More TM

When a décadent type of man ascended to the rank of the highest type, this could only happen at the expense if its countertype, the type of man that is strong and sure of life. When the herd animal is irradiated by the glory of the purest virtue, the exceptional man must have been devaluated into evil.
–Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche was a self-professed decadent. That Nietzsche is assumed by some as the highest type of philosopher only proves the weak, uncertain, and herd animal has taken the reins. Nietzsche claims as his especial value the announcement of the death of Christianity. And yet we can read in Schopenhauer:

“But do these gentlemen know what time of day it is?

“A long predicted epoch has set in; the church is beginning to totter, nay it totters already to such a degree, that it is doubtful whether it will ever be able to recover its centre of gravity; for faith is lost. The light of revelation, like other lights, requires a certain amount of darkness as an indispensable condition. The number of those who have been unfitted for belief by a certain degree and extent of knowledge, is already very large. Of this we have evident signs in the general diffusion of that shallow Rationalism which is showing its bulldog face daily more and more overtly. It quietly sets to work to measure those profound mysteries of Christianity over which centuries have brooded and disputed with its draper’s ell, and thinks itself wondrous wise withal. It is, however, the very quintessence of Christianity, the dogma of Original Sin, which these shallow-brained Rationalists have especially singled out for a laughing-stock; precisely because nothing seems clearer or more certain to them, than that existence should begin for each of us with our birth: nothing therefore so impossible as that we can have come into the world already burdened with guilt. How acute! And just as in times of prevailing poverty and neglect, wolves begin to make their appearance in villages ; so does Materialism, ever lying in wait, under these circumstances lift up its head and come to the front hand in hand with Bestialism, its companion, which some call Humanism.”

So where does lie Nietzsche’s especial “virtue”? Not in negating Schopenhauer’s pessimism, which he fully embraced in fact he took it to the level of absurdity. Nietzsche himself said that to destroy a movement all one had to do was become its most extreme follower. This gives us a hint, a clue. If we reject this pessimism that Nietzsche took to the absolute, so that all human advancement was based on malice, then we uncover Schopenhauer’s error, what Schopenhauer missed. Nietzsche’s work is then done and he maybe dismissed.

But why is Nietzsche flung so often in our faces? He is mentioned in the PoEZion as being valuable to their cause. His first English translation was done by Levy. Because his is the philosophy of the decadent; the higher type of man, who is strong and sure of life doesn’t need him and as Blake said, the eagle never lost so much time as when he consented to be taught by a horse.

EC-10: Sense Offence!

Faith in the power of exposing ideas that are vulgar and uninspired, presupposes an audience that understands the difference between virtue and vice.

A vice can be described as consenting to entertain corrupted modes of thought that seek to dope the senses, blot out compassion, and thwart understanding, and in this process destroy or pervert the psychological well being of others.  Those that live in vice, either consciously or unconsciously thrive on malice and will always find an intellectual argument against Compassion, Morality, Justice, and Honor.  They fanatically seek an intellectual theory to justify their a-moral perversions.

A virtue, on the other hand, can be described as consenting to entertain sobriety, compassion, love and empathy and will always find reasons to support its reality through examples in nature.  Virtue animates nature with compassion and beauty.

Watching animals cuddling each other, playing together, lambs leaping and jumping in joy with the budding birth of a new spring,  this is virtue, but nobodies pleasure;  everybody’s pleasure is to watch them tearing each other apart in a blood spectacle or fornicating.

A diseased mind of vice stagnates in filth and shows signs of diminished faculties as it treads and retreads the same arguments to defend the peculiar vice, as it does not want to be interfered with.  It juggles words on the virtue of beastiality.  No argument will satisfy.  And what does an argument based on vice accomplish?

“…little or nothing, and sometimes even harm.”  St. John of the Cross

A mind of virtue never stops within itself, it is original, but familiar, ordinary, but extraordinary, it is always open, full of bliss, reaching for honey – it makes sorties which surprisingly take it places which it never dreamed existed and becomes amazed at what it can achieve.  It presses on, gets pushed into corners and takes the blows;  But it’s sense of enigma grows stronger, the wonder and beauty of Man becomes more visible and it never bores, for the mystery of life keeps it wondering and occupied.  The mind of the virtuous is a mind of creation and discovery, and what it discovers always excites, and many strange pathways begin to appear, and produce even more undiscovered pathways.  It allows itself to be inspired and loved.

It is not men that change the form of society that are valuable to mankind, but those that make them think, aspire, and wonder.  A virtuous  conscious and character  deserves a place above intelligence.  The world is real precisely because it exists in our own conscious.  It is the conscious character that creates the world, and the collective conscious that bursts into collective action and decides whether the action is a virtue or a vice.  It is the difference between building a slaughter house or constructing Notre Dame.

The function of an Intellectual Elite is to inspire to virtue, not imprison, beat and fanatically destroy consciousness, compassion and the beauty of the natural world.

