An Outline of Beyond Nihilism with sources etc. Source inclusion: A.

Towards a Personal Knowledge of Economic History: Reflections on Our Intellectual Heritage from the Polanyi Brothers Author(s): Lewis E. Hill and Eleanor T. von Ende Source: American Journal of Economics and Sociology -1) make sure to quote them about MP being the greatest epistemology of 20th cen 2) cast doubt on their notion that MP does not care about destruction, about tearing down: We are against Halls notion of a Romantic MP, but the opposite extreme is also untenable. 3) somewhere, give credit the them for the idea of post-critical phil. of hist, and show that epistemology, as they show, is conn. in MP to history(ography) intimately.

Introduction: There is no lack of attention to morality in todays nihilistic climate. This is a problem, for according to traditional ways of thinking, nihilism or any overlooking of traditional values would be un-moral (3). The problem is one of history, of historiography. This is one reason why the problem is so dangerous, because it is not recognized that we do not need more moral fervor per se, but we need to trace the idea to its origins and understand why it has come to be. 1. Judeo-Christian origin of religious passion (not moral, which is totalizing and calls for a total change of society into the New Jerusalem via violence) (4).

2. In the Mediaeval Western Church, provoked by Gregory VII and Urban II (crusade, uprising of people against Church, against feudal lord, against the heathen, etc. with violence), rebellions were launched which were heretical oppositions against all established authority (established their own authority, proclaimed their own Messiahs, etc.). In other words, the orthodox Christian tension between this worlds way of life (the State) and the hope for the eschaton was snapped, and the moral passion for the New Jerusalem had its flip-side in a violent hatred for all worldly authority. This hatred would be put into action with no restraint, since the Last Judgement is being held. A downward spiral, a dynamic element of decline is suggested: The pseudo-Christian moral police demand a new leader who perfectly embodies transcendent virtues, but this leader will not have any traditional political channels of compromise, and must survive by proclaiming itself to be the ultimate good, beyond good and evil (4). So far we have a prelude to the full manifestation of Western nihilism: 1) legitimate, moral Christianity and society, 2) violent Mediaeval moral revolt, and 3) immoralist superman leadership progressively more totalitarian and nihilist. 3. Nihilism proper: A. Secularization of Europe in the 1700s. 1) Scientific outlook, 2) rejection of all religious and traditional authority in the name of pure rationalism and skepticism, the latter will of course lead man to perfection on earth (5). B. Rousseau 1) He pushed the contradiction (the rejection of all human culture will lead a perfect human culture) to its logical conclusion: All men are slaves due to the progress of the human mind. The present age is utterly corrupt, an age of dung following the previous golden age, where men were perfect without culture: he poured into the channels of

rationalism a fierce passion for humanity (6) which kept expanding with time (secular dynamism). Rousseau showed forth the way which secular moral passion would develop: more and more fervent fanaticism, directed not only against religion but also against human society in general. This was new. 2) His prognostication went further: His general will society based on supposed liberty turned out to be just as totalitarian as Hobbes Leviathan! (6-7). See Social Contract 15-16. The freedom of the general will is just as absolute as that of private wills, and if the latter conflicts with the former, these individuals must be coerced or exterminated! [T]he sovereign being established in both cases as the sole arbiter of the contract between the citizens and itself (6). Conclusion: the demand for total freedom leads to collectivist absolutism. Interlude: All this time, the logic of Hobbes and Rousseau was suspended by disregarding the question as to who would arbitrate between the government and the citizens (7). 4. French Revolution: never before had the deliberate contriving of unlimited social improvement been elevated to a dominant principle (7). Voltaire and his ilk never dreamed that the consequences of their ideas would help to transform the emotional personality of man (7). In other words, Romanticism was the result of Enlightenment philosophy. Rousseaus critique of fallen society was through a telling of his own life, a defiant assertion of radical individual immoralism (8). Calm hedonism of garden cultivating was transformed in Rousseau into a defiance of human culture and the de-valuing of anything outside of himself. 5. Nationalism: Romantic individualism mixed with the organicist notion of the state, resulting in nationalism. States had a

