A Belly with Two Needs and a Head with One
We spoke awhile back about my impatience with cynicism, or with satire. Since then, maybe ironically, I picked up an old book of Nietzche after hearing him talked about on a podcast. The podcast reminded me about how much I enjoyed his writing back when I read more philosophy.
Early on in the book, called Beyond Good and Evil, there's a section where he talks about Cynicism. He says:
Cynicism is the only form in which common souls come close to honesty; and the higher man must prick up his ears at every cynicism, whether coarse or refined, and congratulate himself whenever a buffoon without shame or a scientific satyr speaks out in his presence. [...] And whenever anyone speaks, without bitterness, rather innocuously, of man as a belly with two needs and a head with one; wherever anyone sees, seeks and wants to see only hunger, sexual desire, and vanity, as though these were the actual and sole motives of human actions; in brief, whenever anyone speaks "badly" of man–but does not speak ill of him–the lover of knowledge should listen carefully and with diligence, and he should in general lend an ear whenever anyone speaks without indignation.
The passage reminded me of our back-and-forth, and on the "usefulness" of cynicism. I'm not well steeped in philosophy (although I enjoy it) and I don't pretend to follow everything Nietzche is saying in this book but he seems, more than anything, to be impatient with the dishonesty inherent in most philosophy. For example, in another section he says
It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy has hitherto been: a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir; moreover, that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy have every time constituted the real germ of life out of which the entire plant has grown. To explain how a philosopher's most remote metaphysical assertions have actually been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to ask oneself first: what morality does this (does he–) aim at?
So I take the thrust of his comments on cynicism to be this: that most philosophy, or maybe most systems of thought have really been erected to reinforce what we already believe, or what the creators of those systems believed. They were never really trying to get at "the truth" – that was never the point. So when we're most cynical when, with a cold eye, we're looking to our "baser" instincts for the causes of our actions we are likely then coming closest to the truth.
As grim as that is, I think it's important to note that he's not saying that those other "systems of thought" aren't useful, my sense is that he thinks of them as something like useful delusions, and that they can indeed serve people. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra he says of the "Famous Wise Men"
And truly, you famous wise men, you servants of the people! You yourselves grew with the people's spirit and virtue – and the people through you! I say this in your honor!
Anyway, I don't necessarily have fully-formed thoughts about this. I guess it made me wonder if my impatience with cynicism comes from the simple fact that the truths being highlighted make me particularly uncomfortable. Probably. Am I one of those annoying people who go around saying "don't come to me with problems, come to me with solutions?" And why should anyone speaking truth be obliged to also offer a solution?