Chapter X
Synopsis
I. The Faustian morale purely dynamic, p. 341.
The Faustian man feels the ethical imperative- his morality projects & demands obedience as a universal truth. This attitude is totally different from Indian or Apollonian Culture; neither contain Will. The Greek world was one of pantheism as well as ethical pluralism, devoid of the moral imperative of the Faustian (be they Nietzsche, Jesuits or Darwin). So too the Socialists preach the moral imperative. Though Schopenhauer denies Will & Nietzsche affirms such Will, yet BOTH preach a moral imperative. Faustian morale is always clothed in movement, in the 19th century it was Darwin’s Struggle for Existence. Even reactions to Faustian movements are themselves movements. The Faustian morale monopoly is writ large in the secular state which preaches religious toleration & freedom yet is quick to regulate, limit THE church. The great “I”, the passion charged centre, the Faustian ego knows NO toleration and even the act of Contrition contains this. The moral imperative permeates the symbols, the art & architectural expressions of the Culture almost as unconscious instinct.
II. Every Culture has a form of morale proper to itself, p. 345.
Every Culture has its own distinct morality. Just as every individual artist & artistic endeavour has a categorical imperative, an impulse that is culturally shaped, so too our inward morality. There is no general or universal morality. Convictions, be they formula, philosophy or dogma, exist but are not fathered by God. A man cannot be converted to an Alien moral any more than the Renaissance produced Apollonian art- it created Southernized anti-Gothic art using Apollonian motifs (sculpture). As Megapolitans we may elect intellectually to “go back” to Buddhism or Paganism, or Catholicism, we may champion Anarchists, may avow Atheism, but our feeling, as Megapolitans men remains. The movements, the words do not change feeling
Neitsxhe made a step forward with his moral erelaives, to go beyond Good and Evil, yet while a sceptic he was also a prophet, while a critic, a gospeller! He dismissed one set of judgmetns ethics & replaced it with his own judgments. and modern revoluionaires ( Stirner,Shaw, Ibsen, Stridnbrg) do the same, they hide from the facts behind a new formula
Morale like the other SYMBOLS (art music, painting) is tied to Culture; it is an ornament with its own grammar & laws. Morality reflects Culture as it unfolds, from birth to death. We judge the great men of philosophy as expressive individuals, reflecting a higher plane when in fact they are but expression of the larger entity, their Culture.
III. Posture-morale and will-morale, p. 347.
Apollonian ethics defined man as an individual, static being among beings. Faustian ethics defined man as a centre of effect in an infinite universe. Ethical Socialism is sentiment expressed thru space (the 3rd dimension), care for those with us now & care in the future. It has affinity with Egyptic care. Whereas the Apollonian ethic has affinity with Indian ethics (immobility, non-desire, will less). Diogenes would be at home in India.
Nietzsche (blinded by his own prejudices) was mistaken in seeing Faustian Christian ethics as soft compassion (the slave morality). The compassion of the Magian Church is utterly distinct from the Faustian Church. The latter reflects action at a distance, practical dynamics, a proud soul’s demands upon itself, words of command.
We must not conflate the WORDS of Faustian ethics with the practical ethics revealed in Faustian ACTs. As Faustians we value & venerate the values of the past, its religious traditions. But the expressed convictions, ideals to be believed, do not relate to REALITY. Few men are conscious of their own true belief; easily conflate “BELIEF” with ACT. Look at the nil impact of the Mendicant Orders or the Salvation Army, institutions of great compassion. The Faustian ethic is NOT revealed in the words of Luther, Calvin or Trent, but rather in their actions, unconscious contradictions to their teaching.
Faustian virtue, that of Nietzsche’s superman, or Spanish honour, contrasts Apollonian virtue of enjoyment, placidity of nature, the absence of wants. Faustian men are granite, unyielding; Apollonian are feminine, dreamers. From the 11th to the 20th centuries Faustian men display discipline, energy, direction. Even our priests display such character- witness the bishop warriors of the Middle Ages or the great medieval Popes bent on ruling mighty kings, the Cardinals directing the French state. Their passion is worldly, all have a mission. Even their charity is upright, dynamic, hard, not soft or melting.
Compassion, charity, in our words & hopes we respect, but NEVER in actuality. Even Kant rejected this; the meaning of life is action not surrendering to soft options. Nietzsche’s slave morale is a phantom, &his mater morale IS the reality of Faustian man, his superman made flesh.
