Marx and Marxism

By Andrew Aaron

There is, there must be a good deal of caution used when one discusses human nature and Marx's view of it. It is somewhat easier to diagram (at least partially) a Gandhian picture of human nature. The reasons for this have as much to do with the structure of communism, as well as Marx's way of seeing humanity. Another problem, and perhaps more basic, is the complexity, scope, and breadth of Marx's writing and the way that writing has been filtered, repackaged, reformulated, shortened or lengthened, and overall, edited as it makes its way through society(s). The first two problems will be dealt with during this essay, the last will be touched on at the end.1

Locke, Hobbes, the libertarians, the utilitarians, all have in common a belief in the power of the individual. Although it would seem that the “greatest happiness” principle is one of collectivism, it really is an individualistic idea. Each individual must and does seek their own best happiness. Now, this may be inside a group, but it does not have to be. The power of the enlightenment belief in the individual, in man as prime actor in the drama of history was and is pervasive. We, at the end of the twentieth century, still wrestle with the age old rubric of the "great (individual) men” of history. This idea, which is millennia-old (or more), certainly became a central force during the enlightenment and the renaissance. Both The Prince and Leviathan are examples of the "great men" pushed to their logical conclusion. The rugged individualism of American thought had deep roots in the writings of Locke. Yes, the social contract is a good. Yes, the Bible is correct when it speaks of "it not being good for man to be alone,” but it is always at the discretion of the individual to stay or leave and bear the consequences of that choice.

The belief in the individual that characterizes many of the philosophers and political writers that the course covered had interesting ramifications for the systems that they created or espoused. Democracy is the great individual political movement.  “One man, one vote” is so clear a statement of this that almost no more need be said. Almost. By making the individual so powerful, there is a loosening of the bonds of history, of circumstance. The extreme end of this view is that of the self-help books that clamor on the shelves of bookstores. Each one is pushing hard to make the individual responsible for their own lives, for their own destinies. “America is the land of opportunity. Anyone can make it here” are familiar phrases that are used to boost America. It is beyond the scope of this essay to debate the merits of these beliefs, they are merely examples of how deeply influential individualism and the belief in the freedom of the individual to make his or her own destiny is in our society.

What makes Marxism so radical in its view of the individual is how it strips much autonomy away from the individual. The theory of human nature in Marxism was (and is) new in philosophy. It is assumed that man entered into the social contract for various reasons. It is further assumed that this was a good thing. Marx seems to accept most of the ideas about the state of nature and the social contract that went before him. However, where Hobbes saw man as a baseless creature, very much a loner, who is constrained and kept in check by the social contract, Marx sees the social contract as a good that arises naturally out of the fact that man is a creature of community. Where Locke sees the social contract as a binding instrument that exists to allow the good nature of man to thrive and prosper, to create and develop the greater good of capitalism, Marx sees capitalism as an evil that changed the very nature of humanity's relation to the world and weakened the social bonds of the social contract.

For Marx, the debate between Hobbes and Locke about the goodness or baseness of man is almost moot. Marx as a scientist, or at least a philosopher who tried to be as scientific as possible, saw man as an animal, highly intelligent and capable, but an animal nonetheless. We begin to see now, one of the two problems I spoke of at the beginning of this paper. It is hard for me to see man as an individual in Marxist thinking. I continue to see humanity as a pack animal who moves through history in group formations. Whatever the system of government, whatever the system of trade, man is acted on largely as part of a group. Marx views human nature not as the conflict between good and evil, or as the battleground between opposing moral forces but almost as a changing object that is subject to the power of economic forces. Human nature is no to be redeemed by religious or spiritual forces. It is not to be saved by the intervention of superior moral forces, although they may be created later on in history. Human nature is in continuous flux, and growth rising from one thought pattern created by economics to another until finally it reaches or will reach that of the consciousness of the proletariat.

Now, the second problem arises. Because Marx does not see human nature as good or evil, inherently, the reason that humanity does what it does must be located elsewhere. I touched on this briefly in the last paragraph. Marx is very much a believer in progress, in an inevitable course of events unfolding along dynamic economic lines. The old barter, small-town economy gives way to feudalism, which yields to small capitalism then large capitalism and industrialism, which ushers in the growth of a massive growth of workers, the proletariat, who will lead the world to communism and freedom from economic slavery. In the Marxist model, while there may be individual acts of wrong doing, indeed there must be many acts of economic cruelty and corruption to push the need for economic change. However, the capitalist can only act this way. Even those capitalists who try to do the "right thing" are doomed to failure and worse. Hence, the disdain that both Marx and, especially, Engels have for utopian socialists, for anyone who advocates capitalism with a friendly face.

Because of the systemic, almost inevitable, way that economics and history unfold in the Marxist model, indeed history is just the playing out of economic forces, because of this, it is difficult to posit where exactly human freedom or individual action exists in Marxist thought and what part these may play. I am not sure if it does, and if it does, how important either or both are in the Marxist scheme of things. One answer to this problem may be that human freedom, truly individuated individuals, real autonomy exist until after the revolution of the proletariat and many years of stripping away the baggage of capitalism and the instilling of new values, values that come from the proletariat. If this is the case, then it would seem that Marx is actually far closer to utopians like Thomas Moore and Jonathan Swift than not. However, unlike the utopias of these two writers, utopias that seem to have always existed without change, Marx has a plan to get there. Because in the end, Marx believes in the perfectibility of the race. Hell is found present on earth in the workhouses and prisons of Dickens' England, in the fire of the Triangle shirt company, in the child labor practices of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Heaven is waiting to be created in the years after the revolution of the proletariat.

