Better to Want Nothing, Than Not to Want at All

Self-Alienation through Modern Science

Better to Want Nothing, Than Not to Want at All

Self-Alienation through Modern Science

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Estella Walter

Nietzsche's criticism of science is perhaps one of the most provocative, but also the most relevant, sub-areas of Nietzsche's comprehensive critique of modern culture. Estella Walter reconstructs her perhaps most important formulation in the third treatise The Genealogy of Morals and shows how Nietzsche sees science as a form of alienation. She explains this concept, which is so central to modern philosophy, and bridges it from Nietzsche to (young) Marx: Both are critics of the alienations of the modern way of life, whose critiques we should read together in order to reach a comprehensive understanding of it.

Nietzsche's criticism of science is perhaps one of the most provocative, but also the most relevant, sub-areas of Nietzsche's comprehensive critique of modern culture. Estella Walter reconstructs her perhaps most important formulation in the third treatise of The genealogy of morality and shows how Nietzsche's science is a form of estrangement Understands. She explains this concept, which is so central to modern philosophy, and bridges it from Nietzsche to (young) Marx: Both are critics of the alienations of the modern way of life, whose critiques we should read together in order to reach a comprehensive understanding of it.

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I. Alienation — or the science of underwear

Under the title Impact of Wet Underwear on Thermoregulatory Responses and Thermal Comfort in the Cold — “The impact of wet underwear on thermoregulatory responses and thermal comfort in the cold” — a study was published in 1994 which came to the conclusion that wet underwear in a cold environment had a “cooling effect on [...] thermal comfort”¹ I have; wet underwear, according to the groundbreaking finding, doesn't feel good. What reads like a parody of the modern scientific landscape can be brought to mind in the best case as shallow entertainment, at worst, and that means in serious, serious cases, but in serious cases, we catch a glimpse of the symptoms of a society that has given up on itself and has now fatalistically dedicated itself to the mechanical counting of gray desert rock. When reading the type of study above, redundant, tautological, nonsensical and yet spread like sand by the sea, there is a dull feeling of cold lifelessness, we are dealing with dead material — or, in Nietzsche's terminology, with profound nihilism. This insight is by no means new; Friedrich Nietzsche dedicated himself to the work as early as 1887 On the genealogy of morality of modern science and subjected it to criticism that continues to this day. According to one of the core theses, science is a contemporary outgrowth of ascetic ideals and as such life-denying and self-contradictory. Instead of putting oneself at the service of life, being a source of new potential, it catapults people away from this world into the abyss of nothingness. There, I would like to argue, he becomes a stranger to himself, is alienated from the immediate world in which he lives. In Nietzsche's critique of science, however not explicitly expressed, there appears to be a alienation criticism to snooze.

However, according to popular criticism, “alienation” is a tricky term, as it implies alienation From something, something that already preexisted. But what is that supposed to be? How can you, especially against the background of Nietzsche's critique of the original thinking of metaphysics and its continuation in modern science itself, this somewhat Still require? Is there nothing but alienation, is life, as some postmodern theorists certainly teach in reference to Nietzsche, a vain game of masks with no face behind them?

The question therefore urgently arises as to what exactly alienation of oneself and from the world means. In order to answer them, Nietzsche's critique of science will first be examined in more detail and then, with the help of Marxian analyses, to what extent modern science can be understood as a form of alienation.

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II. Science and Truth: The Ultimate Ascetic Ideal

The meaning of ascetic ideals is just as diverse as their application in world history is universal. Ascetism may be present in art as well as in philosophy or, above all, in the Christian religion — this “Platonism for the 'people'”² — and with it always a suitable ideal, an idea that transcends and therefore unattainable to people and justifies him: God, State, Capital. However, what all these manifestations of asceticism have in common, its nucleus, is a struggle for the evaluation that Valuation of life, in fact that it is “related to a completely different existence”³, a higher, more perfect one; one who, in order to affirm it, demands the disparagement of one's own life, it as a “wrong path that you must finally go backwards”(ibid.) is necessary to deal with. But, Nietzsche notes, enforcing such collective self-denial by devaluing life itself requires tremendous strength. It “expresses the basic fact of human will”⁴. The ascetic ideal is an expression of a will to power, a Willens zur Macht.