Our great doers of good are men of action, whose plans & care effect millions; they are great statesman & organizers. Nietzsche’s hope was of a higher man (of greater will, wealth, aptitude, influence) who will use democratic Europe to bring into their hands the entire Earth. Shaw says the West must breed new politicians & rulers OR be ruined by democracy. These new men are the Undershafts in his Major Barbara, he is Nietzsche’s superman, born of the ideas of Malthus & Darwin. Such men do not give their millions away to artists or weaklings but instead use them for the future, employ them on their own projects & plans. They make a centre of force with money which will even outlast their own lives (such as Rhodes). Thus we must distinguish between the popular social morality, the humanity apostles, and Faustian instinct.
Socialism is exclusive, not based on freedom or human rights or the greatest good for the greatest number. Indeed such sentiments are the negation of Faustian ethics. For the Apollonian ”happiness” was the sum idea. Philanthropy for oneself, even the Greek tragedy worked used Peripeteia to provide relief from the compassion for himself. Alcibiades represents the Apollonian Master morality, even better Protagoras (man as measure of all things).
IV. Buddha, Socrates, Rousseau as protagonists of the dawning Civilizations, p. 351.
All civilizations go thru Nietzsche’s trans-valuation of all values- unable to produce new, the Civilization begins to reform the old, reinterprets. Civilization inherits, and it magnifies (hence the super-size of much architecture in this stage) - the city becomes the sole space. In Apollonian civilization Socrates was the herald of the reinterpretation & trans-valuation. In India the Buddha is the agent of change, the Vedic culture is reinterpreted after Buddha, old truths are dumped. In Faustian Civilization it is Rousseau who preached return to Nature, a message given to the urban denizens who despised a Culture to which they were no longer organically linked. Nietzsche preached Nihilism, as did Buddha and Socrates. Faustian parallels with Rome are clear—the Apollonian Winter is synonymous with Rome. For Faustian men, the Civilization epoch began in 1800; Winter will arrive in 2000 AD. For men of the Doric & Ionic age, of the Gothic & Baroque age, ages of Culture, creation was unconscious mastery. But as the Soul dies, along comes reflection, thought, the replacement of dogma & cult with rationality, the replacement of historical law with natural law, the state as an order of society to be reformed, in art styles replace THE style & in all we see the gigantic form of the city, central & sucking men into its maw. Science is soulless, it is extension; it begets the ideas of Buddhism, Stoicism & Socialisms. God willed destiny becomes a problem to be solved, to be judged by a rational mind. The “people” really means the urban denizens, the peasants are now a lost class.
V. Tragic and plebeian morale, p. 354.
During the Spring/Summer, the Culture stage, morality is instinctive, it is known, subconsciously. Once Civilization begins, the men of the city need articulated theory, to solve a problem. The first is beyond logic, the second is a product of logic. The great systems of metaphysics only looked obliquely at ethics & morality. But once Civilization begin, ethics itself is the sole focus of thought- instinct morality is severed from Life, Knowledge of Life is the focus. Life which can no longer govern itself, must be governed. Now metaphysics become a mere backdrop to practical morality. So arises Socialism, the Stoics & Buddhism.
The heights of Culture are replaced with the valley lands of Civilization, pride in a burden born of destiny is replaced by designs to outrace Destiny. An inward mastery of nature during the Culture period, becomes the banal, prosaic, humane ethic, the Will to Deed becomes the work ethic as suffering Prometheus becomes the lolling Diogenes in the Apollonian Civilization
VI. Return to Nature, Irreligion, Nihilism, p. 356.
The spiritual extinction of the Winter is unique for each Culture/Civilization- Buddhism, Socialism & Stoicism all occupy this period, unique to each Culture but all related as Winter end products of the Spirit. All 3 are worldly & un-metaphysical, each contemporary with the other. In each reason will develop Ethics; religion plays no role; all 3 are indifferent to religion.
Buddhism rigidly inward looking, recognizing no soul, rejects speculation on God & cosmos. Our own Socialists reduce men to electrical chemical sensations & there is a close link between the idea of conditioning (association psychological) and Buddhism. The Stoics took the deeply metaphysical Logos of Heraclitus (a process of constant change- flux) turning it into a code of personal ethics aimed at happiness. Faustian Socialism takes Social Darwinism (survival of the fittest, with Hegel’s dialectic of conflict -Marxism) to produce state socialism. Brahman karma (ethical balance, good leading to good, evil leading to evil) under Buddha becomes withdrawal & individual self-abnegation.
