Monday, April 28, 2014





143. Forms of nihilism

Here I start a series on nihilism: what does it mean, what forms are there, what responses to it, how can one move beyond nihilism, what did Nietzsche propose for that move, and what is my proposal? Here, I elaborate on item 19 of this blog, with the title ‘Beyond nihilism: Imperfection on the move’. I use bits from a book with that title that I am writing. 

Western culture has harboured a deep urge, and still lingers in that urge, towards the certainty of ideals or values that are objective, i.e. ‘outside’ or independent from human cognition and inclinations, and absolute, that is: universal, unconditional, regardless of conditions and interests, and immutable, in other words applying everywhere and forever. This urge has been shaken by nihilism.

Nihilism is a complex notion, with a variety of meanings and interpretations. Karen Carr gave the overall characterization that I like best: ‘Loss of all sense of contact with what is ultimately true or meaningful’[1]. This loss has led to despair, in a loss of meaning in life, a feeling that life is not worth living. This is called Existential nihilism. It is a derived form of nihilism, following from loss of faith in the old, absolute values, or in human ability to live by them, or both. This can result in despair, if the old ideals are maintained, or in disorientation, if the desirability of the old ideas is in doubt or rejected.[2]

Nihilistic anxiety is not new, and arose before Nietzsche, but the spectre of nihilism manifested itself more openly and radically in his work, and it has been haunting philosophy ever since.

There are different forms of nihilism, according to the type of values lost. Religious nihilism results from loss of God, ontological nihilism from loss of reality as independent from human consciousness, epistemological nihilism from loss of objective knowledge, ethical nihilism from loss of objective morality, and aesthetic nihilism from loss of objective standards of beauty.  

Epistemological nihilism can be traced to the scepticism of the ancient philosopher Pyrrho, and to the later Kantian revolution. According to Kant we can only perceive and interpret the world according to categories of time, space and causality that we impose. We have no access to objective reality as it is in itself. This destroys the correspondence view of truth as a correspondence between ideas and items in reality.

Kant did propound absolute standards of ethics, such as the categorical imperative, a form of the ancient golden rule: do (not) do unto others that you (do not) want done to yourself. The underlying idea is that reasons are sufficient only when based on absolute values, and that reason can grasp them, standing apart from inclinations and interests.

Nietzsche demolished absolutes in all areas, of God, knowledge, ethics and art. The basic idea is that claims to knowledge, ethics and art are always, inevitably, based on some contingent, non-absolute perspective, associated with interests, which could be different but nevertheless yields sufficient reasons. 

For Nietzsche, the point was not only that the old absolutes couldn’t be achieved but, more importantly, that they pervert, thwart life. What room is there for life and humanity, for creativity and invention, and corresponding error, when we are bound by universal, immutable ideas? In particular, Nietzsche rejected the morality of compassion and altruism, as hypocritical, a revolt of the weak against the strong, which destroys excellence and flourishing of life.       

There is a distinction between weak nihilism: regretful loss of belief, and strong nihilism: no longer seeing such belief as desirable. Could one not make a step from disorientation to re-orientation, on the basis of values that are no longer claimed to be objective and/or absolute? Would that still be nihilism?

Nietzsche did not simply reject the old values as irrelevant, deserving indifference, as later postmodernists did (such as Richard Rorty). He also rejected indifference with respect to values, and passiveness, hedonism, and stoicism as an escape from the despair of nihilism. In his view that was as ‘decadent’, i.e. life thwarting, as the old absolutes.

He acknowledged the need for man to seek value and meaning, and rather than rejecting all values that go beyond the self, he sought a ‘Revaluation of all values’, with values that are not absolute and yet contribute to the flourishing of life. This offers an escape from nihilistic despair, but the despair was needed to propel this revaluation. What that revaluation entails I will discuss in a later item in this series. 



[1] Karen Carr, The banalization of nihilism,  State University of New York Press, 1992, p. 2.
[2] I adopt this distinction between despair and disorientation from Bernard Reginster, The affirmation of life; Nietzsche on overcoming nihilism, Harvard University Press, 2006. 
 
