeper insight into the importance of the other for learning by the self.

In language, there is Wittgenstein’s argument of the impossibility of a private language. The self needs the other to establish meaning and for making sense. In item 37 on the change of meaning I applied the theory of invention to change of meaning. Universals derive their meaning from specific cases and as abstractions from them are only temporary, forming a platform for application in novel contexts by which universals and their meanings shift.

In item 60 I discussed Nietzsche’s (mostly implicit) assumption that the self can rise above itself without the need for any other. In item 61 I discussed Levinas, as a polar opposite to Nietzsche, in recognition of the need of the self to open up to the other as a source of transcendence.

In sum, my argument for otherhumanism is as follows. Any hereafter as life after death is an illusion. The hereafter is not you yourself but the people and their environment that you leave behind. If you want to make your life worthwhile and dedicate yourself to the hereafter then the only way is dedication to others and to the society of the future. Dedication to others is not at the expense of yourself and life. The self needs others to escape from illusory certainties as well as doubt, to achieve the highest possible level of freedom, to achieve its potential, to develop and transcend itself, and thereby to utilize the unique gift of life.

This leads to a notion of the flourishing of life that goes beyond the life of the self, not in a claim to any absolute, universal good beyond the world, but in participation and contribution to the flourishing of others, during and after our life. 

The views and analyses that I present in this blog are perhaps more congenial with Eastern, in particular Chinese, philosophy than with Western philosophy. Later, in a sequel to the present blog, I will consider that in some detail. For the moment, let me just give a few indications. My otherhumanism seems close to the social humanism of Confucius, with its perspective of benevolence (although I do not much like the importance assigned to propriety, ritual and respect for authority). In Buddhism and in Chinese philosophy I find interest in change and impermanence, in different ways, which is congenial to my imperfection on the move. The Chinese notions of yin and yang, and later developments in neo-Confucianism (e.g. in the notions of opening and closing in the philosophy of Xiang Shili) seem to have some resemblance to my cycle of invention. There is a strong tradition of integrating thought and action, which is congenial to the pragmatism that I preach and practice.   

Wednesday, December 12, 2012


64. Nietzsche, Levinas and me

Both Nietzsche and Levinas wage opposition, as I do in this blog, to a number of fundamental intuitions in Western philosophy, going back to Descartes, concerning being, rationality, knowledge, the self and the relation between self and other. The self is seen as autonomous, self sufficient, and disconnected from its environment. The world, including the self, is supposed to be ‘present’ to consciousness. Knowledge is seen as ‘seeing’, ‘grasping’, ‘comprehension’. Knowledge is reduction of experience into universal categories of thought. The pretension of the self is that thus it can contain everything from its environment, including itself. This idea has the pernicious ethical consequence that one also looks in this way to fellow human beings as something that one can absorb and ‘make one’s own’.

Levinas is to some extent an existentialist philosopher in the sense that like Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, and Gabriel Marcel he sees human existence as a process, as a participating, acting, being involved in the world. Acting is more fundamental than thinking. Abstract knowledge in the form of the assimilation of experience into categories, universals, is preceded and trumped by a much richer form of knowledge as experience in the practical handling of things in interaction with specific people in specific situations. His bent towards specific, individual people and their circumstances, and his mistrust of abstractions, universals, and the impersonal forces of ideology, state, market and technology that they produce, which lead to alienation of the human being, are a characteristic of existentialist philosophy.
 With Nietzsche and Levinas I share the perspective of the bodily, physiological, emotional roots of cognition and ethics, the question what to do with human suffering, and the relinquishing of God as a way out. With Nietzsche I want to preserve, not subdue the life force and creativity of the human being, and I share his ‘Dionysian’ striving to transcend the self. With Levinas I share the idea that openness to the other forms the foundation of the self and a source of transcendence of the self. I radically disagree with Nietzsche’s often-tacit presupposition that the self can do this by itself. On the other hand in my view Levinas goes overboard with his idea of the self as a hostage for the other. In my view the self not only has the right but also wisdom on his/her side to distance him/herself from the other when that seems needed. I even claim that this is a consequence of Levinas’ thought itself.
 The point is this. If the other in his/her opposition to me and in the ethical appeal to me to have concern for him/her is a source of transcendence for me, then I should also grant the same to him/her, in my opposition and appeal to him/her. I should be passive in the sense of being receptive to him/her but also active in helping him/her to receive me. Paradoxically perhaps, it would be egotistic of me to completely subject myself to the other.

Saturday, December 8, 2012


63. Nietzsche and Levinas

 At first sight few views are so much opposed as those of Nietzsche in his rejection and Levinas in his radical acceptance of responsibility of the self for the other. At second sight there are also commonalities.

