Dec 24, 2023 07:34 AM
(This post was last modified: Dec 24, 2023 06:26 PM by C C.)
https://aeon.co/essays/since-when-is-phi...p-industry
EXCERPTS: . . . In the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche, greatly influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer, wrote in an aphoristic style, expressing his ideas – often as they came to him – in bursts of energetic prose. There are very few philosophers who have managed to capture the importance and intellectual rigour of philosophy while being as impassioned and poetic as Nietzsche. Perhaps this accounts for his enduring appeal among readers, though it would also account for the scepticism he often faces in more analytical traditions, where Nietzsche is not always treated as a ‘serious’ philosopher.
[...] Adrian Moore ... laments the rise in specialisation, noting that, while specialists might be necessary in some instances, ‘there’s a danger that [philosophy] will end up not being pursued at all, in any meaningfully integrated way.’
[...] By demoting the significance of generalised thinking, the connective tissue that naturally exists between various disciplines is obscured. One is expected, instead, to abide by the methodologies inherent in their field...
[...] To narrow one’s approach to knowledge to any one field, any one area of specialisation, is to reduce one’s view of the world to the regulations of competing discourses, trivialising knowledge as something reducible to a methodology. Under such conditions, knowledge is merely a vessel, a code or a tool, something to be mastered and manipulated.
By moving away from a more generalised focus, philosophy became increasingly detached from the more poetic style that nourished its spirit. James Miller, for instance, called pre-20th-century philosophy a ‘species of poetry’.
Nietzsche’s own unique, poetic writing style can account for much of the renown his ideas continue to receive (and also much of the criticism levelled at him by other philosophers). Reading Nietzsche may at times be arduous and convoluted, but it is never dull. Indeed, Tamsin Shaw spoke of Nietzsche as less a philosopher and more a ‘philosopher-poet’. Jean-Paul Sartre called him ‘a poet who had the misfortune of having been taken for a philosopher’.
[...] In an age dominated by self-help, the cult of Silicon Valley and the normalisation of excessive wealth, philosophers have been demoted, replaced with ‘thought leaders’ and think tanks, influencers and entrepreneurs. Kiran Kodithala, in his article ‘Becoming the Übermensch’ (2019), even sees Nietzsche’s Übermensch as an entrepreneur, providing a particularly egregious interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy:
For Kodithala, Steve Jobs can be seen as one possible incarnation of Nietzsche’s elusive Übermensch, in large part due to his dogged pursuit of creativity against considerable hardships. Yet Nietzsche would have baulked at the implication, while admonishing society’s celebration of tech moguls like Jobs and Elon Musk, who have simply reinforced the status quo under the guise of entrepreneurship, rather than disrupting it. These were not the individuals that Nietzsche had in mind when he theorised the Übermensch, a concept that applied less to a specific individual than to an idea. Had Nietzsche intended for the Übermensch to apply to a specific person or persons, he would have reserved it for the greatest artists only.
For Nietzsche, art exists as the purest form of self-expression, and he held in the highest esteem figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Goethe and Schopenhauer who, he felt, exhibited the intrinsic spirit of self-overcoming. In the 21st century, creativity has been co-opted by industries of capital, and the very idea of ‘greatness’ has lost its meaning, increasingly applied to those who, Nietzsche would have argued, do nothing but defile culture and tarnish the very idea of creativity. Creativity is not rewarded as an end in itself, but merely as a method to accrue capital.
Or, as Jenny Odell puts it in How to Do Nothing (2019), art, philosophy and poetry struggle to survive ‘in a system that only values the bottom line’; such pursuits ‘cannot be tolerated because they cannot be used or appropriated, and provide no deliverables.’ To this end, great philosophical works have been replaced by pop philosophy books that are more closely associated to the self-help industry than to philosophy itself.
[...] There is a disconnect between philosophy as it was practised by the likes of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Kant, and what readers are being offered today. Corporatisation and commercialisation have not only dulled people’s tolerance for critical thinking but have warped their expectations about what it means to read philosophy, seeing it only as something that can make them happier. But as Monk reminds us: ‘Philosophy doesn’t make you happy and it shouldn’t. Why should philosophy be consoling?’
