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Jim Nichols Daybreak Book IV Aphorism 210.docx Download this file

                Friedrich Nietzsche wrote his second book, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, to his “patient friends” in order to help set the ground work resolve tensions blocking intellectuals as they struggle towards the, “days that have not yet broken,” as the Rig Veda epigraph to Daybreak notes will be plentiful in the days ahead.  Nietzsche wants us to recognize that an individual’s redemption—one’s own daybreak—is a solitary affair, but one worth the endeavor if one is able to sustain the solitude and perils along the way:

For he who proceeds on his own path in this fashion encounters no one: that is inherent in ‘proceeding on one’s own path.’  No one comes along to help him: all the perils, accidents, malice, and bad weather which assail him he has to tackle by himself. (pg. 1 Daybreak Cambridge University Press 1997 Ed. Clark and Leiter)

In book IV, aphorism 210 stands out as pivotal and worth spending a great deal of time with because it can give form to what is going on throughout book IV as Nietzsche flows through a spectrum of seemingly disparate issues, topics, and subjects.  This paper will argue that aphorism 210 is a thread that can give structure to book IV and place the book clearly within the project of Daybreak—which is to undermine our faith in morality.

Human beings are animals, and we are not even very special animals.[1]  One of the challenges we must overcome, in Nietzsche’s eyes, is to not see and infuse our actions and behaviors with greater motives of grandeur and meaning than they actually deserve.  Such misplaced egoism on our part leads us on a path where we are bound to take wrong turns, creating misinterpretations which churn out sloppy diagnoses of the challenge and problems we face.  As Clarke and Leiter note in their introduction to Daybreak, “[i]n Human, All Too Human… Nietzsche began a long effort to free morality from the metaphysical world to which Kant and Schopenhauer had connected it,”  with Daybreak Nietzsche continues this effort, “to explain ‘higher’ things in terms of the ‘lower,” the merely human” (p.xx).

Aphorism 210 is a perfect example of this pursuit to have us reframe our approach in a ways that highlight the lower—rather than get us caught up in confusions of grandeur about “good” or “evil” motives we have which coming from “higher” questions; he does so in this aphorism by way of looking at the question of laughter.  “Formerly,” Nietzsche notes, ‘we asked: what is the laughable? As though there were things external to us to which the laughable adhered as a quality, and we exhausted ourselves in suggestions… Now we ask: what is laughter? How does laugher originate?”  Why did we change our question? Because it solves an issue of clarity saving us the headache of wrong turns and detours which, Nietzsche often points out Kant and Schopenhauer quite often led us on:

[T]here is nothing good , nothing beautiful, nothing sublime, nothing evil in itself, but that there are states of soul in which we impose such words upon things external to and within us.  We have again taken back the predicates of things, or at least remembered that it was we who lent them to them:—let us take care that this insight does not deprive us of the capacity to lend, and that we have not become at the same time richer and greedier(p133).

            Nietzsche is just using laughter here as his example of how we can misconstrue the “in itself” and that our questions can lead us to answer questions other than the ones we are truly trying to grasp and flesh out.  As a philologist, Nietzsche is by training always working to parse our language and framing of such language usage to cut through and highlight confusions.  I would even claim that Nietzsche is working dialectically[2] (at least in a naturalistic way that does not get us lost in Hegelian Idealism) starting with ancient Greek ethics as his thesis, taking Martin Luther and the reformation as his antithesis to work out a synthesis which for the free spirit culminates personally and emotionally as a psychological “daybreak.”      

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Aphorism 638.doc Download this file

 Chapter 9 Aphorism 638
2.9.2012

Chapter nine of Friedrich Nietzsche’s book Human, All Too Human is entitled “Man Alone with Himself,” and the title of the concluding aphorism of this chapter is entitled—The Wanderer.  This paper will argue that The Wanderer is the paradigmatic case of a free spirit come to fruition and that this aphorism is not only the conclusion to Volume One but is also the conclusion of the “convalescence” of spirit which Nietzsche has been thinking us through in earlier chapters of the book.