 

Monday, April 21, 2014


142. Limits of language

 In item 29 of this blog I proposed that abstract concepts, expressed in words, such as knowledge, memory, meaning, communication, peace, justice, identity, truth, and so on, are modelled in terms of metaphors from objects moving in time and space, while those are not necessarily adequate for that purpose. I called this the ‘object bias’.

I proposed that the inclination to think that way derives from evolution, where survival depended on adequately identifying objects moving in time and space: hunting a prey, being hunted by the sabre-toothed tiger, aiming and tracing projectiles, enemies, etc.

Examples of the bias are the container metaphor (we are ‘in’ love, ‘in’ trouble), the transmission metaphor (communication as ‘sending signals’ along a ‘communication channel’), ‘putting forth’ an argument, ‘retrieving’ a memory, etc.

The object bias concerning the notion of meaning yields the intuition that meaning is constant as it is shifted from one sentence or context of action to another, like a chair being moved from room to room. This masks the context-dependence of meaning.

The object bias also breeds misleading fundamental intuitions such as being as an object rather than as a process, the notion of substance as a ‘carrier’ of characteristics, essence as a defining ingredient. The notion of identity, of a person or culture, is misleadingly felt to require some essence (see items 8 and 9). The notion that something must be inside or outside a category, seen as a container, yields an abhorrence of ambiguity, of being both inside and outside, or neither. Ambiguity is as frightening as a leaking roof, or doubt whether the sabre-toothed tiger is inside or outside the cave.

It is a challenge to expand language and meaning beyond the object bias. In item 36 I discussed how meanings can be ambiguous, context dependent, and subject to change, along the hermeneutic circle. In item 105 I recalled Wittgenstein’s idea of similarity without shared essence, on the basis of family resemblance.   

Montaigne also was sceptical of the ability of language to grasp objective, outside reality, and employed language to express what he saw as an inner reality, in the self-searching of his Essais.

Taoism also, in its own way, was sceptical of language. One aspect of that is notion that the cosmos, the all-encompassing whole of natural forces, is ineffable. That notion of ineffability is familiar also, in the form of an ineffable God, among mystical streams in Christianity and the Islam. According to Taoism it also applies to wisdom. Since that transcends ordinary experience with its misleading linguistic categories, it cannot be entirely or adequately communicated with words.

From Coutinho[1] I learn that Taoism was also aware of what Gilbert Ryle called knowing how vs. knowing what. Knowing how is also known as tacit knowledge. In ordinary life it applies to the skill and artistry of an artisan, a motorcycle mechanic, a painter, or a musician, for example. According to Taoism it also applies to wisdom. Teaching wisdom, as a way of thinking and living, is largely by ostentation, with a master showing how, guiding practice in the training of an apprentice.

Clever metaphors may help to trigger steps in the groping for insight, skill, and mastery, as when in master class for violinists the maestro implores the playing to be ‘more like a mountain stream in spring’. This may help, before we turn away in despair from the rational incomprehensibility of Taoist writing, to explain the preaching of silence and the use of baffling, bewildering metaphors, images and aphorisms in much of it.


[1] Steve Countinho, An introduction to Daoist philosophies, New York, Columbia University Press, 2014.

Monday, April 14, 2014


141. The soft power of Yin

 In Taoism, of the two forces of Yin and Yang, Yin is seen as the most fundamental. This, I believe, connects with the role and importance of trust versus control that I discussed in items 68 to 75 of this blog.

The comparison may work as indicated in the table below.

Yin                                                     Yang
yielding, submission                          conquering, control
à                                                                                                à
cooperation                                        rivalry
altruism                                              egotism

In items 54 and 55 I discussed the intellectual, spiritual and moral importance of collaboration, and in item 66 its economic importance. In item 67 I discussed the ensuing problems of collaboration. Later in this blog, in a series on economics and markets I will elaborate on these themes.