right to, through power and force, realize their individual destinies, just as individual persons do. So far: 1) distorted, secular Christian fervor combined with 2) skeptical rationalism. Result: Nationalism, Nazism, and Fascism. Another view of it: 1) Stage one: intellectual secularization spread new anti-trad. view of society and world while evoking strong passions and calling for total change of society. 2) Stage two: Dynamic political action: the historical course which released these emotions. Thoughts were transformed into ideologies, or fighting creeds (11). Society is mere convention and if it is bad, it must immediately be changed to a good society and any who oppose your own conception of how to change it is by definition guilty of high treason and must be eliminated. By the way, total power is needed to make the total change which the individuals supreme rationality has formulated (13). This is moral inversion: moral passions go from being a means to an eschatological end to being ends in themselves. Thus Robespierre appeals to the burning sensation in his auditors breasts to justify their support of his totalitarian regime. 6. After the French Revolution, the next step was 1) Utilitarianism, for the rationalist critique of moral sentiment kills all transcendent ideals. Now, as Bentham would have it, Utility is the supreme object (14). This is a scientific morality, which put forth insane plans for societal reform which became more and more associated with science! The more scientific these utilitarian dreams became, the louder was the cry for society to totally submit to its unimpeachable authority (15). 2) The professional revolutionary (see Billington) was the radically scientized result of the Rousseau-ian Romantic. Thus they were morally dedicated to commit any act of

treachery, blackmail, or cruelty in the service of a programme of universal destruction (15). Also see Billington for the support of the utilitarian/revolutionary notion that total destruction of the existing order was all that was required to make the new perfect society and that no moral qualms should be felt because the whole thing was predestined to happen anyway. 3) MarxismAs an ideology, it justified itself against opposition by appealing to its own closed system of logic and also by declaring opposition as unscientific. By endowing a machinery of history with the power to bring social salvation, [Marx] imbued its mechanism with all the passions of utopia. Hatred of capitalism, of its icy cashnexus and of the wicked exploitation of the workers, and, correspondingly, the hopes of socialist brotherhood, were injected with all their frvour in the Marxist mechanism and made thee passions serve this mechanism as its fuel. [M]oral perfectionism is protected against skepticism by being embodied in a mechanical process (Why Destroy Europe, 913, 914). Think of Wilson getting laughed out of town by Lenin because the President dared to speak of transcendent virtues which he wanted to guide the world toward. Moral inversion: Robespierres noble egoism is transformed to a call for total destruction of the existing human society through a violence beyond good and evil (16). Violence as a total denial of conventional morality and convention is the only honest mode of political action. The Surrealists, led by Breton, were revolutionaries who perpetrated aimless crimes as total subversion in the early twenties. Soon they joined the Communists as a progression from their earlier private protests to a communal expression of their individuality a la Rousseau (Why Destroy Europe, 915). 4) French existentialism: the triumph over conscience. p.17

5) Nazism and the Great War: The End of the Liberal Ideal. If there is no God says Kiriloff in the Brothers Karamasov, then man is compelled to demonstrate his independent will, and Kiriloff demonstrats [sic] this sovereign will, by committing suicide (Why Destroy Europe, 913). 7. <Segue into chapter 3: Excursus on Polanyis Christianity: fill in later with the main point that though moral passion is inconceivable apart from a Judeo-Christian eschatological background, it is not a necessary development, but a specific Western development (Yannaras). In fact, a naturalistic view of man led the moral inverters to make all moral motives immanent, which modulated them into an non-human key since there were no traditional social or religious moorings to contextualize moral impulses. It is a fervent, fanatical worship of a system which tries to accomplish a perfect society outside of values and morality. (17-18)>