However, it is an expression that is at odds with itself, that cannibalizes itself in order to stay alive. Under his rule, idolatry flourishes in everything that suffers, that is impoverished and enslaved, in short, that opposes the flourishing of human life. This desire for self-minimization, self-elimination, for watery soup that is just barely digestible, and the associated fear of everything alive, of any energy and magnificence, they inevitably result in nihilism, in The will to nothing: “People still want [L] ieber The nothing want, as not want...”⁵

It is a perverted “attainment of power in factual powerlessness through the powers of the imaginary.”⁶, because anyone who does not know how to defend themselves by other means resorts to more treacherous weapons — be it morality, virtue or guilt. In the last resort, the ascetic ideal is to satisfy the suffering of all those who are powerless and tired of life, who use every means of fighting for self-preservation, no matter how poisonous the medicinal waters are. Unable to act, the ascetic ideal at least allows them to “discharge of affect.”⁷, i.e. a satisfaction of the “numbing of pain through affect” (ibid.) — resentment, guilt, conscience that is directed inwards, spiritualizes itself, and there take the person hostage within themselves. “[T] u yourself are solely to blame! “(ibid.), therefore be pious and humble, salvation lies in not wanting. And this is how the sufferer disciplines himself, punishes himself for his own existence.

Most people are all too familiar with such tricks of exercising power; they literally cry out for the imperatives of Christianity. But anyone who prides himself in atheism, weighs himself in the protection of reason and objectivity, and confidently ridicules the archaic remnants of religious ages should be careful at this point. Too often, the achievement of modern science is celebrated as overcoming ascetic ideals, as the end of metaphysics and the beginning of self-sufficient truth. Who needs God when Darwin exists? Nietzsche warns against this self-delusion. Science has no courage for itself, its essence is still an insubstantial shell “and where it is still passion, love, ardour, woes is, it is not the opposite of that ascetic ideal, but rather its most recent and elegant form”⁸. In it, the self-destructive will to do nothing, for which he killed God, is now ungodly in search of a new faith, finds his last asylum. In scientific activity, which seriously places itself at the forefront of all importance, lies the remaining comfort over the loss of great faith, of the ideal, which could at least give rise to the contractions and suffering. If you work hard, you don't have to think twice. Anyone who enhances well-being in wet underwear as an object worthy of exploration needs the “question of why”⁹not to address the “[g] general problems” (ibid.). Modern scientists are convinced of their freedom from all supernatural shackles, they must be convinced of their freedom in order to be able to relax. Behind this self-deception, however, as we feared in honest hours, is a submission to a final, very fundamental ideal: belief in the absolute truth. This will to truth, and it should be said, fundamental truthfulness and objectivity, is itself still “belief in a metaphysical Werth, ein Werth In itself the truth”¹⁰. The universal claim to truth hangs in the sky of ideas, unreachable and therefore all the more desperately sought after. Like any other ideal, it requires the affirmation of another, divine world, which is in contrast to ours and is therefore dependent on strict renunciation of all sensuality, the renunciation of “evaluations and interpretations [...]. By wanting to abstain from judgement, they are taking 'human self-loathing to the extreme. '”¹¹. The ascetic scholars have no choice but to flee to their ivory tower, watch the accumulation of dust there and let the world pass by as unnoticed as possible. We are dealing with an unparalleled passivity that forces us to breathe the hot air of status quo. Such a nihilistic truth dogma shows its absurd, devastating effects: half of all published research articles end up unread in the informational waste dump, 90% of them are never cited¹² And while the most bizarre figures are entrenching themselves on the moon in hedonistic departments, the so-called 'global South, 'is struggling with the very real consequences of hunger crises, war and exploitation caused by humanity itself. Like modern science, the ascetic ideal depends on the inviolability of truth and therefore also on a”The impoverishment of life”¹³; atheism replaces God with Christian morality itself, hidden in scientific conscience, which only sees the world according to the standard of “divine reason.”¹⁴ bends.

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III. Alienation through science

Before we can understand modern science as a phenomenon of alienation, we must first address the difficulties of the concept of alienation, which have already been indicated. Anyone who speaks of alienation necessarily points to the relationality of two instances: There is something that is alienated from something else. On the basis of such considerations, however, it would be far too urgent to conclude that there was a pre-alienated origin to which it was necessary to return. This is also how Nietzsche has his problems with the fetishization of origin, as this is thrown into the pot indiscriminately with the purpose, accuracy or, ultimately, the truth of a thing.¹⁵ However, anyone who wants to equate something “established” (ibid.) with its origin ignores its inception, its historical changes and overrides; ignores “that everything that has happened [...] is a Overwhelm, Herrwerden and that in turn everything overwhelming and becoming master is a reinterpretation, a reinterpretation, in which the previous “meaning” and “purpose” must necessarily be obscured or completely obliterated.” (ibid.) We may therefore be able to understand the development process of a phenomenon, but not its origin in the sense of zero hour in which it magically Ex nihilo began to exist. The origin is an illusion; it is always untrue. Instead, we are dealing with a chain of “overwhelming processes” (ibid.) of forces that affect a The will to power refer.