All 3 are nihilistic, aiming to dispose & renew an out-dated system, the repudiation of religious, political & artistic forms centuries old. Yet each follows their own prime symbol. The Apollonian Stoic sees the old ways as corporal, substance which “crumble”; he cares only for self-management, he sees neither future nor past. The Faustian nihilist “shatters” the old- the dynamic working out of life, for all mankind, for all future time, under a single global regime. The Indian “withdraws” away from the old, and into himself. All 3 are Become, all have lost Soul replaced by pure Intellect; they are similar yet all are specifically unique to their Culture/Civilization. All are contemporary expressions of the same process, each has nuance of the other (kitharas of Attic drama - Nirvana)
Every soul has religion and all expressions of the soul are ultimately religious- but with Civilization this is no longer possible- for civilization is irreligious (note: not anti-religious)- art expresses not religion but irreligion (Haydn versus Wagner), the cities (Paris) are bastions of irreligion whereas prior to this (Antwerp) they had feligious flavour. And so too the ethical sentiments, are irreligious. Socialism is the Faustian ethical sentiment though it has Christian nuances, just as the Stoics accepted the Emperor cults and Buddhists have their own “gods”.
The extinction of the inner religious sense will gradually pervade all things. This, the climactic change from Culture to Civilization, results in sterility, of all things, in art, in courtesy, in formal thought, in demographic terms, the childless aging society.
We are the living representatives of the New Order, the wholly intellectual creatures of the gigantic cites, the masses who have replaced the rural folk, educated, marketing men, men of mass media & sports consumers, readers of best sellers- these are the objects of the Stoic message, Socialism as well as similar messages from other Winter civilizations.
In our public arenas we find the diatribe (Faustian journalism, editorials or public speeches), agitation (protests, marches) and programs (The New Deal). This is the new religion for the irreligious masses. We see the replacement of inner spiritual space with the outer expansive drive of imperialism, the substitution of quality with quantity. All are valued for mass appeal and not “best”
Hellenic philosophy is all rhetorical; so too the art of Ibsen & Zola are journalistic. Although primitive Christianity became tainted with rhetoric, its foundations are antithetical as it was Magian (not Apollonian). It was the Hellenistic Paul who brought the Christian message into the Roman marketplaces. Whereas Jesus was a peasant who dealt with peasants, Paul was a man of the Hellenistic Winter devoted to propagating his message to the urban masses. What a difference between this Paul & Pope Boniface of rural & valley, the Cistercians, Knights Templers. And with the advance of Winter into Faustian Civilization we again see emerge more diatribes, more Pauls, promoting various “causes” such as Free Thinking or social or religious issues. Today we are passionately consumed by banal issues like digestion, nutrition, alcohol, hygiene, or vegetarianism, topics that the great visionary religions (of the early Cultures- Orphic, Vedic, the Christianity of Jesus, the Faustian Christianity) would never have even considered. Yet for the Buddha such issues were prominent just as they were for the Stoics.
VIII. Ethical Socialism, p. 361.
Today we are all socialists, as all Apollonian in the Winter were Stoics. Socialism is the highest possible attainment for a life & is characterized by aim, which means a direction which means Time. It encompasses the Future and is what we call progress. It is not based on compassion, bur rather duty. It is not based on attitude or appearance (like the Apollonian), it is based on deed- action. In today’s Civilization, the “deed” is replaced by the more banal “work”. It is vital to differentiate between this “work” and the popular Christian sentiments- happiness, peace, freedom from care. Popular yet illusionary, Faustian socialism is work, initially the right to work, but finally & ultimately the duty to work.
Faustian man wills duration, the Future; Apollonian man looked backward, to a Golden Age of the Past. Apollonian man would KNOW the future; Faustian man will SHAPE the future. And each Culture/Civilization has its own World history. For the Apollonian he can see only himself, a universal history is inconceivable. For the Magian Man he dreams of the cosmic drama between Soul & Spirit, Good and Evil, & he sees the end of history as a Saviour arriving. But the Faustian sees World History as a tense unfolding of Aim, as reflected in the sequence Ancient/Medieval/Modern paradigm, dynamic in nature. Socialism is the final form of this perception.
It is however a tragic future- none of the seers (Nietzsche, Ibsen, Hebbel) could explicitly define the end, though they did define what needed to be destroyed. The Faustian Winter Soul full of desire, direction, force yet has no substance, form without content. The longing has to have the illusion of an end, the final tragic lie. The Faustian Sprit cannot rest, it must deceive itself with an end which is illusion, and end never to be obtained yet which is needed to sustain the empty energy of the dying Faustian Soul..
IX. Similarity of structure in the philosophical history of every Culture, p. 364.
Every Culture has its own unique philosophy – a symbol part of the Macrocosms; and the answers ar less important than the questions, their choice, their form, whcih reveal the pecularites of each Culture.