On Parsifal

I know I’ve been absent and I know I promised some more posts on the logical forms within the Faculty of Judgment, but first a timely meditation…

Wagner was influenced by the philosophy of Schopenhauer and in his opera Parsifal used the theme of Schopenhauer’s ‘compassion’.

At the beginning we meet our young hero Parsifal, a young man whose father died on the battlefield of the crusades as his mother gave him birth. Terrified that the same fate would befall her son she keeps him from knightly company in a hut in the woods. There Parsifal learns to shoot his bow with deadly accuracy and fight with the wild beasts.

One day Parsifal sees some knights ride past and is mystified and exhilarated by their appearance and follows them into the land of the Grail King which is “beyond space and time”. There he shoots down a swan and is upbraided by the Chamberlain because this is a sacred land where nothing is to be killed. Looking down upon the blood splattered swan while the Chamberlain talks of its former life Parsifal feels shame for his deed.

The Chamberlain then invites Parsifal to witness the Grail ceremony where the brotherhood of Grail Knights share communion as a band of blood brothers. Parsifal is overawed and made dumb by the sight. The Chamberlain calls Parsifal in his emotional state nothing more than a fool and sends him on his way.

The chorus refrain is always a “Through compassion a pure fool”

Having learnt during the ceremony that the Grail King suffers a grievous wound administered to him by Klingsor, a wicked sorcerer, by his own lance, which is a holy weapon, Parsifal goes to defeat Klingsor.

Klingsor tempts Parsifal with worldly pleasures but Parsifal resists and fights on towards Klingsor’s lair. Finally, Klingsor, sure of victory, launches the lance he stole from the Grail King at Parsifal, but in flight it comes to settle over Parsifal’s head, and Klingsor’s kingdom crumbles to dust.

Parsifal returns to the Kingdom of the Grail King and reawakens the Kingdom into Spring with his approach.

I’m not going to draw parallels between the story and the modern world.

When Parsifal looks upon the swan he killed he is introduced into the moral dimension of life, of compassion, of identification with others, even in the animal kingdom. In the ritual of the Grail Knights he learns to put aside the mere appearance of the uniform and to understand the character of those who wear it. In denying the worldly pleasures that Klingsor offers him, he recognizes his own character which holds an individual’s duty higher than an individual’s pursuit of sensual pleasures.

“Through compassion a pure fool.” To the eyes of the ignorant or worldly wise Parsifal appears a fool, overcome by feeling and sentiment as he is, and for denying the pleasures of the moment for an uncertain future out of concern for the welfare of others. And yet he prevails just on account of such foolishness. Still it is just art and perhaps one can prevail by indulging one’s sensual appetites and by having little concern for the welfare of others. I know what Hitler thought. What about you?

Note: My wife changed the header colors. I wash my hands of it 🙂

Judge not?

To reiterate what has gone before. The Faculty of Reason is what separates men from animals. The objects of the Faculty of Reason are representations of representations, which because the essential has been abstracted out lose perceptibility.

Now I can think of a general ‘dog’ and create a picture of such in my head, but I give it arbitrary features, like a hair color, a size etc… Such a representation is called by Schopenhauer a ‘phantom’. They are useful in testing hypotheses with the understanding. So wonderful is the Faculty of Reason that on its account alone so wide a span exists between human and animal life. Abstracting out time gives us a past on which to reminisce, a future for which to plan, whereas the animal is stuck in the ever present.

Enough of my squawking, let us return to Schopenhauer and the Faculty of Judgment:

“All thinking, in a wider sense: that is, all inner activity of the mind in general, necessitates either words or pictures of the imagination [phantoms]: without one or other of these it has nothing to hold by. They are not, however, both necessary at the same time, although they may co-operate to their mutual support. Now, thinking in a narrower sense that is, abstract reflection by means of words is either purely logical reasoning, in which case it keeps strictly to its own sphere; or it touches upon the limits of perceptible representations in order to come to an understanding with them, so as to bring that which is given by experience and grasped by perception into connection with abstract conceptions resulting from clear reflection, and thus to gain complete possession of it. In thinking therefore, we seek either for the conception or rule to which a given perception belongs, or for the particular case which proves a given conception or rule. In this quality, thinking is an activity of the faculty of judgment, and indeed in the first case, a reflective, in the second, a subsuming activity. The faculty of judgment is accordingly the mediator between intuitive and abstract knowledge, or between the Understanding and the Reason.”

The Faculty of Judgment is the mediator between abstract and intuitive knowledge. Important!

“The true kernel of all knowledge is that reflection which works with the help of intuitive representations; for it goes back to the fountain-head, to the basis of all conceptions. Therefore it generates all really original thoughts, all primary and fundamental views and all inventions, so far as chance had not the largest share in them. The Understanding prevails in this sort of thinking, whilst the Reason is the chief factor in purely abstract reflection.”