Yet, and yet. The golden period that will come has to be worked towards. As inevitable as the revolution seems to be, Marx did believe in struggling for it anyway. He wrote, published papers, set up groups, was arrested, and exiled for his actions. So, in what appears to be a contradiction, Marx the individual (with a few cohorts) helped to lay the groundwork for the collective revolution. This opens a space for an interesting question. Is there room in Marx's theories for political action?

 It would appear on the surface, at least, that voting, lobbying, and the other tools and strategies that make democracy work (or not) would be absent in the Marxist world. The high degree of individual choice coupled with the way politics often force crossing of class lines, making for strange bedfellows, stands in direct contrast to the way power is taken in Marxist thought by the workers. Since it is only by seizing the means of production, that the workers gain power, all the tools of democracy that are used to gain influence and power are rendered superfluous. It is only after that the proletariat is in control that the democratic tools come into use. Even then, they are circumscribed so as to not allow capitalists to regain control. At base, democracy is clearly a middle-class idea. The American Revolution and the Puritan Revolution in England were both middle-class revolutions as such, and like the bourgeois class itself, democracy has its merits over monarchy but is inferior to communism. Marx is a believer in progress, and in his case, he has a very definite idea about where it all should lead to in the end.

I mentioned a final, more basic problem, above. One might term this problem as the problem of mass dissemination. The man wrote and published a great deal. His final works were edited and published posthumously. Whether in the hands of able, honest, careful translators (either from one language to another or from difficult to layperson) or in the hands of less scrupulous translators and redactors, Marx and his ideas have been moved widely about. This makes it difficult to arrive at exactly what he was thinking on all issues. It is especially difficult to decide this question of human nature. However, I think some conclusions might be in order. Marx does believe in the perfectibility of humanity in the aggregate. He does believe that a human being is not evil by nature but is warped by economic forces. Those forces must finally come under the control of the proletariat in order for humankind to be free. Once this is achieved, there may be no limit to the good, to the progress that humanity can achieve. Marxism is a fairly optimistic theory.

But. I am troubled by aspects of Marx's view of human nature. I am not so willing to disregard the individual's role in history. Nor, for that matter, am I willing to simply view history as the play of economic forces. I am too much a product of my culture(s) to be able to shake off the belief in the power, the drama of the individual to change things for reasons quite apart or beyond economic ones. To some extent, Marx fits very well alongside other scientists and philosophers of the last two hundred years. He, like they, strives for that unified field theory. He, like them, is looking for the big answer that will solve all the questions. Finally, he, like they, is a firm believer in the momentum of history, in the continuous movement forward of the human race. Progress was the definite watchword of his time, as it was for the modernist period of our own century. I am not sure if this is the case. Is there really such a thing as progress? Are we always moving forward? Some religions say that we are devolving, that it has all been downhill since Eden. I do not believe this at all. Yet, I am not convinced in continuous forward progress interrupted by minor setbacks, either. Marxism as an entire theory has much to recommend it. I certainly will not argue with the analysis of capitalism or the sympathy that Marxist thought has for the worker, the downtrodden, even the industrialist as a prisoner of the system. I do take exception with the reduction of man to Homo Economicus. Humanity is far too complicated to be so reduced. Humanity is such a bundle of virtue, vice, neurosis, nonsense, pleasures and pain that I cannot honestly be altogether with Marx's simplification of human nature.

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1.     Of course, the length of this essay itself is a problem. The discussion of Marx's theory of human nature could fill, and does, many books, magazines, and pamphlets. Nevertheless, some attempt will be made to define his theory.

Liberal Humanism

By Andrew Aaron

.It is perhaps, only possible now, to speak of liberal humanism and hermeneutics as cultural products, in the light cast by materialism. The great work that materialism did for cultural critique was to open every area of human endeavor, including materialism, for exploration and critique. Heretofore, each new school of human thought, while fully able to analyze other schools, generally left itself off the hook. Descartes’ doubt extended only so far, Arnold having found high culture looked no further. However, a general discussion along such lines may be somewhat premature. A more particular summary of materialism and its forebears is in order.

Liberal humanism is and has been the dominant model that has governed the West for four hundred years 1. Its strength lies in its ability to speak to deep democratic impulses of liberty, justice, fairness, the centrality of the individual while at the same time allowing any number of imprisonments, injustices, unfairness, and atomization of the individual coupled with group dominance to exist and even flourish under its rubric. In fact, what is most apparent about each of the three models of critique is that they engender in their application, the reasons for new critiques (I will return to this). Liberal humanism fought against theism, authoritarianism, and the static nature of the Middle Ages 2,

The Catholic Church with its vast hierarchy and domination of all religious and much secular matter was perhaps the most organized opponent of liberal humanism. The various feudal monarchies bolstered by divinely given absolute rule had little or no truck with even primitive forms of democracy. Finally, medieval culture was deeply unchanging, to some extent resembling Egypt at its peak. Long years of war, plague, and ignorance all made for an environment that was hardly conducive to breakout thinking 3. Nevertheless, with the reformation of the church, the exploration of the globe, it was only a matter of time before a new model developed. Liberal humanism was that model. It emphasized man as individual, as conqueror of nature.

