Philosophy and the Social Problem

by Will Durant

5
Degeneration

What kind of men is to be found in such a society? Mediocre men; men stupid to the point of sanctity; fragile, useless souls-de-luxe; men suffering from a sort of hemiplegia of virtue,—that is to say, paralyzed in the self-assertive instincts; men tamed, almost emasculated by a morality whose essence is the abdication of the will.[194] Now, as a rule, the taming of a beast is achieved only by deteriorating it; so too the moral man is not a better man, he is rather a weaker member of his species. He is altruistic, of course; that is, he feels that he needs help. There is no place for really great men in this march towards nonentity; if a great man appears he is called a criminal.[195] A Periclean Greek, a Renaissance Florentine, would breathe like one asphyxiated in this moralic acid atmosphere; the first condition of life for such a man is that he free himself from this Chinadom of the spirit.[196] But the number of those who are capable of rising into the pure air of unmoralism is very small; and those who have made timid sallies into theological heresy are the most addicted to the comfort and security of ethical orthodoxy. In short, men are coming to look upon lowered vitality as the heart of virtue; and morality will be saddled with the guilt if the maximum potentiality of the power and splendor of the human species should never be attained.[197]

Men of this stamp require a good deal of religious pepsin to overcome the indigestibility of life; if they leave one faith in the passing bravery of their youth they soon sink back into another.[198] God, previously diluted from tribal deity into substantia and ding-an-sich,[199] now recovers a respectable degree of reality; the imaginary pillar on which men lean is made stronger and more concrete as their weakness increases. How much faith a person requires in order to flourish, how much fixed opinion he needs which he does not wish to have shaken, because he holds himself thereby,—is a measure of his power (or more plainly speaking, of his weakness).[200]

The same criterion classifies our friends the metaphysicians,—those albinos of thought,—who are, of course, priests in disguise.[201] The degree of a man’s will-power may be measured by the extent to which he can dispense with the meaning in things; by the extent to which he is able to endure a world without meaning; because he himself arranges a small portion of it.[202] The world has no meaning: all the better; put some meaning into it, says the man with a man’s heart. The world has no meaning: but it is only a world of appearance, says the weak-kneed philosopher; behind this phenomenal world is the real world, which has meaning, and means good. Of the real world “there is no knowledge; consequently there is a God”—what novel elegance of syllogism![203] This belief that the world which ought to be is real is a belief proper to the unfruitful who do not wish to create a world. The “will to truth” is the impotence of the “will to create.”[204] Even monism is being turned into medicine for sick souls; clearly these lovers of wisdom seek not truth, but remedies for their illnesses.[205] There is too much beer and midnight oil in modern philosophy, and not enough fresh air.[206] Philosophers condemn this world because they have avoided it; those who are contemplative naturally belittle activity.[207] In truth, the history of philosophy is the story of a secret and mad hatred of the prerequisites of life, of the feelings which make for the real values of life.[208] No wonder that philosophy is fallen to such low estate. Science flourishes nowadays, and has the good conscience clearly visible on its countenance; while the remnant to which modern philosophy has gradually sunk excites distrust and displeasure, if not scorn and pity. Philosophy reduced to a “theory of knowledge,” a philosophy that never gets beyond the threshold, and rigorously denies itself the right to enter—that is philosophy in its last throes, an end, an agony; something that awakens pity. How could such a philosophy rule![209]

6
Nihilism

All these things, democracy, feminism, socialism, anarchism, and modern philosophy, are heads of the Christian hydra, each a sore in the total disease. Given such illness, affecting all parts of the social body, and what result shall we expect and find? Pessimism, despair, nihilism,—that is, disbelief in all values of life.[210] Confidence in life is gone; life itself has become a problem. Love of life is still possible,—only it is the love of a woman of whom one is doubtful.[211] The “good man” sees himself surrounded by evil, discovers traces of evil in every one of his acts. And thus he ultimately arrives at the conclusion, which to him is quite logical, that nature is evil, that man is corrupted, and that being good is an act of grace (that is to say, it is impossible to man when he stands alone). In short, he denies life.[212] The man who frees himself from the theology of the Church but adheres to Christian ethics necessarily falls into pessimism. He perceives that man is no longer an assistant in, let alone the culmination of, the evolutionary process; he perceives that Becoming has been aiming at Nothing, and has achieved it; and that is something which he cannot bear.[213] Suffering, which was, before, a trial with promised reward, is now an intolerable mystery; if he is materially comfortable himself, he finds source for sentiment and tears in the pain and misery of others; he concocts a “social problem,” and never dreams that the social problem is itself a result of decadence.[214] He does not feel at home in this world in which the Christian God is dead, and to which, nevertheless, he brings nothing more appreciative than the old Christian moral attitude. He despairs because he is a chaos, and knows it; “I do not know where I am, or what I am to do; I am everything that knows not where it is or what to do,” he sighs.[215] Life, he says at last, is not worth living.

Let us not try to answer such a man; he needs not logic but a sanitarium. But see, through him, and in him, the destructiveness of Christian morals. This despicable civilization, says Rousseau, is to blame for our bad morality. What if our good morality is to blame for this despicable civilization?[216] See how the old ethic depreciates the joy of living, and the gratitude felt towards life; how it checks the knowledge and unfolding of life; how it chokes the impulse to beautify and ennoble life.[217] And at what a time! Think what a race with masculine will could accomplish now! Precisely now, when will in its fullest strength were necessary, it is in the weakest and most pusillanimous condition. Absolute mistrust concerning the organizing power of the will: to that we have come.[218] The world is dark with despair at the moment of greatest light.

What if man could be made to love the light and use it?

7
The Will to Power

Is it possible that this despair is not the final state in the exhaustion of a race, but only a transition from belief in a perfect and ethical world to an attitude of transvaluation and control?[219] Perhaps we are at the bottom of our spiritual toboggan, and an ascending movement is around the corner of the years. Now that our Christian bubble has burst into Schopenhauer, we are left free to recover some part of the joyous strength of the ancients. Let us become again as little children, unspoiled by religion and morality; let us forget what it is to feel sinful; let the thousandfold laughter of children clear the air of the odor of decay. Let us begin anew; and the soul will rise and overflow all its margins with the joy of rediscovered life.[220] Life has not deceived us! On the contrary, from year to year it appears richer, more desirable, and more mysterious; the old fetters are broken by the thought that life may be an experiment and not a duty, not a fatality, not a deceit![221] Life—that means for us to transform constantly into light and flame all that we are, and also all that we meet with; we cannot possibly do otherwise.[222] To be natural again, to dare to be as immoral as nature is; to be such pagans as were the Greeks of the Homeric age, to say Yea to life, even to its suffering; to win back some of that mountain-air Dionysian spirit which took pleasure in the tragic, nay, which invented tragedy as the expression of its super-abundant vitality, as the expression of its welcome of even the cruelest and most terrible elements of life![223] To be healthy once more!