Here Schopenhauer mentions, as he so often does, the primacy of intuitive representations, of the fruits garnered from the Empirical World, from experience. The one unique feature of Schopenhauer’s philosophy is that from its metaphysical basis one can build up hypotheses which can be tested against experience, and which confirm it. I shall talk about some of these confirmations later. Continuing…

“On the whole, all that can be affirmed is, that every true and primary notion, every genuine philosophic theorem even, must have some sort of intuitive view for its innermost kernel or root. This, though something momentary and single, subsequently imparts life and spirit to the whole analysis, however exhaustive it may be, just as one drop of the right reagent suffices to tinge a whole solution with the color of the precipitate which it causes… All mere rational talk thus renders the result of given conceptions clearer, but does not, strictly speaking, bring anything new to light. It might therefore be left to each individual to do himself, instead of filling whole volumes every day.

“But, even in a narrower sense, thinking does not consist in the bare presence of abstract conceptions in our consciousness, but rather in connecting or separating two or more of these conceptions under sundry restrictions and modifications which Logic indicates in the Theory of Judgments. A relation of this sort between conceptions distinctly thought and expressed we call a judgment. Now, with reference to these judgments, the Principle of Sufficient Reason here once more holds good, yet in a widely different form from that which has been explained in the preceding chapter; for here it appears as the Principle of Sufficient Reason of Knowing. As such, it asserts that if a judgment is to express knowledge of any kind, it must have a sufficient reason: in virtue of which quality it then receives the predicate true. Thus truth is the reference of a judgment to something different from itself, called its reason or ground… Now, these grounds upon which a judgment may rest, may be divided into four different kinds, and the truth obtained by that judgment will correspondingly differ.”

I shall cover those grounds in my next posts. The important points are, the primacy of intuitive conceptions (from the Understanding) over mere abstractions (from Reason). The Faculty of Judgment is the mediator between Reason and the Understanding. Logical relationships between concepts give judgments. Judgments are concerned only with a truth value.

Why I Write

I am beginning to pull some flak which gladdens me. I must be over the target. Schopenhauer, in his own day, suffered from a conspiracy of silence. We all know how Hitler was and still is treated. I will press on. Why?

Besides my debt to Truth, if I reach just one young, curious mind, who being drawn on, imbibes Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Hitler and understands them aright, then I would have changed the world for the better.

I being old, and through the distortions and modern conspiracy of silence having come grey haired to the Spring of Knowledge, have only its pellucid waters to give to those who thirst.

Have faith that there is treasure here to be mined. The fate of the world might just hinge upon it, and you.

The vain and conceited might as well move on. Courage is required by Wisdom to earn her laurel. Such courage is considered nothing more than folly by those who do little more than chase their own tails.

So take, if you have the strength, the water I offer, or know it was never for you, and from Truth are you ever barred. As the fox, just consider the grapes sour.

Give me a Reason

The next Principle of Sufficient Reason that Schopenhauer discusses is the Principle of the Sufficient Reason of Knowing. Let’s see how he begins the discussion:

“THE only essential distinction between the human race and animals, which from time immemorial has been attributed to a special cognitive faculty peculiar to mankind, called Reason, is based upon the fact that man owns a class of representations which is not shared by any animal. These are conceptions, therefore abstract, as opposed to intuitive, representations, from which they are nevertheless derived. The immediate consequence of this is, that animals can neither speak nor laugh; but indirectly all those various, important characteristics which distinguish human from animal life are its consequence. For, through the supervention of abstract representation, motivation has now changed its character. Although human actions result with a necessity no less rigorous than that which rules the actions of animals, yet through this new kind of motivation so far as here it consists in thoughts which render elective decision (i.e. a conscious conflict of motives) possible action with a purpose, with reflection, according to plans and principles, in concert with others, &c. &c., now
takes the place of mere impulse given by present, perceptible objects…”

SO the Principle of the Sufficient Reason of Knowing has as it faculty Reason. But what are its objects?

“Still, as we have said, the whole difference lies in this that, besides the intuitive representations examined in the last chapter, which are shared by animals, other, abstract representations derived from these intuitive ones, are lodged in the human brain, which is chiefly on this account so much larger than that of animals. Representations of this sort have been called conceptions, because each comprehends innumerable individual things in, or rather under, itself, and thus forms a complex. We may also define them as representations drawn from representations, for, in forming them, the faculty of abstraction decomposes the complete, intuitive representations described in our last chapter into their component parts, in order to think each of these parts separately as the different qualities of, or relations between, things. By this process, however, the representations necessarily forfeit their perceptibility; just as water, when decomposed, ceases to be fluid and visible. For although each quality thus isolated (abstracted) can quite well be thought by itself, it does not at all follow that it can be experienced by itself. We form conceptions by dropping a good deal of what is given us in perception, in order to be able to think the rest by itself. To conceive therefore, is to think less than we perceive. If, after considering divers objects of perception, we drop something different belonging to each, yet retain what is the same in all, the result will be the genus of that species. The generic conception is accordingly always the conception of every species comprised under it, after deducting all that does not belong to every species. Now, as every possible conception may be thought as a genus, a conception is always something general, and as such, not perceptible. Every conception has on this account also its sphere, as the sum-total of what may be thought under it. The higher we ascend in abstract thought, the more we deduct, the less therefore remains to be thought. The highest, i.e. the most general conceptions, are the emptiest and poorest, and at last become mere husks, such as, for instance, being, essence, thing, becoming, &c. &c. Of what avail, by the way, can philosophical systems be, which are only spun out of conceptions of this sort and have for their substance mere flimsy husks of thoughts like these?”