For Bacon, the superstition of the church and the dogma that enveloped and protected that superstition was anathema. Socrates’ belief that the man of wisdom could discern signs in heaven on how to live was replaced by actually seeing what was in heaven and what was on earth, in nature. Nature that was created just to be understood by man. Bacon saw that culture, therefore, in all its forms must be thoroughly doubted. Where did these ideas come from about the world, about people, about society? Bacon found his key to understanding in the scientific method, Hume went further, and he doubted even science. However, there is something cold and sterile in all this science, Kant attempts to add layers of nuance to liberal humanism. Kant attempts to corral each of the three ways that reason exists by forcing them to be viable only in their fields of endeavor. God's existence cannot be proved or disproved by science since the supernatural falls outside its purview 4. Culture, then, is not autonomous or given divinely for Kant but exists at the interstice of the individual and his world. It becomes the vehicle for pushing man upwards out of the slime and chaos of his past. Progress was an undeniable good for most of the architects of liberal humanists.

I wrote earlier that the critique of any model was found in the very application of the model. Liberal humanism was rigid at times, it relied heavily on science, and it seemingly attempts to place man in kind of perpetual now, as a self-creating individual who can be divorced from his background 5. This model founded on reason could only call into being a model founded on romantic tendencies. Hermeneutics is literally the science of interpretation. Surber derives the word finally from Hermes, the messenger of the Greek gods and the carrier of secrets. The hermetic texts were sacred and magical books that could only be deciphered by adepts and only truly understood by those adepts. While the thinkers who developed hermeneutics as a model of understanding and critiquing the world, were not magic seekers by any means (as far as I know) it says something that their model was at least partially based on magical thinking.

The great advance that this, in part, romantic model made over liberal humanism was the development of the idea that culture was a continuously produced, refined, reshaped, organism that depended on the individual and the world that individual inhabited. Moving back and forth between the throwness (past), the circumspective concern (present), and the projection (future), the individual and the group created language, art, writing, dance, in short all that human beings did or said was culture, was text. This being the case, it was the hermeneutisist's job to analyze and decipher what any particular "text" meant for reader and author, for viewer and painter, for observer and choreographer. Hermeneutics as a model may not be as complete or as far-reaching as the other two, but it does lay the groundwork for Deconstructionism in the study of literature, Psychoanalysis in the study of the human mind, Critical Legal Studies in the examination of law and governance. However, just as liberal humanism could become the backbone of the status quo and even quite reactionary (i.e. Arnold), hermeneutics could and sometimes does drift into obscurity, into side issues, leaving the grappling with the world to others.

Surber quotes Marx's line “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however, is to change it,” at least twice in his chapter on the materialist critique. There is excellent reason to repeat this dictum. It is the clearest formation of the difference between materialism as it became under Marx, and either hermeneutics or liberal humanism. Both of the latter are tools to analyze, to probe to understand why and how and what an object, an idea, a civilization is and is not. The former is a tool for all these but it also can be the tool to change the object, the idea, the civilization. Materialism gets its start with Baruch Spinoza, philosopher and theologian, in the 17th century. Spinoza pushed for a matter-based world, the mind and substance not being incompatible6 in such a universe. Once this becomes established, once science makes nature a thing that can be controlled, changed, a purely sensed based view of reality is not going to last long.

As materialism develops, it becomes somewhat mystical under the sway of Hegel. Feuerbach pulls Hegel back and turns him around, shifting his words in order to change the meaning of his sentences. Marx takes this notion and creates a critique of culture in which culture is seen as both the expression of a person and a people as well as the way in which the operative forces of history are masked and hidden from the people. Marx's famous and oft-misunderstood belief "that religion is the opiate of the masses" becomes clear when religion is seen as being a cultural construct that generally supports the those in power, whether by its structure of belief in a kingly God-figure which sets an example for earthly rule, the hierarchy of priests and prelates, or the dogma and superstition that Bacon abhorred 7. Culture is too be critiqued (and criticized) when it occurs under status quo, domineering models of governance and power relationships. When it can occur spontaneously under optimal conditions it is to be embraced, according to Marx. However, as Marxism played itself out in history, becoming Leninist-Stalinist Marxism, it assumed many of the faults and foibles of the regimes it had stood against. This forced a reevaluation of Marxist theory. For the purposes of this essay, Gramsci's view of culture as part of hegemony and anti-hegemony forces, his belief that culture and politics/economics were reciprocal, that is mutually enhancing and detracting is of paramount importance. Materialism is at bottom a view of the universe, that sees all as matter, the "stuff' of the universe, as existing obeying laws, governed by time and space, even human affairs obey these laws. Gramsci and Althusser push Marxism and materialism into new places, new modes of thinking. Together Marxist-Materialism remains as a powerful tool for analysis.

Reading back over this essay, I am struck by how much my language reflects liberal humanism. I speak of "advances," of progress. I talk of engendering; my language is tainted by diachronism. I feel myself missing "the big picture," trapped by my own belief in my individual intelligence. I mentioned Borges before, something of his terror and wariness when confronted by vertiginous thinking by multiplicity of form and sameness. Am I guilty of banality is the essay that others are also guilty of before and after me? How much of my cultural baggage has made this essay what it is and what it is not? Each model that I have discussed contains faults and virtues, the leading virtue and the leading virtue both being that reflexivity, the looking and critiquing the self beyond just the moral but also the political, the scientific, the personal, the cultural, is here to stay.

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1 Culture and Critique, Jere Paul Surber (Colorado: Westview Press, 1998). This figure is quoted on page 45 but the theme of liberal humanism's dominance is repeated often in the course of all three chapters.

2 Ibid. Surber repeats this formulation through chapter I

3 However, it is worth noting that the Greek and Roman knowledge that Bacon, Hume, et al valued, was preserved by monks and clerics in Europe, and the sages/theologians of Islam. Structuralism strikes again.

