August 22, 2004
SYMPTOMATICS:
Once more the origin of scholars.— The wish to preserve oneself is the symptom of a condition of distress, of a limitation of the really fundamental instinct of life which aims at the expansion of power and, wishing for that, frequently risks and even sacrifices self-preservation. It should be considered symptomatic when some philosophers, for example, Spinoza who was consumptive, considered the instinct of self-preservation decisive and had to see it that way:—for they were individuals in conditions of distress. That our modern natural sciences have become so thoroughly entangled in this Spinozistic dogma (most recently and worst of all, Darwinism with its incomprehensibly one-sided doctrine of the "struggle for existence"—) is probably due to the origins of most natural scientists: in this respect they belong to the "common people [Volk]," their ancestors were poor and undistinguished people who knew the difficulties of survival only too well at firsthand. The whole of English Darwinism breathes something like the musty air of English overpopulation, like the smell of the distress and overcrowding of small people. But a natural scientist should come out of his human nook: and in nature it is not conditions of distress that are dominant but overflow and squandering, even to the point of absurdity. -The Gay Science: Book V: We Fearless Ones (Friedrich Nietzsche)Posted by Orrin Judd at August 22, 2004 1:55 PM
Other than that sharp thing on the top of your head, what is your point?
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at August 22, 2004 6:41 PM>The whole of English Darwinism breathes
>something like the musty air of English
>overpopulation, like the smell of the distress
>and overcrowding of small people.
Anyone out there read the Gould essay "Kropotkin was No Crackpot"? (It's in one of his earlier collections.)
Kropotkin and Russian Darwinists took a tack that evolutionary survival was based on cooperation between individuals, not cutthroat competition. Gould's take on this is the difference between in Russian conditions (few people widely scattered through a lot of land where you had to band together against the harsh winters) as opposed to English conditions (a lot of people on a not-too-large island, especially when packed into the cities).
You can also see the roots of both countries' brands of Social Darwinism -- Russian Communism (the Collective vs the outside) vs Western Yuppieism (individual vs individual).
Posted by: Ken at August 23, 2004 12:56 PMOf course, Nietzche was nuts.
I've read this passage twice, and I still can't find a coherent argument in it. It's just an ad-hominem attack against Spinoztics and Darwinists. Just as his attack against Christians and their "slave morality". Why are you wasting time on this nutjob?
Posted by: Robert Duquette at August 23, 2004 6:06 PMRobert:
If Malthus had lived in Oklahoma there'd be no Darwinism.
Posted by: oj at August 23, 2004 9:16 PMAnd if Jesus had been a Roman he'd have died in his sleep.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at August 24, 2004 12:11 PMHe was Roman.
Posted by: oj at August 24, 2004 12:35 PM