So representations of representations, abstractions are the objects of the Principle of the Sufficient Reason of Knowing. It should be well noted that these objects are abstracted out from Empirical Reality. Nothing comes from nothing and there is no revelation which gives us objects outside of Time, Space and Causality. Schopenhauer continues:

“Now as representations, thus sublimated and analysed to form abstract conceptions, have, as we have said, forfeited all perceptibility, they would entirely escape our consciousness, and be of no avail to it for the thinking processes to which they are destined, were they not fixed and retained in our senses by arbitrary signs. These signs are words. In as far as they constitute the contents of dictionaries and therefore of language, words always designate general representations, conceptions, never perceptible objects; whereas a lexicon which enumerates individual things, only contains proper names, not words, and is either a geographical or historical dictionary: that is to say, it enumerates what is separated either by Time or by Space; for, as my readers know, Time and Space are the principium individuationis. It is only because animals are limited to intuitive representations and incapable of any abstraction incapable therefore of forming conceptions that they are without language, even when they are able to articulate words; whereas they understand proper names.

On analyzing a long, continuous speech made by a man of no education, we find in it an abundance of logical forms, clauses, turns of phrase, distinctions, and subtleties of all sorts, correctly expressed by means of grammatical forms with their inflections and constructions, and even with a frequent use of the sermo obliquus, of the different moods, &c. &c., all in conformity with rule, which astonishes us, and in which we are forced to recognise an extensive and perfectly coherent knowledge. Still this knowledge has been acquired on the basis of the perceptible world, the reduction of whose whole essence to abstract conceptions is the fundamental business of the Reason, and can only take place by means of language. In learning the use of language therefore, the whole mechanism of Reason that is, all that is essential in Logic is brought to our consciousness.”

The more astute of you may spot the word ‘logic’ in there. In fact, although Schopenhauer doesn’t explicitly mention it, he subdivides the faculty of Reason into a faculty of abstraction and a faculty of judgment, the latter containing the forms of logic. But in due time we shall discuss this.

Interlude: Courage for Joy

In the following we see Scopenhauer’s ‘will-less knowing’, that which has an analogy with modern psychologist Abraham Maslow’s ‘peak experiences’, and also, shrouded in unjustified mystification, the New Agers ‘living in the Now’ or ‘coming to the Now’.

Schopenhauer was the first to identify these experiences and place them within a philosophical frame-work, and Hitler the first leader to attempt to raise the level of consciousness of people by reminding them of those ‘quiet moments’ when we are raised above the mundane and thereby justify it and existence itself.

From an SS publication:

Courage for the Joy of Life

“Whoever walks through the devastated streets of the bombed-out cities, whoever looks and shudders at the ruins of castles and churches, in which the life feeling of great periods is reflected, whoever looks into the abyss of the hearts whom death has ripped open… he may consider it presumptuous to speak about the joy of life as one of the invincible forces of the human soul. Perhaps the soldier has the greatest right to do exactly that: Not only for the sake of comfort, but from the living feeling of the reality from which the joy of life stands in contrast to the incalculable and the darkness, yes, which alone make them bearable. In the weeks of the New Year, one could hear the sounds and hustle and bustle of carnival celebrations throughout our beautiful cities. Streets which once were alive with joyous throngs are now covered with the ashes of destroyed houses. Instead of decorations, one sees ruins strutting up over our heads. Men who once drank from the cup of life now lie under the earth or struggle with their grey and now serious faces in the loneliness of the battle for the existence of European culture. Women have fled far away to the farmyards and villages. Where does there remain a light, a thought, which can lead us back to the joy of life?

“Perhaps we should discuss what the joy of life really is. Whoever seeks there only in external expression will hardly find them in war. Whoever cares only for the somewhat raw materialistic pleasures will be disappointed with the sparse remains… and claim there is hardly anything worth living for anymore, or to praise this life for or to love. The deeper joy of life, however, is not dependent upon time and fate, not upon needs and bitterness. It is one of those quiet wonders, which God gives to those aware of his existence. It cannot be thrown upon us from outside. It lives within our essence and being. It lives within us, the man who has it is rich even if he goes about in rags and lives in earth caves. Whoever lives in a palace and has all the expensive trappings of life is nonetheless the poorest guest upon this earth, if he does not have this genuine joy in life.