But if we say goodbye to the idea of a pre-existing truth, of an essential being, then what is the alienated relationship? In its early publication Economic-philosophical manuscripts Marx treats alienation as a “critique of the existence of an abstract general”¹⁶: “Alienation is [...] the opposition of abstract thinking and sensual reality” — “the fact that the human being [...] objectifies itself in contrast to abstract thinking is regarded as the established and abolishing essence of alienation”¹⁷. Or in other words, through the abstraction of and spiritualization of the sensory world, which creates a metaphysical cosmos in which the human being places himself outside of himself as an overarching, total unit, he alienates himself both from his directly and sensually experienced life as well as from the world in which this life is constituted. Modern science and its relentless thirst for truth, the ultimate ascetic ideal, belong to this very cosmos. It appropriates the “human beings [i.e. reinified; EW] essential forces of man” (ibid.) and allows them to degenerate into spiritual echoes of themselves — the soul becomes the prison of our body¹⁸. Alienation through science is therefore in no way alienation from a true origin or an ideal being, because with such an assumption, one would fall once again into the mystifying trap of metaphysical transcendence. Rather, it is “alienation of the knowing person or the thinking alienated science.”¹⁹, which is the essence of life, namely its “growth beyond itself”²⁰, its continuous growth, negates. It is the idling, the stagnation, the stepping into place of a minimized life, caused by the requirement of an abstract and stiff claim to truth, which prohibits any liquefaction of form and meaning. It is the result of self-medication against the painful suffering of one's own existence.

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IV. Conclusion: Hostility to life with method

One common narrative of modernity is its scientific advancement, its unprecedented achievements. Even though these should not be denied, Nietzsche's critique of science places the finger on the secret wound and is still more relevant today than ever before. At the core of modern science, with all its specializations, sophisticated methods and systems, lies tragic nihilism, a desire to abolish oneself disguised as cool prudence. Science has by no means found its self-worth, nor does it mean liberation from the spirits of metaphysics. Rather, it too still needs a hand from above; is it also still dependent on “value-creating [] power”²¹, the ideal of an absolute truth, which is impossible to achieve and therefore requires even harsher asceticism. Bound to an apparent and therefore all the more tightened abstraction, it captures life and alienates it not from a supposedly pre-existing origin, but from its ever-recreating process of becoming, from a sensual, material reality. Of course, Nietzsche does not stop at diagnosing modern science and morality. He has his own idea of overcoming himself, of overcoming the nihilism that has fallen prey to us. How fruitful these are remains an exciting question, which needs to be addressed in further articles on this blog.

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Literature

Bakkevig, Martha Kold & Ruth Nielsen: Impact of Wet Underwear on Thermoregulatory Responses and Thermal Comfort in the Cold. In: Ergonomics 37, no. 8 (August 1994), pp. 1375—89. (link)

Foucault, Michel: Monitoring and punishing. The birth of prison. Frankfurt am Main 2021.

Heidegger, Martin: Nietzsche. Ed. by Brigitte Schillbach. Complete edition. Department I, Published Papers 1910-1976, Vol. 6.1/2. Frankfurt a. M. 1996.

Heit, Helmut: Criticism of science in the The genealogy of morality. From ascetic ideal to knowledge for free people. In: Ders. & Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir: Nietzsche as a critic and thinker of transformation. Berlin & Boston 2016, pp. 252—274.

Meho, Lokman I.: The Rise and Rise of Citation Analysis. In: Physics World 20, No. 1 (January 2007), pp. 32—36. (link)

Marx, Karl: Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts. Ed. by Barbara Zehnpfennig. Hamburg 2008.

Saar, Martin: Genealogy as a critique. History and theory of the subject according to Nietzsche and Foucault. Frankfurt am Main & New York 2007.

Wallat, Hendrik: Awareness of the crisis. Marx, Nietzsche and the emancipation of the non-identical in political theory. Bielefeld 2009.

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