A large literature, in economics and business, has given attention to the tension between collaboration and rivalry, and in dealing with them, the tension between trust and control. Both are needed. Rivalry is needed for achievement, efficiency and innovation from competition. That is Yang.

On the other hand, often mental, spiritual and economic flourishing arise from utilizing differences between people (and organizations), or what I called cognitive distance. That requires an investment that is specific to the relationship, i.e. is lost when the relationship breaks. Thus, the investment will made and will come to fruition only when there is a perspective for a certain duration of the relationship. That requires mutual forbearance and yielding to each others interests, and the the building and maitenance of trust. That is Yin.

So the Yang of innovation and breakthrough needs the Yin of stability, forbearance and trust.

Specific investments create dependence, and a risk of losing the investment if the partner breaks the relationship. There is a Yang way and a Yin way of dealing with such risks of dependence.

The Yang way is power play and control, by hierarchy, in monitoring and imposing constraints on conduct, or by incentives, threats and rewards, to elicit proper conduct. There is an underlying threat of exit, breaking a relationship, when demands are not satisfied.

The Yin way is give and take, in voice, openness in deliberation to identify problems and cooperate to solve them, based on trust.

Yin is certainly the most difficult of the two, requiring wisdom, constraint, and empathy. It is also the most rewarding, in terms of both costs (lower costs of control) and revenues (more depth of relationship), as well as in intrinsic value of the relationship.

Here, as elsewhere, Yin and Yang are complementary, and they meet. Trust needs to begin where control ends and control needs to begin where trust ends. Behind voice there is exit as the last resort. A relationship may begin with control and soften intro trust when things go well. It may begin with trust but gather controls when risks increase or trust meets its limits.

Does the use of the notions of Yin and Yang help in these issues? Perhaps not. But it is still nice, to my taste, to see that some familiar issue in the economy can be fitted into such a wider philosophical matrix. And perhaps, the other way around, this issue of rivalry and collaboration may help to elucidate the notions of Yin and Yang, and to make them more concrete.

Monday, April 7, 2014


140. Montaigne on the move
A central theme in this blog is movement, change: in development, evolution, discovery, and meaning. In preceding items I have been looking at change as an alternation, interaction, a merging and separation, between a principle of stability (Yin) and a principle of impetus (Yang).
Movement plays an important role in the philosophy of Montaigne, in contrast with most other Western philosophers. Might there be a connection with Yin and Yang? Here I make use of a treatise on movement in Montaigne by Jean Starobinsky[1].
Montaigne also holds a cyclical, organic view of change, but he does not reject acting in the world, as Taoism did (in wuwei).

However, having acted in public functions, among others as a member of the parliament of Bordeaux, in 1571, at the age of 38, Montaigne withdrew to the tower of his castle to reflect. He retired from what he saw as the posturing, hypocrisy, bragging, superficiality and mindlessness of public life and discourse.
To his dismay he next discovered that in solitude his thoughts flew off, chaotically, incoherently, in all directions. He realized that he needed some outside anchor to arrest his thoughts in some stability and coherence. He turned to the attempt to capture thoughts in writing them down. This led to his Essais.

Montaigne had a humanist orientation towards justice and empathy towards others, a strong sense of social responsibility, and an orientation towards others as an essential part of life. He granted that any criticism towards others might also be directed against himself.
However, a strong condition for external involvement was the preservation of  his peace of mind and moral integrity. Montaigne remained inward looking, oriented towards the self as the sole arbiter. In my reading he failed to recognize that one needs not merely contributions to society, and receptive readers, but active opposition, in dialogue, as a test of one’s ideas, to escape from one’s own prejudice and blindness, as I have argued in this blog.

Next, Montaigne turned to a contrast between body and mind. The body represents heaviness, inertia, and the mind lightness, impetus. The body is needed to stabilize the mind, and the mind is needed to mobilize the body. Life is a flow of interaction between he two.
I find this interesting because it reminds me of the claim, which I adopted from Damasio (in item 8 of this blog), that it is the coming together of neural and other physiological processes, in embodied cognition, with the body as a focus, a locus of coordinated activity and mental maps, which creates some coherence and stability of identity.   