4 Many atheists dispute this logic.

5 This may explain the American capitalist notions of the self-made man and every individual's ability to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, regardless of their past or how that past may impinge on their present.

6 We are all materialists in our day-to-day lives. I find it hard to imagine really being able to prove to the average person the truth of a David Humian world. Borges's refutation of time might be the last great example in this century.

The Holocaust

By Andrew Aaron

Well, a great deal has been said here tonight. Some true, some false, some plainly wrong. If there is a topic that is ambiguous, unwieldy, far-reaching and filled with awe, it is the Holocaust. However as shot through with all the above as the Holocaust is, some truth can be found. Amazingly, the comments dovetail with each other, but two really stand alone.

The history of Germany and Judaism is not a particularly positive one. Whether it was in the German inquisition or the later polemics of Martin Luther or the outbreaks of anti-Semitism during World War I, there never has been an easy relationship between the two. Yet, Jews lived in Germany and even prospered there. The anti-Semitism in Germany was not much different, in either degree or kind, from that of the rest of Europe. Pogroms were less frequent than in Eastern Europe and powerful Jews as numerous as those in England. Germany was a culturally advanced society with mixed attitudes toward Jews, not much different from other countries of the time. So where did the viciousness emerge from?

Certainly, Hitler saw a world free of Jews. He was a deep anti-Semite who attracted others like him. However, given Germany’s present-day problem with Turks, one can only assume that there may be a quirk in the culture that needs to vilify the other (like so many other cultures) but also need to act on this vilification. This quirk may manifest itself in some of the people who carried out the brutal acts of the Holocaust, others may simply have been caught up in the fervor of the moment, that bizarre sense of community that Nazism inspired. It may be that many Germans saw a Europe free of Jews or just a town free of Jews. Violence is a whirlwind that often becomes a vast choreography that many cannot dance away from. Nonetheless, the Germans (and others) killed many Jews, but not all; the plan did not succeed.

The plan did not succeed but the Holocaust happened. Or did it? Is it possible that all the photos, artwork, secret essays and diaries, all the poetry are mere exaggerations, lies even? Can it be that the reports from Patton, who would not enter, and Eisenhower, who did, so he could say "I saw all this,” are mistaken, misrepresenting the truth, overdrawing the situation? Perhaps he and others are part of some sinister conspiracy. Perhaps it involves the Russians or the Allies or the Zionists in an attempt to take power from someone else. Perhaps? But what if it is true. It certainly is easier to believe that the suffering was far less, the horror minimized and rendered just a part of war, of life in POW camps, internment sites, relocation centers. These are so easy on the tongue, so smooth. Only, if it is true what do we do with all of our new questions: What about this incredible case of inhumanity to man? What to do with the loss of faith in man, in God? Where do we put the deep unease caused by the realization that progress and science were inseparable from the breadth and skillfulness of the act? Where does the fact that Germany was civilized, cultured and capable of the most murderous rampage lead one? What to do? What to do? Of course it is easier to deny, to downgrade the spectacle of the Holocaust but in the end is still there, calling into question all that we believe of ourselves and the whole of modernity. It is better to let such "revisionist" questions go and face the repugnance and explore the camps.

The camps existed, the holocaust happened. How could so many be oppressed by so few? How did they allow themselves to go “like lambs to the slaughter?” Many did not go at all. Many fled as far and wide as they could away from Nazism. Many hid for years and came out only reluctantly when they were sure the night was over. Some went to Israel and became the forebears of those who would later (ironically) call them weak. Many became fighters, resisters, and leaders of the people. These orchestrated the uprisings (or quelled them), led the secret armies of the sewers, and gave solace and comfort when they could. For many, it was these who delayed the end and gave time to escape.

Historically, the Jews of Europe knew about pogroms, knew about deportation. Who knew about genocide? By the time the unbelievable truth was out; many were dead, ill, or "gone" inside. For those left, it took time to get one's bearings. It took time to organize oneself according to the rules and terrain of hell. When the ovens were blown up at Sobibor, when black markets were run effectively from inside the camps, when information was passed out, all of these and more were the most profound of resistances. To blame the victim is almost always wrong, to not give credit to the victims for surviving (even a short time) is always wrong.

And many did survive. A miracle of will, luck, mazel, placing, fate. The Nazis did everything in their power to make camp living as horrible, as insulting, as foul as possible. It was hell, literally. Flames, smoke, unendurable, unending pain, weariness, illness, and filth were all in abundance in the camps, gleefully provided by the Germans. Dignity was taken by force, pride broken, men and women left naked to the world of the camps.

Each person was tagged like meat, all were dressed the same, so that their executioners could kill the same hated individual over and over The prisoners were expected to respond like animals, reduced passed caring to pure barbarism. Did it work? To some. They became debauched vacant, people whose souls had fled their bodies. They were musselmanns, animated skeletons.

Not all became like the musselmann, however. Dignity was found in the oddest places. Weak pseudo-coffee was used as a mouthwash. Any opportunity to wash or even sprinkle water on the skin was taken. Clothing was patched and "warmed-up.” Any act that gave proof of humanity, of taking interest in life was an act of survival, an act of hope. The Germans wanted animals, those who did these acts threw the words back onto their captors.

These acts saved lives. Inmates working together with other inmates to survive the fated that had seemingly caught them saved lives. Fate is a big word. Coincidence when it is traced back far enough becomes inevitable, and fate always plays a role. Men and women who knew how to work in groups lived. Men and women who knew how to delegate and be delegated to lived. Those who could cooperate lived. Businessmen, competitive and wary, tended not to make it. Aristocrats (as such) tended not to make it.

