Moral inversion, revisited
Mark A. wrote last December re the discussion about my dispute with John Derbyshire, in an e-mail I just came across:
I am quoting your comment:
“Here’s the basic problem with being a cultural conservative. Until the 1960s and 1970s, there were agreed-upon norms of decency for public behavior, for writing, and so on. The Cultural Revolution threw that out, and by the 1990s a new, “anti-cultural” order had come into being. In place of the former, traditional norms, the new norm is that anything goes—except, of course, traditional beliefs. As a result, if a supposedly conservative writer at a supposedly conservative magazine jokes about interviewing a female entertainer in a hot tub, that is not considered objectionable. If another writer at the same magazine lasciviously informs his readers about a pornographic video featuring a scantily dressed blond playing with power tools, that is not considered objectionable. But if someone does object to these things, then he is the one who is violating the norms of society. He is the disruptive person who is out of step and must be reproved.
“This is the moral inversion that the Cultural Revolution—implicitly or explicitly endorsed by mainstream conservatives—has wrought. It has turned conservatism against itself, by insisting that conservatism means accepting and upholding the prevailing order of society, even if, as at present, that order is liberal and decadent. A conservatism that remains silent in the face of the ubiquitous degradation of our culture is not worthy of the name. Genuine conservatism—which I call traditionalism—means resisting the liberal norms of our time, no matter how much we are attacked for it, because it is only through such resistance that a non-liberal conservatism can be restored or created.”
My question is the following:
Is this what Nietzsche meant by the transvaluation of values? Being the product of public schools (in the 1980s and 90s), I admit my knowledge of philosophy is entirely self-taught. I am curious as to what you think about this. I remember reading Tom Wolfe saying something about how the modern age was predicted by Nietzsche, but I’m not entirely sure if this is the same thing.
P.S. Another nice thing about VFR is that you actually discuss things with your readers. Derb, or anyone at else at NR, never seem to discuss anything. It appears that NRO is a merely a blog to help them express their vanity.
LA replies:
On one hand, by transvaluation of all values Nietzsche was referring to Christianity which had toppled the “noble” values of older cultures; on the other hand, by transvaluaton of all values I think he also designated the toppling of Christian and liberal values by the superman. But what we’re talking about here is something specific and I don’t know that Nietzsche’s ideas can help us with it: the moral inversion that results logically from liberalism. We need to try to understand this phenomenon itself and not rely on a phrase of Nietzsche’s which may not explain it adequately.
As I see it, the problem starts when man denies or loses any experience of higher truth. Once that happens, there is no longer a hierarchy of truth and value above and outside of man, so all human things are now believed to be equal. In reality of course things are not equal. Some things are objectively better than others, or are naturally more preferred by us than others. But such inequality is no longer acceptable. So to destroy the “betterness” of the better, the better must be made to seem worse, while to destroy the “worseness” of the worse, the worse must be made to appear better. The better the better really is, the more it must be unjustly dragged down, while the worse the worse really is, the more it must be unjustly and artificially raised up and given advantages. It is simply socialism as applied to values, with the whole pattern of vicious double standards that this implies.
The result is the inversion of values that was discussed in your e-mail. Low, unworthy behavior is normalized, lauded, and protected. Disapproval of such behavior is marginalized and put down. This is liberalism. And the attitudes resulting from this liberalism rule the the whole society, including at the “flagship magazine of American conservatism.”
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Mark A. replies:
Thank you. My God this is so true. I like your analysis because it intertwines the denial of higher truth and hierarchy. I would like to propose a caveat however. It appears to me that when there is no hierarchy above us, it is not just that all things are equal. It is that all things are valued according to a new hierarchy where the individual, rather than God, is at the top. Thus, how people “feel” about issues is most important—after all, they are the one at the top of their personal hierarchy and their thoughts count more than anything else. As Jose Ortega Y Gasset said, the mass man never submits his opinions to a court of higher appeal. No wonder so many people these days describe themselves as libertarians.
LA replies:
Yes, a new hierarchy based on the self and its desires. Fantastic.
Alan Roebuck writes:
“… a new hierarchy based on the self and its desires.”
Under liberalism, man is the supreme being. If there is no God, man becomes the supreme being, and this could mean two things: man the group is supreme (socialism and multiculturalism), or man the individual is supreme (libertarianism and mainstream contemporary liberalism). Of course, a regime in which individuals are supreme is supremely unstable, so it would tend toward socialism, i.e., tyranny.
LA replies:
“Under liberalism, man is the supreme being.” Perfect.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 28, 2007 08:53 AM | Send