Each Culture (he lists the Indian, Chinese, Apollonian, Faustian) will ask the great questions initially; all problems, even the most modern, have roots in their Spring, the temple. Each philosophy bears the peculiar mark of their Culture (regardless of oral transmission, or fluid masses of text) but all will follow a similar course of organization. In the Spring philosophy speaks with the tongue of Faith, it is contemplative, the World seen as created by Spirit; science & philosophy dependent on religion; the thinkers are priests. Metaphysics with a religious cast.
In the Summer, now free of religion philosophy becomes worldly, it uses epistemology on religion itself! The urban sprit looks upon itself as the highest form of judgement. The problem of Knowing comes to the forefront; metaphysics becomes increasingly rational; the priest is replaced by the men of action (explorers, statesmen, merchants) & thinkers are drawn towards the realm of Mathematics. And then the succession of great thinkers reaches culmination, for the Apollonian it was Aristotle, for the Faustian it was Kant.
Following these great final systems, Civilization emerges, it is Autumn. Metaphysics once Queen of Philosophy now increasingly takes a backseat to Ethics. By late Civilization, Metaphysics is ignored, forgotten, Philosophy serves only to examine practical questions of personal conduct, Ethics.
X. The Civilized philosophy of the West, p. 365.
Following these great final systems, product of the Culture’s Summer, Civilization emerges, it is Autumn. Metaphysics once Queen of Philosophy now increasingly takes a backseat to Ethics. Contemplation & theory are relegated by the practical. By late Civilization, Metaphysics is ignored, forgotten, Philosophy serves only to examine practical questions of personal conduct, practical, urban, Ethics.
With the emergence of Civilization, the link between Mathematics & Philosophy weakens. Kant never penetrated the practice of calculus, despite breath-taking Faustian advances in the 18th & 19th centuries (Leibnitz, Newton, Gauss). The Romantics & German Idealists (Fichte, Hegel) left Calculus to others and worse follows in the 19th century with thinkers like Schopenhauer & Nietzsche. And while Metaphysics sinks Ethics rises to domination with a minimal side glace at Metaphysics, becoming the unnecessary appendage of philosophy, a vestigial organ. The Ethics & Metaphysics of Kant are bound together seamlessly; with Schopenhauer Ethics is a standalone article, his metaphysics almost obsolete. And with Nietzsche, metaphysics is barely considered. So too it was with the Stoics, deep concern for behaviour & ethics, with a quick bow to the conventions of metaphysics. Thus metaphysics s exhausted. The city has overrun the countryside, Soul is replaced with Brain. The will to power dominates everyone &everywhere, into the Future. As the Stoic took cares for his personal body, so the Socialist cares for the Social Body, it is political economy converted into ethical and imperative form. Ethics has replaced mathematics as the basis for thought about the world. Philosophy has become personal; hence the importance of secular humanism as reflected in Cousin, Bentham, Comte, Mill and Spencer.
No philosopher chooses his questions- rather they are selected by the Soul of the Culture; each epoch (season) has its own questions & themes. The philosopher only need see the epochal questions. Other than this apprehension, there is little skill in philosophy aside from developing suitable accepted conceptual subtleties & systems.
All 19th century philosophies are ethics; its most important practitioners, are the dramatists, not the academics, who endlessly write & re-write the History of Philosophy. Shaw follows Nietzsche and in the footsteps of an earlier dramatist, Ibsen. And Nietzsche though a Romantic in style, is a full on materialist, drawn to Schopenhauer by the latter’s destruction of Kant’s metaphysics, his dismissal Kant’s “thing in itself”. Now the great metaphysical thing in itself becomes Will, and Will is the product of the brain, an appendage of the body, its function is mere self-preservation. Schopenhauer’s clarity mask triviality; his reference to Kant & Hindu serve as convenient clothing. His works were easily absorbed by the civilized mediocrities. He anticipates Darwin & it is no coincidence his popularity grew with Darwin’s. He turns the intellect into the ultimate weapon for survival; he turns sexual love into a biological natural selection.
Darwin integrates economics into science (zoology), incorporating Malthus. It is a method not a result, the application of the principle of Causality to Nature. Nor is it new- Rousseau in 1754 anticipated it! It is popular as it incorporates a political element, the Manchester School.
The evolution concept embraces all, from Hebbel, Shaw & Schopenhauer during the Winter; shallow, civilized and economic or biologic in form, it reflects the a priori Faustian will, always aiming forward towards infinite future. Evolution itself is evolving, from the Goethian (organic, experience, emblem, inward fulfilment, read from Nature) to the Darwinian (mechanical, cognition, law, progress, read into Nature). Literature also evolves - whereas Shakespeare’s tragedies move realities, actualizes figures of destiny; our writers (e.g. Zarathustra, Ibsen’s “Ghosts," Wagner’s "Ring of the Nibelungs") tend towards the working out of a system of superficial connections. Schopenhauer perceived this & pessimism descended; Wagner’s Tristan is the supreme expression of this dark foreboding.