Daring, timing, watching, saved lives. The ability to learn enough German to understand the guards, saved lives.

Above all, cooperation saved lives. Nothing was easy in the camps. All things were geared to savagery, to the reduction of the individual to the state of the beast. So the fact that a rough form of ethics came into being, is amazing. This was an ethic of sharing what could be shared. It was an ethic of helping almost without thinking or knowing why. It was an ethic that demanded silence and punishment for traitors. One was never to steal a man's bread, but when possible, one was to share a crumb, a pinch of salt, a piece of string. It was an ethic that was group-driven and individually centered. A man could be killed by a guard that just came on duty—fate in action But a man who was tipped off that Guard A likes vodka or cigarettes or chocolate; that he is sober at 6 but not so after 8; that meat is available in the storeroom after 8:30, this was how fate was circumvented, this was how the camps were survived.

Hell is lived through, and the survivors blink in the strong sun brought by the allies. Most of the Europe they knew is gone as are most of their families. Long waits in displaced person camps and new homes far away become the lot of many of them. The depression is over, the war won. Go on, be free. Soon there is even an Israel to go to and enjoy. Hell is not a place only, it is a mindset. It becomes a part of you, a cold region few understand. Many of the survivors went onto new lives, new families.

Many did not. How does one let go of so much pain? We know how long the grieving may last when one loses a loved one to old age.  We grieve the loss of a job, a house, a friend. How does one grieve the loss of a town, a city, a people?

It may be asked, “Why should they let go of their experience? Why let go of such a powerful truth?” Unquestionably, many do let go. Or perhaps the pain is put aside, pushed down. “Never again” are only words unless we know what follows after “again.” If for no other reason, by not “getting over it,” survivors make us all wrestle with our past and our present and our future. "Look (they say), look how close the beast is to the surface. I have seen it, lived with it. I know it." We need such witnesses; need them to point out the truth to us. I do not know how many survivors do not get over "it". That they do not wail in the streets (as perhaps they should) is something.  There are no normal lives to live, but there are extraordinary lives to share.

God

By Andrew Aaron

There is an almost overpowering feeling that one gets merely from stating that "God is dead." This feeling is more than just one of "overpowerfulness,” or empowerment, it is also more than a feeling of being overpowered. Somehow, the feeling is a combination of all these feelings at once in a kind of whirlwind of ideas and emotions. When Nietzsche writes these words for the first time, a shudder must run through Europe, creating a rupture that remains to this day.

For thousands, if not millions of years, humanity has looked outside itself, beyond itself to find the "answer". Entire cultures are founded on, fueled by, churned by, and sometimes overthrown by the notion that there is somewhere else a way and a power. European history has been dominated by this notion. Whether it is the divine rights of kings that allowed for the most drastic and horrendous kinds of abuses or the taking (and losing) of property and treasure and population (almost always the last consideration), the power of the word "God" has given power of a different kind to many believers and nonbelievers alike.

The Vikings and the Norsemen, ancestors of both Heidegger and Nietzsche, had dark gods that were wrathful, wild, and lovers of battle. Other Europeans had gods of love and compassion (gentle Jesus) or stern and unforgiving (the Father of the Inquisition). Yet, in the end, the results were much the same. Wars of religion, like the Crusades, were engaged in by all sides. Wars of plunder, imperial wars, were engaged in by all. Wars of persecution and wars of hate were engaged in by all. The "answer(s)" always was pushing the combatants onward to greater gory glory.

On the other hand, art, poetry, and science flourished as well at times. The Norse (and their relatives) created the Eddas and the oldest piece of literature in Northern Europe, the saga of Beowulf. Monks preserved the wisdom of Greece and Rome in manuscripts that still are marvels for beauty and craftsmanship of penwork and drawing. The crusades made connections between the Islamic world and Christendom. Both sides benefited from trading of foods and technical knowledge. The "answer(s)" drove men (and some few women) on to discover as much of God's world as possible.

God's world and God's word. These are the common threads that run through both the good and the bad, the order and chaos of Western history. Whether one believed in a Calvinist manner or venerated the Ikons of Eastern Orthodoxy, whether the Pope was one's guide or one looked to the Archbishop of Canterbury, it didn't really matter. The answer was outside of man, separate from man, beyond man save by the intercession of intermediaries like Jesus and his saints and martyrs (or Moses and legions of rabbis and Talmudists or Mohammed and imams and scholars, to be fair). One could gain insight into the world only by leaving off looking at the ground and gazing into the heavens. It is not odd that both Nietzsche and Heidegger dislike Socrates. After all, it was Socrates who taught that men of understanding could by discernment see the signs in heaven for themselves and know to act accordingly. The common thread, the thing that ties so many centuries of European history together is this other-centered universe, this mindset that is directed outward away from the world to the supernatural world, the world beyond.

Yet the slow movement1 from gazing at earth to gazing inside does not occur all at once. Man moves from the earth-centered universe to that of a sun-centered one. This does two things at once, humanity is free now to move beyond either Aristotelian science or church dominated intellectual striving, but it also means that man is no longer the center of the universe, a problem that will come up more for Heidegger and the Existentialists than for Nietzsche. Over the centuries, man will be freed from certain moorings that seemed strong and sure. Humanity loosens and loosens again the ties that bind philosophy and science and art as well to dogma and belief. Through it all, though, no one stands up and says, "God is dead" the way that Nietzsche does. Thomas Jefferson is a "deist." Marx, while having little truck with traditional religion, has his own invisible Gods, who look not unlike the Gods of Adam Smith. The hidden is still lurking about, waiting to guide humanity if it wishes. What to do, what to do?

