9.25.2021 - Hello to all who are returning and hello to those arriving here for the first time. I just wanted to tell you all thank you for stopping by another week to review this content. Now I have a few housekeeping items.
The first one is that I will be moving the release date of the Newsletter. I’ve noticed scheduling the Newsletter on Fridays reduces the traffic, and depending on IRL work and online work, it does strain me a bit.
I see only a few quirks occurring from moving the Newsletter, but nothing that can’t be ironed out. Now, as to the date, I was thinking of moving it to this upcoming Wednesday and, from then on out, release the Newsletter weekly every Wednesday morning. I’ve arrived at the Wednesday date via a couple of findings, but I’ll spare the details and say that it looks like a “good time” to release.
If you have any suggestions or comments, I’d love to hear them. You are always welcome to reach out to me at cutenoumena@gmail.com or on Twitter at @CNoumena.
As always, thank you for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy this week’s content.
-C.N
Notes on Piety, Hedonism and “Ressentiment”
I’ve been thinking recently about the relationship between Virtue, Piety, Nietzsche’s notion of Ressentiment, and what it has to do with NeoVitalism. My focus has been on the conflict that Nietzsche points out in his conception of Slave Morality. To simplify brutishly, Slave Morality in opposition to Master Morality aims at subverting notions of exerting one will through strength. An example of Slave Morality that Nietzsche uses is the example of Christianity. Christianity to Nietzsche is an example of this as its value system exalts the meek, the humble, and mild. Nietzche sees this as an example of what he calls “ressentiment.” Ressentiment is the sense of weakness or envy in the face of that which generates a value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of defect or deficiency. This moral system is then used to explain the deficiency by identifying the opposing force as inferior, serving as an insulating mechanism that prevents one from addressing and overcoming their insecurities.
Regarding Hedonistic tendencies or desire, they are often coupled as easy to do, requiring no discipline, and therefore are not worthy of Virtue. On the one hand, I can’t help but understand this view as it requires very little of an individual to fall back and justify their desire to internal or external structures, as that which forces affectivity on their body and does not allow them to escape specific behavioral, psychological or emotional barriers.
But I find this all too reductive and even black and white. As I wish to understand it, it should be possible to synthesize Master Morality with particular Christian morality and Virtue. If Virtue is something we can approach like an asymptote, something we can’t ever reach, coming in intensity, then to commands one will towards Virtue not as that which we ought or should live by but that which we desire to live by. The affects produced by capitalism of certain degeneracies are not mine to judge, but they can be desires which we escape and decouple ourselves from.
If NeoVitalism is to mean anything, it suggests a philosophy attempting to locate post-capitalist desire. Not to brute force our way out of capitalism but to bootstrap ourselves to a line of flight to produces new flows of passion, but I do not find this incompatible with a rejection of Virtue or desire as such.