            Richard Schacht, in his introduction to the 1996 Cambridge University Press edition of the R.J. Hollingdale translation, of Human, All Too Human, opens by reflecting on Nietzsche’s statement in Ecce Homo that “Human, All Too Human is the monument of a crisis.”[i]  During this crisis, Nietzsche is coming to terms with his need to sever attachments to many of the key drivers and inspirations of his earlier thought.  Nietzsche realizes that he must cure himself from Schopenhauer’s “blind will to morality,” as well as move beyond his vision of Wagner’s romanticism as a beginning and not an end (“likewise over the Greeks, likewise over the Germans and their future”). [ii]   These deceptions he had “lived on” must now be replaced, or at least his “tenacious will to health” is pushing him to do so in order to become unfettered and able to hear, see, think, (and dare one say, feel?) clearly.[iii]

            For most of Human, All Too Human Nietzsche has provided prescriptions, warnings, helpful hints—seemingly providing for us a highlighted path to becoming a free spirit; or at the very least the path a free spirit would take; and the human, all too human  barriers that keep most of us from achieving such a form of engagement with the world.[1]   But in chapter nine Nietzsche in a way, begins anew to discuss the resolution of this “crisis” he has undergone in an all-together different manner.  The resolution to the crisis Nietzsche had to endure—and all who desire to become unfettered—is to engage the world as a “man alone with himself” and sustain a resolve to continue “wandering”.  Specifically, Nietzsche finds this “living alone with oneself” to mean that one is engaged with the world in a way which adherers both to a certain methodological approach which Nietzsche provides for us in the first chapter—a “historical philosophy” of identifying and collecting the little unpretentious truths—and doing so in a way that is neither mere resignation of ones place in the world, nor indulgent of metaphysical illusions and self-sustaining vanities which hinder clear insight and thoughtful understanding of the world and ones place in it. 

A strong case can be made that in chapter nine Nietzsche is describing free spirits in action and that health is no longer sought out, rather it is something to sustain.  What then, is this free spirit in action?  It is one who has attained, “some degree of freedom of mind,” who can only be described as feeling a sense of wandering the earth.  The sense of wandering comes from living a life which lacks destination; and the free spirit must endure the ups and downs, the triumphs, alienation, and loneliness of such a journey.  The free spirit must engage a world of “strong winds”, “dreadful nights”, and a heart which will grow weary of wandering through such climate.  In this way chapter nine can be read as providing examples of such strong winds and moments of weariness.  But the key to this kind of engagement with the world is that “as recompense, there will come the joyful mornings of other days and climes, when he shall see, even before the light has broken, the Muses come dancing by him in the mist of the mountains…”[iv]

A distinct aspect of the wanderer—the free spirit—is that the struggles one faces are not self-inflicted illnesses or confusions but are simply normal ups and downs up engaging the world openly and honestly and this is laid out quite clearly in the concluding aphorism leading to the argument that The Wanderer aphorism provides the paradigmatic example of the free spirit.  There is nothing to cure in oneself when bad nights appear, or one is forced to dwell in deserts alone, because “joyful mornings of other days and climes” are just around the corner and one cannot cure oneself from such a world but merely stay “cheerful and transfigured” wandering towards a “philosophy of the morning”.

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Time for the Administration to Pivot to More Stimulus

via Grasping Reality with Both Hands by J. Bradford DeLong on 6/12/11

So say we all!!

For example, here: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b3c143b6-952d-11e0-a648-00144feab49a.html#axzz1P7M3EyCp The thinking of Lawrence Summers:

[The] US is now halfway to a lost economic decade. In the past five years, our economy’s growth rate averaged less than one per cent a year… the fraction of the population working has fallen from 63.1 per cent to 58.4 per cent…. [An] economy producing below its potential for a prolonged interval sacrifices its future. To an extent once unimaginable, new college graduates are moving back in with their parents. Strapped school districts across the country are cutting out advanced courses in maths and science. Reduced income and tax collections are the most critical cause of unacceptable budget deficits now and in the future….