“It begins with a simple consciousness of existence, there are men, who after a good night’s sleep, look at the new day and complain because they stand before work and tasks. Others arise after a few hours of restless sleep with a hardly understandable feeling of contentment, glad about the reality of their life, and perhaps simply because it gives them breath, sight, feeling, hearing and thinking. The war has shown us in an amazing manner that our pleasure in simple things in life can be much deeper and more meaningful than the once so highly praised ‘pleasures’. And this demonstrates genuine modesty and the capacity for strong feeling. Who could have explained to a soldier that nothing more than a clean bed, a thinly covered table, yes, a short nap, a glass of wine, a pretty picture or an attractive girl walking by could fill him with such joy? And when we were home, somewhat bored and standing in front of a full rack of books, looking for a single book for a quiet hour… who could have told us that we would one day be able to forget the world and ourselves, the war, filth, suffering and even death… because a pleasant coincidence in an abandoned house in the east provided us with a badly torn up copy of an Eichendorff book? Who could have made us believe that one day, in a dark bunker, in moist cold and plagued by bugs, we could listen to the melody of Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’ by a faint light, and that we would fall into a dream of eternal beauty of the world and forget all the terrors around us?

“In such moments, the joy of life lights up around us like lightening… or like the soft light of a summer sunset. Whereas once we went through the well-lit streets of the city looking for pleasure, we now nearly loose our breath while looking at the radiant beauty of the starlit night, which strangely reflects againt the moon, and this gives us an inner feeling of belonging to the universe. No one can be a more passionate disciple of the joy of life than the single soldier, who is driven through the eternal fire of combat, who has walked through the wall of death and of horror and is suddenly speechless as he stands before the still of an evening and sees the crops gently caressed by a soft wind. In such moments, he feels in the pounding of his own heart the glorious and wonderful life he has been given. A joy then flows through him, which cannot be compared with any other pleasure of this earth. And so we appear to be rather modest, but only apparently, because such modesty at the same time is the highest claim we can demand from life.

“At this hour, when the fate of the war most heavily tests our hearts, both at home and on the fromt, it appears to be a hopeless effort to speak about the joy of life. But courage belongs to joy no less than it does to struggle and death, to over come death means to gain joy. Without that, our souls would have long collapsed under the great burdens of their hardships. Without that, the women at home would have long been driven into the darkest, inescapable depression. This joy of life stands as a shining ‘nevertheless’ above our hard-pressed people, against which bombs and phosphor are useless. A piece of childhood lives in it. Complacent bragging and blind ambition are strange to it. The love of nature and for people, for animals and flowers, for music and for verse, for pictures and for art in stone and metal are all part of it. It teaches us that whenever we loose something, we should look upon that which remains. It teaches us to recognize the meaning in every test.

“Who would deny the joy that husband and wife find during their vacation days together? Who is able to claim that – during the bountiful days of peace with its everyday pleasures – he was able to so deeply feel the love of his wife, the joy of having children and a place of security? And even if fate takes from us that which is most dear, the willingness to help again brings us back into the arms of life.”

Motives and Freedom

Sorry folks, I have been involved in an ongoing art project so posts might slow a little. To recap: 1. The objects for the Principle of Sufficent Reason of Becoming are tangible perceptive objects. 2. The mental faculty that deals with them is the Understanding. 3. The form of the Understanding is the Law of Casuality.

Now the following is important to comprehend as a unique element of Schopenhauer’s philosophy:

“Now Causality, as the director of each and every change, presents itself in Nature under three distinct forms: as causes in the strictest acceptation of the word, as stimuli, and as motives. It is just upon this difference that the real, essential distinction between inorganic bodies, plants, and animals is based, and not upon external, anatomical, let alone chemical, distinctions.

“A cause, in its narrowest sense, is that upon which changes in the inorganic kingdom alone ensue :those changes, that is to say, which form the theme of Mechanics, Physics, and Chemistry. Newton’s third fundamental law, “Action and reaction are equal to one another,” applies exclusively to this cause, and enunciates, that the state which precedes (the cause) undergoes a change equivalent to that produced by it (the effect). In this form of causality alone, moreover, does the degree of the effect always exactly correspond to the degree of the cause, so as to enable us accurately to calculate the one by means of the other.

The second form of causality is the stimulus; it reigns over organic life, as such, i.e. over plant life and the vegetative, that is, the unconscious, part of animal life. This second form is characterized by the absence of the distinctive signs of the first. In it accordingly action and reaction are not equal, nor does the intensity of the effect by any means correspond throughout all its degrees to the intensity of the cause ; in fact, the opposite effect may even be produced by intensifying the cause.

