THE TRAP OF THE ARGUMENT TO THE OBVIOUS

Shouldn’t we at all times believe our senses? This is the core of what I call the argument to the obvious. It is also a trap, and here is Nietzsche to prove it:

The following is yet another fascinating passage in Nietzsche’s inexhaustible Jenseits (#12): “Materialistic atomism is one of the best refuted theories. Boscovich (an eighteenth-century Dalmatian Jesuit philosopher, who defines atoms not as particles of matter, but, incredibly-- as if he had been born in the twentieth century-- as centers of force!) and Copernicus have been the greatest and most successful opponents of visual evidence so far. Copernicus has persuaded us to believe--- contrary to all the senses--- that the earth does not stand fast. Boscovich has taught us to abjure the belief in substance, in matter, in the earth-residuum and particle-atom.

One must however go further, and also declare war on the Christian soul atomism, the belief that the soul is something eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon. It is not necessary to get rid of the soul at the same time. But the way is open for new versions of the soul-hypothesis.”

It is true that scientific progress has been made possible by Copernicus by the fact of disproving the “facts” of visual evidence. This is yet another substantiation of my theory that science cannot be based on fact, but only on fiction, and that the method of approaching this fiction, shown by Dèscartes, is doubt. (Incidentally, the tragedy of the American method of multiple choice in education is that it makes all scientific progress impossible, rewarding only the kiss-ups to established authority. Under this modern American approach to learning, Copernicus would have received a failing grade for his failure to check the right box, containing the “right” answer, concerning the state of the earth… There goes the diploma, there goes the career! Such methodological incompetence, and the whole philosophical collapse of the American education system, are by no means some sad omission on the part of the educators, many of whom have themselves been raised on the superior Yeshiva method of Talmudic discussion, indispensable to the education of lawyers and, generally speaking, superior thinkers. No wonder that there is so much dependence in this country on either Jewish, or foreign-imported brains, from all those “inferior” countries which have been looked down on, by self-respecting homegrown Americans, never realizing that the question of superiority-inferiority has been all turned inside out.)

There is also this issue of the soul-hypothesis. Whether one likes what Nietzsche says or not, anyone with a decent set of brains has to admire the bold novelty and incisiveness of his question. This reminds me of my own private belief in my younger age, yet never completely discarded since, that the problem of the real, as opposed to the apparent, world had been that both had to be in existence at the same time. I believed, almost Calvinistically (although I never liked Calvin per se) that at any time of history, the earth was populated by a certain number of immortal souls, chosen by the Creator to put their propensity for good and evil to the test, according to the disposition of their free will, but also by the predominant number of mortal souls who were just being there, as fillers of existence, and nothing more. The few chosen, tested ones were all characterized by their superior intelligence, and would all be judged, and sent either to heaven, or to hell. The rest were just their temporary fellow travelers, on their own way “from dust to dust.” This meant to me that, even if the latter had to possess some kind of soul, like the animals, but slightly different, their soul had to be mortal. The ethical challenge posed by such a conception was resolved, in my mind, by the assurance that only the Creator had the knowledge of who were the immortal souls, and who were not, and the ethical obligation of one who had been convinced of being thus chosen for immortality himself was to “love his neighbor,” in the sense of treating him as a fellow immortal. Incidentally, the issue had nothing to do with the kindliness of one’s personal disposition, which could not even discriminate between human beings, wild and domestic animals, and crude inanimate things, because that disposition was radiating from the inside out, and looked upon all creation as this projection of its own soul.

A lot has changed in my thinking since then. I have become less arrogant and assuming in my thinking. It has surely undergone some radical reversals of opinion in a number of matters, and the general rank of my priorities has also changed. Things that used to be important to me before, stopped being important, and other interests and other thoughts have taken their place… I might get back to Nietzsche’s thinking about personal over impersonal preoccupation over occupation, as I used to call it there, the personal-- or subjective-- being the battle of the essential drives to become the master of its host’s thinking process. Likewise, it has been with me. Certain drives and certain preoccupations had indeed given color to my thinking at the time, but have since settled down: the wilder got tamed, the inexperienced and reckless ones had become respectable citizens of my inner world, and the reason why I am now recalling some of those very early thoughts is not so much an old man’s nostalgia for those younger years, as a general philosophical curiosity, which used to be directed outward, for as long as there was little inside, but has since turned inward, when it can find many sunken treasures at the bottom of that previously undiscovered sea.