That the problem… is a lack of business demand for employees not any lack of desire to work is all but self-evident… the propensity of workers to quit jobs and the level of job openings are at near-record lows; rises in non-employment have taken place among all demographic groups; rising rates of profit and falling rates of wage growth suggest employers, not workers, have the power in almost every market.

A sick economy constrained by demand works very differently from a normal one…. When demand is constraining an economy, there is little to be gained from increasing potential supply… if more people seek to borrow less or save more there is reduced demand, hence fewer jobs…. After bubbles burst there is no pent-up desire to invest. Instead there is a glut of capital… consumers discover they have less wealth than they expected, less collateral to borrow against and are under more pressure than they expected from their creditors. Pressure on private spending is enhanced by structural changes….

What, then, is to be done?… The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, borrowing and lending, and spending, it is only resolved by increases in confidence, borrowing and lending, and spending. Unless and until this is done other policies, no matter how apparently appealing or effective in normal times, will be futile at best. The fiscal debate must accept that the greatest threat to our creditworthiness is a sustained period of slow growth. Discussions about medium-term austerity need to be coupled with a focus on near-term growth. Without the payroll tax cuts and unemployment insurance negotiated last autumn we might now be looking at the possibility of a double dip. Substantial withdrawal of fiscal stimulus at the end of 2011 would be premature. Stimulus should be continued and indeed expanded…. [It] is a false economy to defer infrastructure maintenance and replacement, and [not to] take advantage of a moment when 10-year interest rates are below 3 per cent and construction unemployment approaches 20 per cent to expand infrastructure investment. It is far too soon for financial policy to shift towards preventing future bubbles and possible inflation, and away from assuring adequate demand…

So say we all, that is, except for the White House: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/06/fiscal-policy-0 The thinking of the Obama administration, as reported by Ryan Avent:

Whether or not the move toward [immediate] austerity was heartfelt, the administration has now embraced the policy choice. At a White House forum on the economy yesterday, I heard from several administration officials who defended the present policy path in no uncertain terms. Austan Goolsbee, outgoing chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, played down the May employment figure as just one data point and touted administration efforts to support entrepreneurship and facilitate private investment. I asked him whether his comments could be taken as indicating that the administration no longer felt fiscal stimulus could or should be used to support aggregate demand. Not at all, he replied, before talking more about the investment incentives and regulatory initiatives the White House has supported. These were, almost exclusively, supply-side policies. The administration’s business-support efforts look like useful steps to me, but they’re clearly not designed to provide a direct boost to aggregate demand. The time for that has passed, or so Mr Goolsbee seemed to imply.

The comments from Gene Sperling, Director of the National Economic Council and a key member of the team negotiating an agreement on an increase in the debt ceiling, were clearer still. The White House believes, he said, that deficit-cutting is an important component (the emphasis was his) of a growth strategy. And he repeatedly said that deficit-reduction was crucial in generating economic confidence. Confidence—he repeated this word many times…

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Deficits More Than Pay for Themselves

via Economist’s View by Mark Thoma on 6/10/11

The old “tax cuts pay for themselves” justification for cutting the tax rates of the wealthy is back:

despite a host of Republican economists telling them otherwise, Republican policymakers can’t resist arguing that tax cuts pay for themselves. That’s the old voodoo economics.

There’s no evidence that tax rates have ever come close to paying for themselves at tax rates such as the US imposes, so it’s a justification without merit. In fact, there’s no evidence that the Bush tax cuts had any effect on growth at all (see here too). The claim that tax cuts are self-financing is snake oil, and if the press was doing its job any politician saying this would immediately be labeled as a fraud (Ryan’s budget proposal makes this claim). Yet it lives on.

Just for fun, did you know that deficits more than pay for themselves?

Suppose the nation needs a key piece of infrastructure, a public good the private sector has trouble providing for itself. If the government puts the infrastructure into place through deficit spending, it will increase private sector growth for as long as the infrastructure remains in place, i.e. until it wears out (it could be replaced, but I want to focus on a single project). If the extra tax revenue from the higher economic growth rate covers maintenance costs, the cost of the project, and then some, then the project more than pays for itself. It won’t cost taxpayers a dime. In fact, it will save them money.

