Talking about the concept of International Justice, one cannot be that naïve as to suggest that the time will come one day that all national laws will be effectively abolished to give way to a universal law, one justice for all the world, so to speak. The ideas of justice differ from nation to nation, depending on their cultural background and various other circumstances. By the time I am through with this section, I intend to have proven that the cultural differences may not be quite as incompatible as the other kind, pitching the world nations to the opposite sides of the fence, according to the oldest and most irreconcilable of all divisions of the rich against the poor.
As long as the wealth of the richest nations has not started to be distributed equitably, and with equanimity, by the United Nations (which utopian dream of the poor nations I am by no means advocating here, such a dream being too naïve to possess any practical value), the rich and the poor shall always be divided, not just politically, but, even more importantly, psychologically. They subscribe to two quite different sets of social morality, and not exactly what Nietzsche is calling master and slave morality. As a matter of fact, the rich may possess the traits of slave morality to a much larger extent than the poor, while many poor nations are closer in theirs to Nietzsche’s understanding of master morality.
(This point is discussed at length in several places throughout my book, and for reference I am providing, at the end of this entry, an excerpt from one still unposted, and another in toto, which was posted previously on January 17, 2011 in a cluster of entries under the joint title Survival Of The Fittest. )
Along these lines, the justice of the poor may contain a bias of resentment toward the rich, and the justice of the rich may be too condescending and insensitive toward the poor. The laws of the wealthy are certain to contain many more provisions for the protection of private property, and are always aimed at the stability of their financial institutions. The laws of the poor, on the other hand, tend to be more collective-friendly, but less individual-friendly, and so on.
Considering that justice is an expression of morality, one justice for all appears like a utopian proposition as well, until we are ready to accept the fact that the reality of international justice can amicably coexist with a multitude of national justices, by virtue of the same principle that, say, the state laws in the United States of America coexist with the federal law. If the American North and South were able to coexist for some three quarters of a century, before the Civil War, under the common umbrella of the federal law, it can only mean that the practicality of the idea of International Justice may not be so pathetically far-fetched, as it appears at first sight. So what if the Eskimos, for instance, have nineteen different words for our one word snow? It does not follow that either they have to abandon eighteen of theirs, or that every African nation has to start looking at the snow as the Eskimos do. The principle of basic relevance will decide, in the case of common justice, which of the respectively contradictory laws are relevant to the development of the common ground and which are irrelevant and can be left alone. It is only in the extreme cases of a fundamental contradiction when some radical readjustment will have to be made, but such cases will be few and their resolution on the basis of their exceptionality, provided that there is a common will to overcome the differences, cannot, and must not, become an impassable stumbling block.
Thus, it is actually possible to reconcile the justice of the rich with the justice of the poor without having to integrate one into the other, or something like that. But such a reconciliation can only be possible when our dissimilar systems of justice are prepared for it, an internal fine tuning of sorts has taken place, promising a mutual tolerance.
So, here I go again, returning to the most unfortunate situation with the International Courts at The Hague. Ironically, most poor nations have embraced this product of the rich European fancy, yet one of their own, the United States, has chosen to repudiate it, spelling a severe internal discord, and the inevitability of the ultimate failure.
It is therefore the most natural conclusion that, before any collective attempt at developing an international justice system can be made, the family issue of the ICJ plus ICC, at The Hague, must be settled between the European Democracies and their detractor-in-chief the United States of America.
An Excerpt From My Still Unposted Entry Master And Slave Morality.
...There is a very delicate line of thought followed here, which may be seriously impaired or even misread, if we pursue it out of simplicity and philosophical complacency. On the surface of it, “master morality” ought to be preferable to “slave morality,” as we are psychologically conditioned to assume that a master is higher than a slave. Master morality is thus associated with higher morality, whereas slave morality is a creature of resentment and submission molded into one. Someone like Uriah Heep is thus a perfect example of a slave, whereas, say, Sarastro of Mozart’s Zauberflöte is a perfect example of a master. Next, we quickly come to realize that a master in life can be a slave at heart and vice versa. Those Roman Emperors who were merely pawns of the Praetorian Guard, installed and dismissed at the whim of the latter, must have been base slaves at heart, whereas the real-life slave Spartacus, or all those famous and not so famous Greek slaves employed by their Roman masters to educate and enlighten their children could not possibly be slaves at heart, but had to be something close to a master personality, and therefore in possession of master morality...