The third form of causality is the motive. Under this form causality rules animal life proper: that is, the exterior, consciously performed actions of all animals. The medium for motives is knowledge: an intellect is accordingly needed for susceptibility to motives. The true characteristic of the animal is therefore the faculty of knowing, of representing. Animals, as such, always move towards some aim and end, which therefore must have been recognised by them: that is to say, it must have presented itself to them as some thing different from themselves, yet of which they are conscious. Therefore the proper definition of the animal would be: That which knows; for no other definition quite hits the mark or can even perhaps stand the test of investigation. Movement induced by motives is necessarily wanting where there is no cognitive faculty, and movement by stimuli alone remains, i.e. plant life. Irritability and sensibility are therefore inseparable. Still motives evidently act in a different way from stimuli; for the action of the former may be very brief, nay, need only be momentary; since their efficacy, unlike that of stimuli, stands in no relation whatever to the duration of that action, to the proximity of the object, &c. &c. A motive needs but to be perceived therefore, to take effect; whereas stimuli always require outward, often even inward, contact and invariably a certain length of time.

“… One thing, however, still remains to be urged. The difference between cause, stimulus, and motive, is obviously only a consequence of the various degrees of receptivity of beings; the greater their receptivity, the feebler may be the nature of the influence: a stone needs an impact, while man obeys a look. Nevertheless, both are moved by a sufficient cause, therefore with the same necessity. For motivation is only causality passing through knowledge; the intellect is the medium of the motives, because it is the highest degree of receptivity. By this, however, the law of causality loses nothing whatever of its rigour and certainty; for motives are causes and operate with the same necessity which all causes bring with them. This necessity is easy to perceive in animals because of the greater simplicity of their intellect, which is limited to the perception of what is present. Man’s intellect is double: for not only has he intuitive, but abstract, knowledge, which last is not limited to what is present. Man possesses Reason; he therefore has a power of elective decision with clear consciousness: that is, he is able to weigh against one another motives which exclude each other, as such; in other terms, he can let them try their strength on his will. The most powerful motive then decides him, and his actions ensue with just the same necessity as the rolling of a ball after it has been struck.”

“The most powerful motive then decides him, and his actions ensue with just the same necessity as the rolling of a ball after it has been struck.”

Think about that! As Schopenhauer asked in his prize winning essay “On the Freedom of the Will”, “Can I will what I will?” Of course a yes leads to infinite regression, “Can I will what I will what I will?” and so on…

Animals

One of Schopenhauer’s distinctions is pointing out that we share the faculty of Understanding with animals. That they are kindred to us in this. In his “The Basis of Morality” he notes:

“Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he, who is cruel to living creatures, cannot be a good man. Moreover, this compassion manifestly flows from the same source whence arise the virtues of justice and loving-kindness towards men. Thus, for instance, people
of delicate sensitiveness, on realising that in a fit of ill-humour, or anger, or under the influence of wine, they punished their dog, their horse, their ape undeservedly, or unnecessarily, or excessively, are
seized with the same remorse, feel the same dissatisfaction with themselves, as when they are conscious of having done some wrong to one of their fellows…

“For the rest, we may observe that compassion for sentient beings is not to carry us to the length of abstaining from flesh, like the Brahmans. This is because, by a natural law, capacity for pain keeps pace with the intelligence; consequently men, by going without animal food, especially in the North, would suffer more than beasts do through a quick death, which is always unforeseen; although the latter ought to be made still easier by means of chloroform. Indeed without meat nourishment mankind would be quite unable to withstand the rigours of the Northern climate. The same reasoning explains, too, why we are right in making animals work for us; it is only when they are subjected to an excessive amount of toil that cruelty begins.”

Adolf Hitler instituted such policies. Animals had to be anaesthetized before being dispatched, and appropriate penalties were put in place so that people, who might molest animals, were motivated to refrain from any such cruelty.

Vivisection Forbidden in Prussia!

The New Germany leads all civilized nations in the area of animal protection!

The famous national socialist Graf E. Reventkow published in the Reichswart, the official publication of the “union of patriotic Europeans”, the lead article “Protection and Rights for the Animal”. National Socialism, he writes, has for the first time in Germany begun to show Germans the importance of the individual’s duty toward the animal…

The friend of animals knows to what inexpressible extent the mutual understanding between man and animal and feelings of togetherness can be developed, and there are many friends of animals in Germany, and also many who cannot accept animal torture out of simple humanitarian reasons. In general however, we still find ourselves in a desert of unfeeling and brutality as well as sadism. There is much to be done and we would first like to address vivisection, for which the words “cultural shame” do not even come close; in fact it must be viewed as a criminal activity.

Graf Reventkow presents a number of examples of beastial vivisection crimes and affirms at the end, with mention of Adolph Hitler’s sharp anti-vivisectionist positions, our demand that once and for all an end has to be brought to this animal exploitation.

We German friends of animals and anti-vivisectionists have placed our hopes upon the Chancellor of the Reich and his comrades in arms who are, as we know, friends of animals. Our trust has not been betrayed! The New Germany brings proof that it is not only the hearth but bringer of a new, higher, more refined, culture:
Vivisection, a cultural shame in the whole civilized world, against which the Best in all states have fought in vain for decades, will be banned in the New Germany!