First, both use the perspective of embodied cognition, as I do in this blog. Impulses, perceptions and feelings precede cognition and ethics and form the basis for them. Second, both turn away from God. Third, both accept that God was invented as consolation for human vulnerability, and now we must find another way to deal with inevitable suffering. Fourth, for both the making of sacrifices for others is not a moral duty or limitation of freedom, but arises autonomously from inside, either as an overflow from the fullness of life (Nietzsche), or as a deep-seated feeling of responsibility that precedes the self (Levinas). Fifth, both try to say the unsayable, beyond established categories of thought and language. Sixth, both are suspicious of universals that cause neglect of diverse, individual, unique human beings. Seventh, both try to escape from the limitations of the self (transcendence). Eighth, for both identification between people, in reciprocation that results in a merging and equalization, is both impossible and undesirable. Ninth, both turn away from the conatus essendi, the drive to survive and manifest oneself, though in very different ways. Tenth, both (but Levinas more in his earlier than in his later work) take the sensual, feeling, exuberant self as a starting point.

But then begins the big difference. Nietzsche begins with the exuberant self, the child, and thinks he can find transcendence from within the autonomous self, from an internally generated fullness, without regard for claims from others or demands for self-constraint, a self that dissociates itself from the other, and in his philosophy he ends up again with the child. Starting with the self, Levinas veers away to the other and its ethical call on the self. For Nietzsche that is treason to the life forces of the self, in a hypocritical and crippling Christian morality of compassion. For Levinas, however, the ethical call to the other is not an appeal to asceticism, not a denial but an affirmation of the self, in being elected.

According to Nietzsche the self experiences a primitive excitement at the suffering of another, and no one benefits from pity, which only multiplies suffering. For Levinas the suffering of the other is unbearable and brought under the responsibility of the self. For Nietzsche suffering is a condition for transformation of the self by the self. For Levinas suffering is a condition for ethics and an escape from the self by the suffering of the other. For Nietzsche separation between self and other yields protection of the self in his emergence from himself, for Levinas it opens the self to the other. Thus, at third sight, in spite of the commonalities between Nietzsche and Levinas the difference is as big as it appeared at first sight.  

Wednesday, December 5, 2012


62. Levinas: justice?

Levinas posited his extreme surrender to the other as a counterweight to the absolute evil of Nazism and of other ideologies that subjugated the individual human being, and to be strong enough it must be absolute.

However, Levinas repeatedly recognizes that in the transition from the ideal, isolated relationship between self and other to a society of third and more parties charity towards the single other must make a transition to justice in society, with rules that are universal and impersonal. There I must also feel responsible for third parties and ask myself whether the single other does not damage the other others. There the asymmetry of the ideal relation disappears and reciprocity and equality under the law appear. How that compromise of the ideal relationship for the sake of justice can still reflect the ideal is problematic. How can we maintain the ethical force that Levinas considered necessary as a counterweight to absolute evil in the world? Levinas struggles with this tension and never completely resolves it.

The idea of justice and its content are not elaborated. However that is developed, of crucial importance remains the claim that the rights of people are in the first place rights not of the self but of the other. Justice and the law are not a social contract necessitated by the threat of war of all against all (as Hobbes proposed), but emerge from a feeling of responsibility for the other. Equality under the law is needed for justice but we must not forget that it does not do justice to the uniqueness of individuals. Note that this is in line with my critique of universalism, in item 17 of this blog. Where the other is concerned we remain anarchists at heart. The law must not forget its inspiration and ideal from the responsibility of individual to individual. In that sense justice has a ‘bad consciousness’ of never quite achieving its ideal and it must remain aware of its shortcomings, and stay open for improvement. The Levinassian relation to the other must be maintained as a source of inspiration and a standard, for personal relations and for social justice.

How can we ensure that law and justice, with all the institutions and power holders associated with them, remain inspired by the responsibility of the self for every suffering of the unique other? According to Levinas it is a task for ‘prophetic voices’ to remind the powerful. I quote from Among us, essays on the thinking of the other (1991): ‘One sometimes hears them in the cries that rise from the folds of politics that, independently from official institutions defend “human rights”, sometimes in the songs of poets; sometimes simply in the press and in the public spaces of liberal states ...’. And where justice can never be complete, the ‘small good’ that people can individually and personally muster for each other creeps into the holes that justice cannot fill. The disappearance of the asymmetry of responsibility in the law need not keep people from bringing that asymmetry of responsibility back into their conduct and their charity.