Master And Slave As The Chicken And The Egg.
As an afterthought, I would like to keep on going on the subject of Nietzsche’s master and slave moralities, which he discusses first in his Menschliches (45), then in Jenseits (260), and later at length throughout his Genealogie, and elsewhere.
Here is another interesting variation on the master-slave dichotomy. I wonder if Nietzsche ever considered the synchronic versus diachronic question of causal coincidence or precedence of the two moralities? Can ‘slave morality’ be considered just as inborn as ‘master morality,’ boiling down to the distinction between the strong and the weak, both of which are to be seen as synchronously normal forms of human existence? In that case, strong and weak are like tall and strong, or dark and blond, nothing more than two alternative variants of the species, and the difference between their respective moralities, even if it is as pronounced as our friend Nietzsche would like us to believe, is purely coincidental, or even existential, in case morality is seen as an existential mode determined by the congenital qualities of strength or weakness.
Should we however wish to subscribe to the Darwinian survival of the fittest theory, while understanding by the term fittest a natural selection of the strongest members of the human race, the coincidence of weakness could be characterized merely as the least viable byproduct of human civilization, which in such a case will legitimize the enduring persistence of human weakness, but only by presenting weakness as a recurring birth defect, in which case, slave morality is no longer one of the two alternative norms, but a totally derivative type of morality, connoting a mental readjustment of the dominant master morality to a life with that birth defect.
But the argument does not end there. In the animal kingdom, where the most basic type of the survival of the fittest rules, yet where from the outset there are the predators and the prey, the coyotes and the rabbits, the wolves and the lambs, the ones ‘discharging their strength’ and motivated by their aggression, and the others… what? Do rabbits and all those animals who are not carnivores, and have been born to be hunted by other beasts, have some kind of innate instinct of self-preservation, which allows them to stay alive as a species, and not to be eaten in toto off the face of the earth?
Now, if the life purpose of the victims, such as rabbits, is to perpetuate their species as food for the beasts of prey, and in order to fulfill this purpose they have been endowed with a greater than average proclivity for procreation, how is this excessive fertility talent to be justified, or forcibly restrained, under Isaiah 65:25?--- (“The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock… They shall not hurt, nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord.”)
Transposing Isaiah’s vision from the animals to the world of human strengths or weaknesses, as pertinent to our discussion, it is possible to visualize the strong acting “like weak” in the Isaiahan creation. I am curious, however, as to how this act of willpower affects their master morality, that is, whether their “new morality” now becomes something else (I cannot even imagine the “like-weak” by choice to adopt the slave morality of the weak by necessity!). By the same token, how does the new world affect the morality of the weak? It is not possible for the weak to become strong in the new creation as, in that case, the strength or the weakness are only a matter of choice, and slave morality is an instrument of dissimulation, which reduces the morality of the weak to a reprehensible vice, rather than allowing it to perpetuate as an alternative type of acceptable morality. I can compare this to Isaiah’s lamb, who does not turn himself into a lion, nor stops being a lamb, but carries on his old role, this time, however, without the urge to flee from the wolf, that is, without fear.
Here, in this absence of fear, is probably the answer. The lamb has no more fear of the wolf not because of his sudden and independent change of attitude, but as a result of the change in the attitude of the wolf which has been made demonstrable and convincing to the lamb.
Considering that generally speaking, the strong instill fear, while the weak are fear’s victims, the absence of fear changes the equation quite radically and both the master morality of the strong and the slave morality of the weak are to undergo a substantial change, resulting from the removal of the fear factor.