A Reich Animal Protection Law which includes a ban on vivisection is imminent and just now comes the news, elating all friends of animals, that the greatest German state, Prussia, has outlawed vivisection with no exceptions!

The National Socialist German Workers’ Party press release states:
“The Prussian minister-president Goering has released a statement stating that starting 16 August 1933 vivisection of animals of all kinds is forbidden in Prussia*. He has requested that the concerned ministries draft a law after which vivisection will be punished with a high penalty. Until the law goes into effect, persons who, despite this prohibition, order, participate or perform vivisections on animals of any kind will be deported to concentration camps.”

Among all civilized nations, Germany is thus the first to put an end to the cultural shame of vivisection! The New Germany not only frees man from the curse of materialism, sadism, …, but gives the cruelly persecuted, tortured, and until now, wholly defenseless animals their rights. Animal friends and anti-vivisectionists of all states will joyfully welcome this action of the National Socialist government of the New Germany!

What Reichschancellor Adolph Hitler and Minister-president Goering have done and will do for the protection of animals should set the course for the leaders of all civilized nations! It is a deed which will bring the New Germany innumerable new elated friends in all nations. Millions of friends of animals and anti-vivisectionists of all civilized nations thank these two leaders from their hearts for this exemplary civil deed!

Buddha, the Great loving spirit of the East, says: “He who is kind-hearted to animals, heaven will protect!” May this blessing fulfill the leaders of the New Germany, who have done great things for animals, until the end. May the blessing hand of fate protect these bringers of a New Spirit, until their godgiven earthly mission is fulfilled!

R.O.Schmidt

*) As we in the meantime have learned, a similar ban has been proclaimed in Bavaria. The formal laws are imminent – thanks to the energetic initiative of our Peoples’ chancellor Adolph Hitler, for whom all friends of animals of the world will maintain forever their gratitude, their love, and their loyalty.

Die Weisse Fahne 14 (1933) : 710-711.

“The preoccupation with animal protection in Nazi Germany was evident in other social institutions and continued almost until the end of World War II. In 1934, the new government hosted an international conference on animal protection in Berlin. Over the speaker’s podium, surrounded by enormous swastikas, were the words “Entire epochs of love will be needed to repay animals for their value and service”. In 1936 the German Society for Animal Psychology was founded, and in 1938 animal protection was accepted as a subject to be studied in German public schools and universities.”

The Hero, Hitler, always a well of compassion.

The First Casualty…

Let me make it clear, before we begin, that the Principle of Sufficient Reason entitles us to ask “why something is as it is and not otherwise.”

In “On the Principle of Sufficient Reason”, the first Principle Schopenhauer describes is the Principle of the Sufficient Reason of Becoming.

The objects for this Principle are:

“intuitive, complete, empirical representations. They are intuitive as opposed to mere thoughts, i.e. abstract conceptions ; they are complete, inasmuch as, … they not only contain the formal, but also the material part of phenomena ; and they are empirical, partly as proceeding, not from a mere connection of thoughts, but from an excitation of feeling in our sensitive organism, as their origin, to which they constantly refer for evidence as to their reality : partly also because they are linked together, according to the united laws of Space, Time and Causality, in that complex without beginning or end which forms our Empirical Reality. As, nevertheless, according to the result of Kant s teaching, this Empirical Reality does not annul their Transcendental Ideality, we shall consider them here, where we have only to do with the formal elements of knowledge, merely as representations.”

The Law under which form they take is the Law of Causality. Schopenhauer was the first to give a precise definition of Causality.

“When one or several real objects pass into any new state, some other state must have preceded this one, upon which the new state regularly follows, i.e. as often as that preceding one occurs. This sort of following we call resulting ; the first of the states being named a cause, the second an effect. When a substance takes fire, for instance, this state of ignition must have been preceded by a state, 1, of affinity to oxygen; 2, of contact with oxygen; 3, of a given temperature. Now, as ignition must necessarily follow immediately upon this state, and as it has only just taken place, that state cannot always have been there, but must, on the contrary, have only just supervened. This supervening is called a change. It is on this account that the law of causality stands in exclusive relation to changes and has to do with them alone. Every effect, at the time it takes place, is a change and, precisely by not having occurred sooner, infallibly indicates some other change by which it has been preceded. That other change takes the name of cause, when referred to the following one of effect, when referred to a third necessarily preceding change. This is the chain of causality. It is necessarily without a beginning. By it, each supervening state must have resulted from a preceding change : in the case just mentioned, for instance, from the substance being brought into contact with free heat, from which necessarily resulted the heightened temperature ; this contact again depended upon a preceding change, for instance the sun’s rays falling upon a burning-glass; this again upon the removal of a cloud from before the sun; this upon the wind; the wind upon the unequal density of the atmosphere; this upon other conditions, and so forth in infinitum. When a state contains all the requisite conditions for bringing about a new state excepting one, this one, when at last it arrives, is, in a sense, rightly called the cause par excellence, inasmuch as we here have the final in this case the decisive change especially in view ; but if we leave out this consideration, no single condition of the causal state has any advantage over the rest with reference to the determination of the causal connection in general, merely because it happens to be the last. Thus the removal of the cloud in the above example, is in so far the cause of the igniting, as it took place later than the direction of the burning-glass towards the object; but this might have taken place after the removal of the cloud and the addition of oxygen might have occurred later still: in this respect therefore it is the accidental order of things that determines which is the cause. On closer inspection, however, we find that it is the entire state which is the cause of the ensuing one, so that the chronological order in which its single conditions were brought about, is in all essential respects indifferent. With reference to a given case therefore, the last occurring condition of a state may be called the cause par excellence because it completes the measure of the necessary conditions, and its appearance thus becomes the decisive change. For purposes of general consideration, however, it is only the entire state which, by bringing about its successor, can be regarded as the cause. The single requisites which, added together, complete and constitute the cause may be called causal elements or even conditions, and into these accordingly the cause may be subdivided. On the other hand, it is quite wrong to call the objects themselves causes, instead of the states: some would, for instance, call the burning-glass in the above example the cause of the ignition ; while others, again, would call the cloud the cause; others the sun or the oxygen, and so on arbitrarily and without order. But it is absurd to call an object the cause of another object; first of all, because objects not only contain form and quality, but Matter also, which has neither beginning or end ; secondly, because the law of causality refers exclusively to changes in states.”

