A BEGGAR OR THE MISTRESS OF THE HOUSE?

Is Philosophy a beggar at the door of science or the real mistress of the house? Such is the question raised by Nietzsche in Jenseits (204). I am afraid that the meaning of this question will be hopelessly lost on the modern reader, and consequently, no coherent answer can be expected to be forthcoming.

It is not without a good reason that I am placing this entry as the last entry in my Contradiction Section. I see Philosophy as the missing link or rather the broken bridge between the real world and the one beyond this life, that is the world of lasting value, untouched by the sleighty hand of a financial genius.

Indeed, our real world has too many Donald Trumps and too few Heraclituses, Platos, and Empedocleses. We have become too sophisticated in the affaires d’argent for our own good. Money-making is the spirit, the goal, the modus of our daily existence, it has become life itself. Who needs culture these days, when a coarse, semi-literate brute has become the symbol of success, the embodiment of the American dream…

His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yeah, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough… Isaiah 56:10-11.

I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth… Ecclesiastes 10:7.
And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast?… Revelation 13:4.

The Contradiction between Capitalism and Christianity is not hidden in the nature of capitalism as-such, but in the propensity of our wonderful Christians to follow its advocates in turning capitalism into an idol for worship. Without a good education, without culture, it is still possible, although difficult, to appreciate the wisdom of the ages, but when human ignorance is accompanied by a contempt for learning (who cares for reading books when an hour of reading does not earn you even the minimum wage!), the case becomes all too hopeless.

“And be not conformed to this world,” says Romans 12:2. “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?” asks James 4:4. How easy it is to take such Biblical passages out of context, assuming that there is no light in learning outside the Holy Scriptures, that all humanistic education is, in fact, a lure of the evil world for the smart alecks, “a mask and picture of the Devil,” to use Martin Luther’s words. It is naïve to suppose that the excesses of the Dark Ages with their insistence on ignorance as a virtue are all behind us trampled into the dust of history. Look what is going on today in the alleged bastions of human civilization. Look at the American school curricula, see what kinds of books are being bought in the stores and read in the libraries. Paraphrasing Alexander Radishchev, “I have looked around myself, and my soul was heavy with the extent of human misery!”

In American Christian churches there exists such a contempt for learning where ignorance disguises itself as a total rejection of “secular” thought. As a result, the Bible too loses its philosophical value, becoming an empty word, pronounced with fake reverence, while its select lines are heard, read, and even memorized, all without comprehension, the latter substituted by the consistent brainwashing of the faithful in the pleasant dogma of the expected sinfulness and the unconditional promise of forgiveness through the blood of Christ, in a last-minute confession and hurried “repentance.”

…So, what does philosophy have to do with this, you ask? Philosophy is much more than Imanuel Kant’s incomprehensible gibberish. It is our love for wisdom, for learning, for higher value than consumer goods and services. It does not preclude a legitimate interest in making money, but it frowns upon money-making as an obsession. Philosophy does not intend to evict all other interests from man’s house, but it desires to be the mistress, not a beggar in that house.

By the same token, there is nothing wrong with capitalism per se as long as it knows its place as an alternative economic function, except when it becomes obsessed with hegemonic power, misrepresenting itself as the predominant global ethical philosophy, the “master of the universe,” and a substitute for God.