61. Levinas: philosophy of the other

From the traditional centrality of the self in Western philosophy it is difficult to find a foundation for benevolence or altruism. Emmanuel Levinas turns it around: the ethical call for benevolence is primary, precedes the self and all consideration of self-interest, and protection of one’s interests is a compromise on that. One can and in conditions of real life in society inevitably does compromise on the ethical call, but the call remains valid to maintain an ideal of conduct that we should not forget.

For Levinas the feeling of responsibility for the other is not a rational choice but something that happens to you and that you experience as being chosen or ‘elected’ and that makes you unique, irreplaceable for the unique other. The ethical call is to surrender to the other, and to suffer from his suffering, an imperative that precedes all other consideration. Levinas speaks of giving oneself as a ‘hostage’. With this he means that the self becomes ‘victim without being guilty’. Responsibility and dedication to the other go so far that they apply also when the other obstructs or even persecutes one.

In the earlier work of Levinas (Totality and the infinite, 1987), to which I limit myself here, the self is, in first instance, tied to itself, which is in due course experienced as frightening, oppressive, or generates boredom, and evokes an urge to escape. ‘Evasion’ he calls that in one of his earliest works (1982). In his novel More die of heartbreak Saul Bellow speaks of the ‘claustrophobia of consciousness’. The self needs the other to escape from himself not only for cognitive reasons, as I have emphasized earlier in this blog, but also for emotional, spiritual reasons. The opening to the other is, in other words, not only a search but also a flight.

Levinas concludes that the flight from the self requires that we must not judge or approach the other from the perspective of our existing views. If we do that we never get away and beyond our present self. As long as one takes oneself as point of departure in the approach to the other we remain locked up in ourselves. We must be open to the other without evaluating or judging in advance and without the pretension to ever completely grasp the other.

Levinas says that this opening is not ‘receptivity’, in which one remains as one is while receiving the other. We require what Levinas calls ‘passiveness’: one should not determine the terms but surrender to the terms of the other. Levinas uses a metaphor of breathing, and letting oneself be literally inspired (breathed into) by the other. Breathing also is not based on a choice on the basis of an evaluation of what it will yield. It is something you undergo. That is the spirit in which one should set oneself aside. 

Saturday, December 1, 2012


60. Nietzsche’s error

 I endorse Nietzsche’s passionate plea for an affirmation of life, in the flourishing of
the creative and intelligent force of the human being, and transcendence of
the self as the highest expression of the will to power. However, this path is blocked
by his overestimation of the self and his condemnation of morality.

In his Genealogy of morality Nietzsche reconstructed the morality of compassion, altruism and self-sacrifice as a revolt of the weak (‘slaves’) in their resentment against the strong (‘masters’). With the power of the majority, the slaves have appropriated morality, in an alliance with religion, in an exercise of their own will to power. Individual will to power of ‘the strong’ is curtailed by external forces of custom, law and punishment, and thus restrained it turns upon the self, to overwhelm it and to torture it in self-denial. The result is suffocation of the forces of self-realization. The shame that this brings about is diverted to a feeling of virtue in the claim that self-sacrifice is a sacrifice for the sake of a higher religious purpose.

Benevolence is particularly perverse when it turns into pity, which is demeaning to both the subject and the object of pity. It is often an expression of the will to power, in a revenge on the weak, in further degrading the weak, in elevating oneself above the object of pity, and imposing the demand of gratitude and obedience, and inviting applause. For the object of pity the feeling that he has a right to pity deflects attention from his weakness and efforts to overcome it. While in contrast with pity compassion may be genuine, with a concern for the dignity of its object, that still undermines the potential of the strong, detracts from the realization of his potential and negates life.

At a few places, Nietzsche recognizes that the self needs the opposition of others, friends and foes, to escape from illusions of the self (in Human all too human). He makes allowance for altruism between friends who may sufficiently know each other to achieve empathy. This is accompanied, however, by an equilibrium of power. He also allows for benevolence from the master to his slave, in a spontaneous overflow from the bounty of his supremacy. However, these points are swamped by an avalanche of diatribe against compassion, altruism and orientation towards the other. In the preface to his Genealogy of morality Nietzsche says that the ‘regard outside, instead of back to the self, is part of slave morality. …. The real, noble spirit seeks opposition only in order to say yes to himself even more gratefully, with more alacrity’.

The error in this is the following. As I have argued in preceding items of this blog, and will argue further in later items, for transcendence of the self the self needs the other to oppose it, to correct its prejudice and errors, and to extend its mental and spiritual scope. And for that to work one must become a master in empathy and compassion.