It should be noted that Primary Forces of Nature (those forces that can not be reduced to others, e.g. Gravity) are Metaphysical in nature, being free from Space, Time and Causality. They are always ready, everywhere, to show themselves when appropriate conditions arise.

Matter (substance) also remains unaffected by Causality, as that upon which Causality acts; the Forces of Nature being that through which it acts.

Now, the Faculty of the mind which has the sole form of the Law of Causality is the Understanding.

“One must indeed be forsaken by all the gods, to imagine that the outer, perceptible world, filling Space in its three dimensions and moving on in the inexorable flow of Time, governed at every step by the laws of Causality, which is without exception, and in all this merely obeying laws we can indicate before all experience of them that such a world as this, we say, can have a real, objective existence outside us, without any agency of our own, and that it can then have found its way into our heads through bare sensation and thus have a second existence within us like the one outside. For what a miserably poor thing is mere sensation, after all! Even in the noblest of our organs it is nothing but a local, specific feeling, susceptible of some slight variation, still in itself always subjective and, as such therefore, incapable of containing anything objective, anything like perception. For sensation is and remains a process within the organism and is limited, as such, to the region within the skin; it cannot therefore contain any thing which lies beyond that region, or, in other words, anything that is outside us. A sensation may be pleasant Or unpleasant which betokens a relation to the Will but – nothing objective can ever lie in any sensation. In the organs of the senses, sensation is heightened by the confluence of the nerve-extremities, and can easily be excited from without on account of their extensive distribution and the delicacy of the envelope which encloses them; it is besides specially susceptible to particular influences, such as light, sound, smell; notwithstanding which it is and remains mere sensation, like all others within our body, consequently something essentially subjective, of whose changes we only become immediately conscious in the form of the inner sense, Time : that is, successively. It is only when the Understanding begins to act a function, not of single, delicate nerve-extremities, but of that mysterious, complicated structure weighing from five to ten pounds, called the brain, only when it begins to apply its sole form, the causal law, that a powerful transformation takes place, by which subjective sensation becomes objective perception. For, in virtue of its own peculiar form, therefore a priori, i.e. before all experience (since there could have been none till then), the Understanding conceives the given corporeal sensation as an effect (a word which the Understanding alone comprehends), which effect, as such, necessarily implies a cause. Simultaneously it summons to its assistance Space, the form of the outer sense, lying likewise ready in the intellect (i.e. the brain), in order to remove that cause beyond the organism; for it is by this that the external world first arises, Space alone rendering it possible, so that pure intuition a priori has to supply the foundation for empirical perception. In this process, …, the Understanding avails itself of all the several data, even the minutest, which are presented to it by the given sensation, in order to construct the cause of it in Space in conformity with them. This intellectual operation, does not however take place discursively or reflectively, in abstracto, by means of conceptions and words; it is, on the contrary, an intuitive and quite direct process. For by it alone, therefore exclusively in the Understanding and for the Understanding, does the real, objective, corporeal world, filling Space in its three dimensions, present itself and further proceed, according to the same law of causality, to change in Time, and to move in Space. It is therefore the Understanding itself which has to create the objective world; for this world cannot walk into our brain from outside all ready cut and dried through the senses and the openings of their organs. In fact, the senses supply nothing but the raw materials which the Understanding at once proceeds to work up into the objective view of a corporeal world, subject to regular laws, by means of the simple forms we have indicated : Space, Time, and Causality. Accordingly our every-day empirical perception is an intellectual one and has a right to claim this predicate,…”

Whew! There are collieries following this, but I think it is enough for anybody to chew over this today.