The problem, of course, is that just as in the private sector it is very unlikely that the economic growth rate would increase enough to actually generate sufficient revenues to cover the costs - it would take a substantial increase in economic growth to do that (into the Pawlenty zone of infeasibility).

Let me emphasize that this says nothing about whether a project benefits society. The tax revenue a project generates through increased growth is different from the economic benefits of a project. In some cases there is little relationship between revenue and benefits, so whether a project generates sufficient tax revenue to pay for itself says nothing about whether it is worthwhile to society. That’s not a test of private sector projects — the requirement is simply that the benefits exceed the costs — and the same is true for public sector projects. For example, providing public parks may not do much for growth, and they may generate little if any revenue, but they can still be a net positive when willingness to pay for parks is compared to the actual taxes that are collected.

A broader point here is that tax cut proponents often point to the private sector benefits of a tax cut, the increased growth, tax revenue, employment, trickle down benefits, etc. that supposedly occur. But they rarely look at what is lost from cutting public spending to pay for the tax cut (or, if spending isn’t cut, the costs of the deficit that is created — deficits Republicans profess to fear so much due to their very high costs). If what is lost in the public sector from cutting spending (or from creating a long-term budget problem) is more than what is gained in the private sector, then even though it may be possible to point to private sector gains, overall the tax cut was harmful.

I’m not arguing that every cut in taxes and spending would result in a net loss to society. There are certainly areas where government spending could be cut (and other areas, like health care, where we could get net positive returns from expansion). But we should at least consider what we give up when we cut spending (or increase the deficit) to pay for tax cuts, something those who argue for tax cuts as the solution to any and all of the nation’s economic problems rarely rarely do. If, for example, the cost is important social programs or key pieces of infrastructure, then society may very well end up worse off.

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Lots of fresh audio product

via LBO News from Doug Henwood by Doug Henwood on 6/10/11

Four shows newly posted to my radio archives:

June 11, 2011 Vincent Reinhartat the Council on Foreign Relations on Greece and the political trick of austerity (thanks to the CFR for allowing broadcast; full event here) •Greg Grandin, author of Fordlandia, on all the great political developments in South America

June 4, 2011 Another Hoover interview: Morris Fiorina on American public opinion and the nonexistence of the “culture war” • And in non-Hoover content, Yanis Varoufakis updates the Greek and EU crises

May 28, 2011 Hoover Institution special. Two interviews from my week as a Hoover media fellow. Paul Gregory on Russian politics (Putin vs. Medvedev) •Terry Moe on school “reform” (i.e., charters, testing, unionbusting, etc.)

May 14, 2011 Deepa Kumar, author of this article, on political Islam [The last 20 minutes of the broadcast version of this show was devoted to fundraising for KPFA. This has been excised for the web version. But if you like what you hear, please donate.]

And now the show has a new Facebook page: Behind the News, with Doug Henwood.

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Department of “Ahem!”: Unemployment Edition

via Grasping Reality with Both Hands by J. Bradford DeLong on 6/8/11

Back a month or so ago, at Stanford, Christina Romer said:

Zale Lecture: Let me start with continued high unemployment. This has obviously been a terrible recession. The collapse of the housing bubble and the resulting financial crisis set in motion a horrible decline in spending and employment. Problem. The past two and a half years have been simply wretched for many American families. At its worst, employment was down some 81⁄2 million from its peak. Unemployment hit 10.1%. This truly has been the worst recession in the United States since the Great Depression. Now we started growing again the third quarter of 2009. Employment started expanding about a year later. So far, we have added about 1.5 million jobs. And the unemployment rate has fallen just over a percentage point. That is certainly an improvement, but it is not nearly good enough. The unemployment rate is still 8.8%. More than 13 million Americans are without a job. Six million of them have been out of work for more than six months…

Count me as unimpressed with falls in the unemployment rate 100% of which are declines in labor force participation, and 0% of which are the result of increases in the employment-to-population ratio…

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