Montaigne saw movement, in interaction of mind and body, not as continuous movement, somehow in between stability and change, heaviness and lightness, but as an alternation and interaction between the two. And indeed, if one watches an athlete in slow motion, one sees a flow of movement with a rhythmic succession of restraint and release. One sees it also in ballet. I quote Starobinski: ‘.. the paradoxical marriage of passive surrender and active grasp, of relaxation and effort’ (p. 445, my translation).
Montaigne generalizes this to the good life, as an alternation, a feeding into each other, of mental and bodily pause and action, weight and lightness, rational restraint and spontaneous abandon, artifice and nature. As a dance through life.

To me, this is attractive, and it sounds like a description, or perhaps a manifestation, of Yin and Yang.
I would add: it is even better to have dancing partners. It takes two to tango.



[1] Jean Starobinski, Montaigne en movement, Editions Gallimard, 1993 [1982].

Tuesday, April 1, 2014


139. Nietzsche and Eastern philosophy

With Buddhism, Nietzsche shares an engagement with the flux, shift, proliferation and transformation of phenomena in the world, without any absolute, immutable substance, including the self, which has no unified, fixed identity. This entails uncertainty, contingency, vulnerability and suffering.

With Taoism, Nietzsche shares recourse to nature, away from the artefacts of ethics, and of social and cultural rules and rituals (wu-wei, in Taoism). Nietzsche was certainly not a Confucian.

However, Buddhism seeks an escape, yielding rest and serenity, equanimity, in Nirwana. Taoism also seeks the achievement of invulnerability, serenity, in an awareness of the puniness of human life and concerns, a form of indifference, in the perspective of the vastness, all-encompassingness, unendingness, incomprehensibility and ineffability of nature.

In Western philosophy, the Stoics sought such invulnerability and serenity (ataraxia).
For Nietzsche that is escapism, decadence, a denial of life and nature. Nietzsche accepts the flux, uncertainty, strife and pain, as part of life, and as a source of strength, something to be engaged in rather than to be transcended or dodged. 

In the nihilistic rejection of immutable absolutes, as humanly impossible to achieve, or even as undesirable, Nietzsche distinguished between passive nihilism, in submission and a striving for invulnerability, and active nihilism, which engages nihilism, welcomes it as a challenge and opportunity.

With Nietzsche nature culminates in the will to power, a noble combat, an agonistic striving for transformation, not a flight from flux but engagement in it, the making of it. The sorrow and pain of life are to be embraced, to be accepted, in a love of fate, even they were to recur and recur forever.

In his early work, Nietzsche made a distinction between Apollo, as a principle of form, balance, harmony, and serenity, in art, and Dionysus, as a force of nature, creative destruction, rupture of form, and ecstasy, as I discussed in item 81 in this blog. In his later philosophy, of the will to power, Nietzsche was definitely on the Dionysian side.

The dynamism of Dionysus is reminiscent of Tao as a force of nature. For Nietzsche, the Dionysian and the Apollonian alternate, in a cycle, an eternal return of ascent and descent. The eternal return is to be accepted, even rejoiced in, taking the good and the bad.

In two preceding items in this blog I discussed Yin and Yang, where Yin is the movement towards stability, harmony, quiet, integration, nurturing, while Yang is the agonistic, strong, wilful, disintegrating force. Together, in their succession, interaction, and their merging, they drive life and nature. Is there a parallel here with the cycle of the Dionysian and the Apollonian in Nietzsche?   

In this blog I have embraced flux, in what I have called ‘imperfection on the move’, an ongoing striving for perfection without the hope or even desire of ever achieving a final end of rest and perfection. I indicated that while ultimately in Eastern philosophy Yin is the more fundamental principle. I noted that in my ‘cycle of discovery’, in line with my interest in innovation and entrepreneurship, I lean towards Yang. In that, I am a Nietzschean.