Nietzsche himself recognised that philosophy can be an unsettling endeavour. In his final book, Ecce Homo, he claimed that philosophy is ‘a voluntary retirement into regions of ice and mountain-peaks – the seeking-out of everything strange and questionable in existence.’ He wrote: ‘One must be built for it, otherwise the chances are that it will chill him.’
In 2005, two years before his death, Richard Rorty similarly noted that ‘philosophy is not something that human beings embark on out of an inborn sense of wonder …’ Instead, Rorty believed that philosophy is ‘something [people] are forced into when they have trouble reconciling the old and the new, the imagination of their ancestors with that of their more enterprising contemporaries.’ David Hall once argued that:
Philosophy, of course, is not meant to be for everyone, and Nietzsche knew this. It is easy to see why Bertrand Russell felt that Nietzsche was elitist, when Nietzsche claimed: ‘These alone are my readers, my rightful readers, my predestined readers: what do the rest matter? – The rest are merely mankind.’
Yet, in many ways, Nietzsche’s works exemplify philosophy at its best. They were not academic in nature, but nor were they overtly commercial. They were impassioned works of tremendous literary force.
Nietzsche did not see himself as a philosopher in the traditional sense, which helps to explain his unconventional place in philosophical history. But Nietzsche nevertheless saw himself as part of a collective. While Borgmann seemed to pit scientists against each other in an ongoing battle of one-upmanship, Nietzsche recognised that he was drawing on those who came before, and that his own readers would likewise draw on him. In Daybreak (1881), one of his earliest and most underrated works, he writes:
Nietzsche has indeed influenced a slew of successive thinkers, though no other philosopher since has had such an enduring impact. Clearly, our century’s emphasis on quantified knowledge, specialisation and marketability has created an intellectual climate that not only devalues philosophical thought, but has turned philosophy itself into something it was never supposed to be... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: . . . In the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche, greatly influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer, wrote in an aphoristic style, expressing his ideas – often as they came to him – in bursts of energetic prose. There are very few philosophers who have managed to capture the importance and intellectual rigour of philosophy while being as impassioned and poetic as Nietzsche. Perhaps this accounts for his enduring appeal among readers, though it would also account for the scepticism he often faces in more analytical traditions, where Nietzsche is not always treated as a ‘serious’ philosopher.
[...] Adrian Moore ... laments the rise in specialisation, noting that, while specialists might be necessary in some instances, ‘there’s a danger that [philosophy] will end up not being pursued at all, in any meaningfully integrated way.’
[...] By demoting the significance of generalised thinking, the connective tissue that naturally exists between various disciplines is obscured. One is expected, instead, to abide by the methodologies inherent in their field...
[...] To narrow one’s approach to knowledge to any one field, any one area of specialisation, is to reduce one’s view of the world to the regulations of competing discourses, trivialising knowledge as something reducible to a methodology. Under such conditions, knowledge is merely a vessel, a code or a tool, something to be mastered and manipulated.
By moving away from a more generalised focus, philosophy became increasingly detached from the more poetic style that nourished its spirit. James Miller, for instance, called pre-20th-century philosophy a ‘species of poetry’.
Nietzsche’s own unique, poetic writing style can account for much of the renown his ideas continue to receive (and also much of the criticism levelled at him by other philosophers). Reading Nietzsche may at times be arduous and convoluted, but it is never dull. Indeed, Tamsin Shaw spoke of Nietzsche as less a philosopher and more a ‘philosopher-poet’. Jean-Paul Sartre called him ‘a poet who had the misfortune of having been taken for a philosopher’.
[...] In an age dominated by self-help, the cult of Silicon Valley and the normalisation of excessive wealth, philosophers have been demoted, replaced with ‘thought leaders’ and think tanks, influencers and entrepreneurs. Kiran Kodithala, in his article ‘Becoming the Übermensch’ (2019), even sees Nietzsche’s Übermensch as an entrepreneur, providing a particularly egregious interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophy:
According to Nietzsche, becoming ubermensch is quite simple. His recipe is to believe in yourself and stop worrying about the world. The status quo will always resist change, the society will always call you crazy, some might even label you a narcissist, and a few might call you naive for coming up with radical ideas.