Nietzsche’s break from Schopenhauer is the final reflection of the German feeling, the unconscious move from Schopenhauer to Darwin, a last attempt to embrace optimism, from metaphysics to physiological (but the identical sprit), will to life expressed as struggle to survive. Nietzsche began with Goethe but ends with Darwin’s mechanical “Superman” concept; his Zarathustra is the ethical rejection of Wagner’s Parsifal. Nietzsche was a Socialist; materialism, socialism & Darwinians are only different in superficial terms- Shaw expresses this in Man & Superman, with his practical economic & utilitarian Superman (Undershaft) in Major Barbara. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra points to the Superman, yet never gives practical details or answers. A public (democratic) compulsory system of selective breeding, materialist & utilitarian, is implicit but never exposed in Nietzsche. He never raises the issue of eugenics (implicit in Zarathustra); he is too much the romantic & though his idea is founded on Darwin, he never owns up to this. And likewise he fails to own socialism, also implicit in his new values. Nietzsche’s master morality derives not from Renaissance’s Cesare Borgia, but from the workshops of Manchester. The thinker who actually gave flesh & bones to what was implicit in Nietzsche was Shaw, in which Will to Power is expressed in Undershaft (even if Nietzsche failed to recognize him). The economic, practical Supermen are seen in such capitalists as well as the trade union workers.
In this Winter period, the stage replaces poetry, and on the stage the “problems” are debated. Wagner’s Ring cycle gives us Brunhilde, the New Woman as well as Siegfried, symbol of the revolutionary; Wagner even incorporates Darwin’s selective breeding (Wotan’s love children , the Volsung twins Sieglinde & Siegmund, whose union produces Siegfried). Hebbel’s work resonates with Marx’s revolutionary shouting to change the world as well as finding affinity with Schopenhauer’s irrational unseen Will.
The Will to Power is the philosophy of the 19th century & is manifested across the full spectrum (intellectual, ethical & social): as Schopenhauer’s Will (will-to-life), as survival of the fittest & eugenics (life-force), as evolution, Positivism & socialism (practical dynamic principles) as Nietzsche’s Übermensch (idea) and via the stage in characters like Judith, Holofernes, Siegfried, Undershaft, Nora (drama). It is the final philosophy of the final Winter stage. After this Western philosophy represents the dilettantes of the universities, a post script.
The end journey begins in 1819 with Schopenhauer’s World as Will & Representation. In the 1840s Proudhon, Comte, Feuerbach, Engels & Marx provide political fabric while Hebbel & Wagner provide the dramatic symbols. In the 1850s Ibsen joins Wagner & Hebbel in the dramatic side while the decade closes with Darwin’s monumental magnum opus, Marx’s first economic critique & Wagner’s ground breaking Tristan. The 1860s sees growing maturity with Mill, Marx (Capital), Ibsen; in the 1870s Wagner begins moving towards mysticism with Parsifal. In the 1880s Nietzsche evolves away from the pessimistic Schopenhauer towards a more positive Darwin (the romantic Zarathustra). The arts advance this decade as the leading playwrights experiment with mystical dramas. At the turn of the century we see a final flash of Kant in the fin-de-siècle sensation of Weininger. Shaw, without the benefit of metaphysics presents on stage, a practical & economic meaning to the eugenics implicit in Zarathustra.
So ends the ethical stage of Faustian thought, just as the metaphysical phase had ended circa in the 1830s. Ethical Socialism, a by-product of German Idealism & Liberal Arts education, peaked mid-19th century after which time it moved in cycles of repetition. It had reached the final development. The 20th century retains “Socialism” as a word, but its philosophy has been replaced by the practical application of economic policies. In the final Winter phase Faustian man remains socialistic; its theory is no longer a topic for debate. Is a 3rd stage (beyond metaphysics & ethics) possible?
The secret of the world, the problems we seek solutions for, appear first as knowledge problems. Kant (the final, metaphysical thinker) saw Ethics as an object of knowledge; he wrestled with the epistemology of ethical behaviour & resolved this with his Categorical Imperative. In the next sequence thinkers (Young Hegelians, British Empiricists) perceived the secret of the world as a materialist (valuation) problem. Hence “socialism” or Marx’s historical materialism as a philosophical by-product. Spengler asks if a third stage will evolve, physiognomic scepticism, in which our answers to these secrets are perceived as merely the historical expression of Faustian Culture.