Furthermore, taking into account the fact that the above-described change did not make the strong weaker, nor the weak, stronger, but that the removal of fear was dependent on the actively changing attitude of the strong, and the changing attitude of the weak was in this case demonstrably reactive, we can conclude that slave morality is derivative from master morality, which solves the case of the chicken and the egg… Or is it a case of non sequitur? Let us ask this question out of curiosity, but without a rush to get it answered right away.
As long as the wealth of the richest nations has not started to be distributed equitably, and with equanimity, by the United Nations (which utopian dream of the poor nations I am by no means advocating here, such a dream being too naïve to possess any practical value), the rich and the poor shall always be divided, not just politically, but, even more importantly, psychologically. They subscribe to two quite different sets of social morality, and not exactly what Nietzsche is calling master and slave morality. As a matter of fact, the rich may possess the traits of slave morality to a much larger extent than the poor, while many poor nations are closer in theirs to Nietzsche’s understanding of master morality.
(This point is discussed at length in several places throughout my book, and for reference I am providing, at the end of this entry, an excerpt from one still unposted, and another in toto, which was posted previously on January 17, 2011 in a cluster of entries under the joint title Survival Of The Fittest. )
Along these lines, the justice of the poor may contain a bias of resentment toward the rich, and the justice of the rich may be too condescending and insensitive toward the poor. The laws of the wealthy are certain to contain many more provisions for the protection of private property, and are always aimed at the stability of their financial institutions. The laws of the poor, on the other hand, tend to be more collective-friendly, but less individual-friendly, and so on.
Considering that justice is an expression of morality, one justice for all appears like a utopian proposition as well, until we are ready to accept the fact that the reality of international justice can amicably coexist with a multitude of national justices, by virtue of the same principle that, say, the state laws in the United States of America coexist with the federal law. If the American North and South were able to coexist for some three quarters of a century, before the Civil War, under the common umbrella of the federal law, it can only mean that the practicality of the idea of International Justice may not be so pathetically far-fetched, as it appears at first sight. So what if the Eskimos, for instance, have nineteen different words for our one word snow? It does not follow that either they have to abandon eighteen of theirs, or that every African nation has to start looking at the snow as the Eskimos do. The principle of basic relevance will decide, in the case of common justice, which of the respectively contradictory laws are relevant to the development of the common ground and which are irrelevant and can be left alone. It is only in the extreme cases of a fundamental contradiction when some radical readjustment will have to be made, but such cases will be few and their resolution on the basis of their exceptionality, provided that there is a common will to overcome the differences, cannot, and must not, become an impassable stumbling block.
Thus, it is actually possible to reconcile the justice of the rich with the justice of the poor without having to integrate one into the other, or something like that. But such a reconciliation can only be possible when our dissimilar systems of justice are prepared for it, an internal fine tuning of sorts has taken place, promising a mutual tolerance.
So, here I go again, returning to the most unfortunate situation with the International Courts at The Hague. Ironically, most poor nations have embraced this product of the rich European fancy, yet one of their own, the United States, has chosen to repudiate it, spelling a severe internal discord, and the inevitability of the ultimate failure.
It is therefore the most natural conclusion that, before any collective attempt at developing an international justice system can be made, the family issue of the ICJ plus ICC, at The Hague, must be settled between the European Democracies and their detractor-in-chief the United States of America.
An Excerpt From My Still Unposted Entry Master And Slave Morality.
...There is a very delicate line of thought followed here, which may be seriously impaired or even misread, if we pursue it out of simplicity and philosophical complacency. On the surface of it, “master morality” ought to be preferable to “slave morality,” as we are psychologically conditioned to assume that a master is higher than a slave. Master morality is thus associated with higher morality, whereas slave morality is a creature of resentment and submission molded into one. Someone like Uriah Heep is thus a perfect example of a slave, whereas, say, Sarastro of Mozart’s Zauberflöte is a perfect example of a master. Next, we quickly come to realize that a master in life can be a slave at heart and vice versa. Those Roman Emperors who were merely pawns of the Praetorian Guard, installed and dismissed at the whim of the latter, must have been base slaves at heart, whereas the real-life slave Spartacus, or all those famous and not so famous Greek slaves employed by their Roman masters to educate and enlighten their children could not possibly be slaves at heart, but had to be something close to a master personality, and therefore in possession of master morality...