For Kodithala, Steve Jobs can be seen as one possible incarnation of Nietzsche’s elusive Übermensch, in large part due to his dogged pursuit of creativity against considerable hardships. Yet Nietzsche would have baulked at the implication, while admonishing society’s celebration of tech moguls like Jobs and Elon Musk, who have simply reinforced the status quo under the guise of entrepreneurship, rather than disrupting it. These were not the individuals that Nietzsche had in mind when he theorised the Übermensch, a concept that applied less to a specific individual than to an idea. Had Nietzsche intended for the Übermensch to apply to a specific person or persons, he would have reserved it for the greatest artists only.
For Nietzsche, art exists as the purest form of self-expression, and he held in the highest esteem figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Goethe and Schopenhauer who, he felt, exhibited the intrinsic spirit of self-overcoming. In the 21st century, creativity has been co-opted by industries of capital, and the very idea of ‘greatness’ has lost its meaning, increasingly applied to those who, Nietzsche would have argued, do nothing but defile culture and tarnish the very idea of creativity. Creativity is not rewarded as an end in itself, but merely as a method to accrue capital.
Or, as Jenny Odell puts it in How to Do Nothing (2019), art, philosophy and poetry struggle to survive ‘in a system that only values the bottom line’; such pursuits ‘cannot be tolerated because they cannot be used or appropriated, and provide no deliverables.’ To this end, great philosophical works have been replaced by pop philosophy books that are more closely associated to the self-help industry than to philosophy itself.
[...] There is a disconnect between philosophy as it was practised by the likes of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Kant, and what readers are being offered today. Corporatisation and commercialisation have not only dulled people’s tolerance for critical thinking but have warped their expectations about what it means to read philosophy, seeing it only as something that can make them happier. But as Monk reminds us: ‘Philosophy doesn’t make you happy and it shouldn’t. Why should philosophy be consoling?’
Nietzsche himself recognised that philosophy can be an unsettling endeavour. In his final book, Ecce Homo, he claimed that philosophy is ‘a voluntary retirement into regions of ice and mountain-peaks – the seeking-out of everything strange and questionable in existence.’ He wrote: ‘One must be built for it, otherwise the chances are that it will chill him.’
In 2005, two years before his death, Richard Rorty similarly noted that ‘philosophy is not something that human beings embark on out of an inborn sense of wonder …’ Instead, Rorty believed that philosophy is ‘something [people] are forced into when they have trouble reconciling the old and the new, the imagination of their ancestors with that of their more enterprising contemporaries.’ David Hall once argued that:
It is the primary function of the practising philosopher to articulate cultural self-understanding. And if the philosopher fails to provide such an understanding, he fails in the task that is his very raison d’être.
Philosophy, of course, is not meant to be for everyone, and Nietzsche knew this. It is easy to see why Bertrand Russell felt that Nietzsche was elitist, when Nietzsche claimed: ‘These alone are my readers, my rightful readers, my predestined readers: what do the rest matter? – The rest are merely mankind.’
Yet, in many ways, Nietzsche’s works exemplify philosophy at its best. They were not academic in nature, but nor were they overtly commercial. They were impassioned works of tremendous literary force.
Nietzsche did not see himself as a philosopher in the traditional sense, which helps to explain his unconventional place in philosophical history. But Nietzsche nevertheless saw himself as part of a collective. While Borgmann seemed to pit scientists against each other in an ongoing battle of one-upmanship, Nietzsche recognised that he was drawing on those who came before, and that his own readers would likewise draw on him. In Daybreak (1881), one of his earliest and most underrated works, he writes:
All our great mentors and precursors have finally come to a stop, and it is hardly the noblest and most graceful of gestures with which fatigue comes to a stop: it will also happen to you and me! Of what concern, however, is that to you and me! Other birds will fly farther!
Nietzsche has indeed influenced a slew of successive thinkers, though no other philosopher since has had such an enduring impact. Clearly, our century’s emphasis on quantified knowledge, specialisation and marketability has created an intellectual climate that not only devalues philosophical thought, but has turned philosophy itself into something it was never supposed to be... (MORE - missing details)