What can one do but come crashing into the marketplace and announce that "God is dead" to all those standing around jabbering and yammering away. With a prescience that is almost eerie, Nietzsche has the madman do the work of shouldering this enormous burden, these brazen shouting of a new truth. I spoke of power, the power of this new phrase, this new thought. The madman sees this, knows that the world is not ready for his truth. The question is whether Heidegger is ready and are we ready for this madman's truth. The further questions are whether we can truly grasp what Nietzsche is really saying, what he means by having a madman deliver his lines,

For Nietzsche, the death of God is both a freeing, optimistic thing, but also a dark omen of a change in the world and the way that world is seen. Heidegger in his essay touches on both these seemingly contradictory themes.  It is important to tease both out and then try to come back to Heidegger's final point about philosophy and its supposed end.

Early on, Heidegger refers to "We Fearless Ones.” He specifically refers to the piece that begins "The greatest recent event--that 'God is dead,' that the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable--is already beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe." This comes from a section called "The meaning of our cheerfulness," from “The Gay Science.” I do not think that Nietzsche is being ironic or sarcastic when he uses this word "cheerfulness.” I think that Nietzsche sees the revaluing of all values as a good thing. It is the throwing off of the veil, the beginning of seeing that which is truly there. In this sense, man freed of the limiting suprasensory world view, is now allowed to seek out from inside himself, from his being that truth which comes from this world without reference to some other world beyond. As Heidegger writes:

“The pronouncement "God is dead" means: The suprasensory world is without effective power. It bestows no life. Metaphysics, i.e, for Nietzsche Western philosophy understood as Platonism, is at an end.”

This does not mean nothing can bestow life. It means that although religion often speaks of "the world being impossible without God, man is nothing without God. etc.," such equations were never valid to start with. This is why Heidegger makes a point of saying that Nietzsche is no atheist. The men in the marketplace who do not believe in God are not the audience for the madman. Because they are atheists in that they no longer believe in God and no longer know how to look for God. They are without thought, for them God has become a mere concept, a repository for old ideas and beliefs, an excuse in a way for how to see the world. Hence, the optimism of the concept "God is dead". The person who can say this, who can free him or herself from a belief that never was valid to start with is now free to start to look for beliefs and concepts that are valid. The void yawns, Nihilism opens its mouth, and the man for whom "God is dead" can laugh aloud at Nihilism and really begin to think as opposed to merely reason.

That is the optimistic view. It is with the darker view, that Heidegger really begins to locate and then go beyond the mere surface of the phrase, "God is dead". If "God" the concept and all the concepts that go along with this overarching one are gone, then what? Where does man then go for answers?

Metaphysics as Nietzsche and the West understands the term, is at an end. It can no longer cast light on anything. In fact, as Heidegger develops his theme, metaphysics has never really cast light on anything at all.2 It is the love of rational, platonic thought that has most blinded men to truth. Truth, however, being a somewhat shady character, truth as the West has understood it, is shortsighted and may be wrong to be looked for in the first place. The darker view that runs through the "God is dead" theme is not just that the West's search for truth is misguided nor is it nearly the existentialist crisis I have just described.

Beyond this, the darker view is that Western metaphysics has trapped humanity, has kept humanity from achieving all that humanity can achieve. Whether it is because of the scientistic way of philosophizing, Baconsim, or because it has led to mistaken ideas such as the reactive method of Western retribution and justice, metaphysics has been a continuous vehicle for nihilism. This nihilism is the life denying life-destroying disease that the West has carried, bred, and is finally dying. 

Where Nietzsche is anti-metaphysics and seemingly develops something against it through his new take on philosophy and religion, Heidegger goes beyond metaphysics completely. In effect as the essay develops, Heidegger makes an extraordinary case that Nietzsche is just playing a new game but under metaphysics’ old rules. Heidegger points out this paradox, himself, in the one of the more important passages in the essay:

“Nevertheless, as a mere countermovement it necessarily remains, as does everything "anti," held fast in the essence of that over against which it moves. Nietzsche's countermovement against metaphysics is, as the mere turning upside down of metaphysics, an inextricable entanglement in metaphysics, in such a way, indeed, that metaphysics is cut off from its essence and, as metaphysics, is never able to think its own essence. Therefore, what actually happens in metaphysics and as metaphysics itself remains hidden by metaphysics and for metaphysics.”

So even with Nietzsche's insights, we still have not traveled as far we thought. At best, Nietzsche provides a window, albeit large and dramatic, into where the West has gone wrong philosophically, but perhaps he does.

For Nietzsche, the death of god is both a freeing, optimistic thing but also a dark omen of a change in the world and the way that world is seen. Heidegger in his essay touches on both these seemingly contradictory themes. It is important to tease both out and then try to come back to Heidegger's final point about philosophy and its supposed end.

I ask this question because Heidegger seems to be without hope, where Nietzsche seems full of hope. I locate this hope in Nietzsche's quest to describe, in effect to bring about the Overman. This Overman will transcend our old dichotomies, our old foolish pride and our prideful shame. The madman is not this Overman, I do believe. The madman is the forerunner, a kind of prophet, but a wholly different magnitude and kind than the old Biblical prophets. The fact that Nietzsche creates the character of the madman fact that while he subjects this character that he cares for to the jeers of the marketplace and yet doesn't allow him to fall into self-pity or Jonah-like self- exile, is a sign that Nietzsche believes that the future is yet to be made. This seems to be the definition of hope to me. Yet, to Heidegger this does not seem.