Master And Slave As The Chicken And The Egg.
As an afterthought, I would like to keep on going on the subject of Nietzsche’s master and slave moralities, which he discusses first in his Menschliches (45), then in Jenseits (260), and later at length throughout his Genealogie, and elsewhere.
Here is another interesting variation on the master-slave dichotomy. I wonder if Nietzsche ever considered the synchronic versus diachronic question of causal coincidence or precedence of the two moralities? Can ‘slave morality’ be considered just as inborn as ‘master morality,’ boiling down to the distinction between the strong and the weak, both of which are to be seen as synchronously normal forms of human existence? In that case, strong and weak are like tall and strong, or dark and blond, nothing more than two alternative variants of the species, and the difference between their respective moralities, even if it is as pronounced as our friend Nietzsche would like us to believe, is purely coincidental, or even existential, in case morality is seen as an existential mode determined by the congenital qualities of strength or weakness.
Should we however wish to subscribe to the Darwinian survival of the fittest theory, while understanding by the term fittest a natural selection of the strongest members of the human race, the coincidence of weakness could be characterized merely as the least viable byproduct of human civilization, which in such a case will legitimize the enduring persistence of human weakness, but only by presenting weakness as a recurring birth defect, in which case, slave morality is no longer one of the two alternative norms, but a totally derivative type of morality, connoting a mental readjustment of the dominant master morality to a life with that birth defect.
But the argument does not end there. In the animal kingdom, where the most basic type of the survival of the fittest rules, yet where from the outset there are the predators and the prey, the coyotes and the rabbits, the wolves and the lambs, the ones ‘discharging their strength’ and motivated by their aggression, and the others… what? Do rabbits and all those animals who are not carnivores, and have been born to be hunted by other beasts, have some kind of innate instinct of self-preservation, which allows them to stay alive as a species, and not to be eaten in toto off the face of the earth?
Now, if the life purpose of the victims, such as rabbits, is to perpetuate their species as food for the beasts of prey, and in order to fulfill this purpose they have been endowed with a greater than average proclivity for procreation, how is this excessive fertility talent to be justified, or forcibly restrained, under Isaiah 65:25?--- (“The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock… They shall not hurt, nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord.”)
Transposing Isaiah’s vision from the animals to the world of human strengths or weaknesses, as pertinent to our discussion, it is possible to visualize the strong acting “like weak” in the Isaiahan creation. I am curious, however, as to how this act of willpower affects their master morality, that is, whether their “new morality” now becomes something else (I cannot even imagine the “like-weak” by choice to adopt the slave morality of the weak by necessity!). By the same token, how does the new world affect the morality of the weak? It is not possible for the weak to become strong in the new creation as, in that case, the strength or the weakness are only a matter of choice, and slave morality is an instrument of dissimulation, which reduces the morality of the weak to a reprehensible vice, rather than allowing it to perpetuate as an alternative type of acceptable morality. I can compare this to Isaiah’s lamb, who does not turn himself into a lion, nor stops being a lamb, but carries on his old role, this time, however, without the urge to flee from the wolf, that is, without fear.
Here, in this absence of fear, is probably the answer. The lamb has no more fear of the wolf not because of his sudden and independent change of attitude, but as a result of the change in the attitude of the wolf which has been made demonstrable and convincing to the lamb.
Considering that generally speaking, the strong instill fear, while the weak are fear’s victims, the absence of fear changes the equation quite radically and both the master morality of the strong and the slave morality of the weak are to undergo a substantial change, resulting from the removal of the fear factor.
Furthermore, taking into account the fact that the above-described change did not make the strong weaker, nor the weak, stronger, but that the removal of fear was dependent on the actively changing attitude of the strong, and the changing attitude of the weak was in this case demonstrably reactive, we can conclude that slave morality is derivative from master morality, which solves the case of the chicken and the egg… Or is it a case of non sequitur? Let us ask this question out of curiosity, but without a rush to get it answered right away.
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