“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Sunday, January 15, 2012

Nietzsche and Hypocrisy

In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche laments the decline in hypocrisy. Quite right! I think this is one thing that the emerging ecological era will force back upon us, though perhaps not for reasons Nietzsche would like. We are entering a phase in which every decision we make regarding our coexistents is inevitably wrong in some sense. (You've probably heard some of my talks about this.) Future virtue in this sense will consist in being as consciously hypocritical as possible, rather than cynical. Maybe this is one place where my ecological philosophy has a quilting point with Nietzsche.

1 comment:

Schizostroller said...

It's impossible to go through life without being hypocritical at some point, if there is such a thing as 'a hypocrite', would it not be the one who tries to deny, repress or even heal any tendency to do so?

I'm not sure about going as far as doing so intentionally, i'm happy saying, 'yeh, I am sometimes, I try not to, but only within reason. I can't do anymore I ain't omniescent, or perfect. But you know sometimes I'm not hypocritical too. If I know i'm about to be its best to be honest with myself about why, as far as I can, avoid it if I can, go with it if I can't'