Is the “end of philosophy” of Heidegger a sign of giving up? Heidegger ends by somewhat quietly asking if we will wake up to what nihilism has done to us, wake up to what we need to understand the world as it is now and what will be in the future. I say quietly because it comes so quickly at the end of the essay and so belatedly, as it were. It follows on so much of "the wrong" and how we got here.

Being is constantly losing in the quest to become known, constantly submerged under the weight of false-Being. How do we stop this process? In other places, Heidegger embraces a kind of listening silence that may yield new answers. It is almost as if after so much reasoning, so much rational thinking, talking, and more talking, that Heidegger wants the West to be quiet for a moment. I am tempted to say that literally, Heidegger is asking for silence for God's sake. Maybe he is doing just that in fact.

The whole point behind the "end of philosophy” is that our kind of philosophy (although Heidegger may mean all philosophy) is no longer capable of doing any of the things that it was meant to do. It can no longer free us from the marketplace. It is no match for technology. It has sold out to both and been dealt with poorly in the transaction. Liberal humanism, Marxism and fascism all are dead ends of one kind or another. The end of philosophy is really shorthand for saying "Western metaphysics, which is really metaphysics, is finished as a place to find solutions to problems. Man is alone in a cold universe and philosophy can not warm humanity any further." If "God is dead," then heaven, hell, ideal forms, platonic signs, "natural" law, inalienable rights, all the touchstones of Western thought no longer function. More, they no longer even exist; they have been effectively erased for all time. Nausea, in Sartre's meaning, becomes the normal state of man and he must deal with its symptoms all by himself.

I do not know if Heidegger is right or not. It may be that such a question is invalid at this point in history. However, I am certain that the madman is right when he says "I come too early ... my time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering-it has not reached the ears of man."

I look around and see that the supersensory world still exists in all its forms. Religious fundamentalism sweeps the globe with talk of millennial (and other forms of) redemption. Men everyday speak in glowing terms about the market as if it was some force beyond human control or creation. The world is filled with vast and secret conspiracies that are unseen and super potent. Books, movies, and television preach that he world that you know is not the real world, there is another, true world underneath the surface. How far are we, in short, from the ancient beliefs in old Demiurges in malicious Gods and demons who use us for their sport? How far are we from the idea that this entire world is but a reflection of the true world above, soon to become visible? Heidegger goes beyond Nietzsche. I do not think we are ready to move quite yet.

·        * *

11)  I do not use the word progression, although this may be so, given both Heidegger’s downward ladder of philosophy and the postmodern trend to dislike “progression” because of what it entails.

22) There are contradictions in this, I know. However problematic as these may be, I just don’t have the background to develop them. Suffice it to say, Nietzsche and Heidegger are not self-created men. They come out of this tradition, raised on Western thought and now pulling the roof on everybody inside. Rorty refers to this.

Edgar Allen Poe

By Andrew Aaron

"Unity of effect was what he strove after in his stories, and he stressed the importance of craftsmanship in the construction of a story no less than Hoffman. But, unlike the German writer, there is nothing whimsical in his work, no different levels of intensity, no trace of romantic irony."1

This is the commonly accepted view of Poe's work. He is a dark, brooding writer, who takes the reader on fearsome journeys that almost invariably end in gruesome circumstances (for the narrator at least). The photographs that we have the writer do not help matters. The lank hair, the heavy bags under the eyes, the somber mouth, the wide forehead all lead one to conclude that this is no dashing dandy of the writing life. The biography put together by Rufus W. Griswold made Poe into a monster of excess, with few if any redeeming qualities. It is perhaps ironic that the writer who so feared forced entombment, had his reputation buried for many years under a hateful biography, that reputation being resurrected well after its owner was long gone.

Yet, Poe was not a happy man, the biography was not wrong on all accounts. He did drink. He did not always make the best use of himself. In short, he was human. Unfortunately, between the accepted view of the man, the success of his tales of terror, and the occasionally difficult writing style have all combined to make the quotation from above all too frequently accurate in the minds of readers.

As to the notions (from the quotation above) that there are "no different levels of intensity, no trace of romantic irony," well this seems to be simply wrong. Poe would be a very boring writer if he did not change the level of his writing voice.

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is clearly a serious story as it details the explanation of the two violent deaths of the mother and daughter, Esplanade. Yet, early on in the story, there is an example given by the narrator as to Duping’s mental acuity, in a somewhat wry, somewhat smile-invoking manner. The phrase "he is a little fellow" is not without its comic overtones. Poe loves language. He loves the way words and feelings go together. If this is not the case, how to explain the third paragraph, from "Thou Art the Man" that begins on page 728 and concludes on page 729. This paragraph is nothing more than a meditation on the name Charley Goodfellow. It is somewhat sarcastic and somewhat caustic, and a little witty. Everywhere in this story, Poe slyly plays with the reader.

If Poe wishes to make the reader ponder on the merits or demerits of Mr. Goodfellow, he does not write that Mr. Goodfellow was a bad man or a user but rather states some little observation and follows it with a corollary: "for 'Old Charley' never let a day pass without stepping in three or four times to see how his neighbor came on, and very often he would stay to breakfast or tea, and almost always to dinner;" (pg. 729). The reader has already been informed that the neighbor never steps over the other way, so that by slyly constructing the sentence so, Poe wittily gives us an insight into "old Charley's" makeup. Poe will do this throughout the story. At every instance, Poe's narrator will by careful modulation of his voice use sarcasm to reveal old Charley's character. Charley will speak and unaccountably the opposite of his entreaties will happen. He will act and his action's go unaccountably awry but always Poe is making the reader wonder if this is truly the case. Finally, Poe will in this story, give us fine examples of his delight in rhyming, in playful onomatopoeia as in the wine merchants that deliver Chateau-Margeau to old Charley: Hoggs, Froggs, Boggs, & Co.

Rhyming and sarcasm are not the only tools of Poe. He has a vast store of philosophical knowledge, it is only reasonable to think that occasionally he uses this to poke fun at himself and other "philosophes.” "Bon-Bon" is just such a story. Poe begins the story with his usual bit of quotation, in this case from French vaudeville. It is a quote on wine's power to make one think oneself wise than one truly maybe. It prefigures the whole story. Bon-Bon is a cook and a philosopher. He is a restaurateur who stores books in frying pans and treatises in mixing bowls. He is also "barely three feet in height" and very round. Between his dress and his physical attributes, he looks to me like a Christmas tree ornament, multi- colored and sparkling. Of course, being round, small, and French, he may look very much like his name, a bon-bon. Our hero is ridiculous then, it is only fitting that his meeting with the Devil is equally ridiculous.

Although there are sinister undertones to the meeting, as when the Devil's book cover changes titles from “Rituel Catholique” to “Regitre des Condamnes,” on the whole this is a witty meditation by Poe on philosophy and its discontents. The devil dismisses the Romans and is contemptuous of the metaphysical notions of our drunken hero (pg. 176). The story also seems to provide information about the dark side of Poe's philosophy of religion and the afterlife. The human soul seems fit only for consumption by those beyond this world. It is dangerous, I think, to speculate this way too much but this does give another example of why reading the lighter-seeming pieces is important.

When Poe is not attempting to give psychological underpinnings to his serious work, as in the story "The Imp of the Perverse", his guard may be lowered in the lighter ones making his asides all the more revealing of the man and his thinking. We leave Monsieur Bon-Bon trapped under a lamp, drunk but not dead, perhaps a little wiser probably not, though, the devil departing for regions unknown. This Devil is the forerunner of Shaw's; of "Oh God, You Devil"; and the many gentlemen "of wealth and taste" that have seduced, offended, charmed and frightened readers, theatergoers and movie watchers in the last hundred years. His tail is tastefully hidden, his horns absent, and his eyes nowhere to be found. This devil tutored Plato and was Epicurus. He is a gourmet when he has the means to eat well. This story is not serious but it is certainly vaudevillian.

A life of tragedy was Poe's with few triumphs and many heartbreaking defeats. He died in poverty and was impoverished a great deal of the time. It is easy for those defenders of the thesis that real horror begot literary horror and that the drug-induced dreams of Poe found their way to paper to become the all-too real nightmares of his narrators and characters. This is all probably true. Yet, Poe could also write things where darkness was nowhere to be found. He could write pieces that are full of word play, puns, and the tricks that late would make Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, and Ogden Nash so widely read and enjoyed.

My favorite of these "word-play plays" is "The Devil in the Clocktower.” In this story that details the fall of what was once "the finest place in the world,” Poe uses all his tricks but calls on word-play more often than not. The paragraph that deals with the town's name "Vondervotteimittis" (pp. 298-299) is as effective a satirical piece on philology, place name origins, and stuffed-shirtism as one can find. It is a joy of children to divide and cram together words. Who did not either trick someone or was tricked into saying "O Wha Ta Goo Si Am" five times fast? Here, Poe uses the stuff of childhood to elicit a very laughable town name for a very laughable town. A town made up, as far as I could tell, of Dutch versions of yard gnomes. Everything goes well in town, so much so that Poe is able to get off a few cracks about complacent town-councils. Like the perfect clock-work of the town clock, perfect is the life of the people of the town. Between the breeziness of the devil who ruins things, the startled exclamations of the people, and the confusion of the clocks, Poe has given us a story that could almost be described as cute. It is not surprising that Poe quotes a piece of vaudeville, French though it maybe, since he uses tricks borrowed from vaudeville to make this story work. High-sounding rhetoric (shades of Irwin Corey), a fake foreign language with a funny accent, and punning are brought together to make the reader smile. I think of Thurber, I think of Benchley, I think of Joyce when I read this story. In the end, I wonder if Twain read this before he wrote "The man who corrupted Hadleysville”?

But should not we use "The Devil in the Clocktower" as the exception that proves the rule? There is only a handful of these humorous pieces to hold against the many tales and stories of death, despair, destruction, and the final dropping into the Maelstrom. Ligeia, William Wilson, Usher, the Red Death, each has taken their proper place in the halls of what is called" great literature.” Poe’s influence on Doyle is quite clear. Bierce and Lovecraft owe him a great debt as well.  Poe is, and hopefully will be, remembered for his contribution to the short story, horror and otherwise. However, a case can and must be made for remembering Mr. Lackobreath and Mr. Windenough, for remembering Mr. Touch-and-go Bullet-head and his city of Alexander-the-Great-onopolis, for Poe’s Scheherezade and her last tale. The richness of his writing and the vividness of his depictions are excellent for highlighting the shadows of humanity, but they are also made to do yeoman’s work in showing us the sunnier, the funnier side of humanity.

1 Franz Rottensteiner, the Fantasy Book (Great Britain: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1978) 37.

3 Rottensteiner, pp. 72, 80.