Nietzschean Nihilism and Dionysian Deception

A Reply to Dionysus

Imperium Press is a publishing company whose work I have nothing but respect for. The Dissident Right has no future outside of independent publishers like them. Their strategy is simple: take the great works of the Western Canon and wrest them from the grubby claws of academics that try to deconstruct them. They couldn’t have started at a better time either. Imperium Press published Homer’s Iliad the same year Leftists called for canceling it with a hashtag campaign. Leftist academics are handing us the wisdom of the ages on a silver platter, so why shouldn’t we take it?

That said, the “Imperium Cast” crowd is not free of error – even serious ideological errors that undermine their mission. These errors come in many forms, but the most pernicious is Nietzscheanism. If you take nothing else from this essay, remember this: Friedrich Nietzsche was a modernist, and Nietzscheanism is, in many ways, the culmination of all that’s wrong with modernity. Despite the “based” things he said about Supermen, Last Men, and liberal ressentiment, the underlying metaphysics of his thought as well as their conclusions are anything but. The Nietzschean framework is nothing but the modernist framework. More important than that though, Nietzscheanism is wrong. And not just wrong, but so obviously wrong that a quick examination of it will make it hard to believe anyone with a functioning brain could believe it.

How do such ideas find purchase in the dissident right? Often, these Nietzscheans come in claiming to be pagans. Of course, the real Nietzsche was an avowed atheist, but mythologizing isn’t incompatible with Nietzschean philosophy. On the Imperium Cast Discord channel, I was recommended an article written by one such pagan. Its author, “Dionysus,” argues for synthesizing a Nietzschean view of morality with generative anthropology (or GA) (Update: the article has since been deleted, but you can find a web archive here). Now, I am sympathetic to GA. I’ve talked about it on my channel multiple times, but I acknowledge that the authors of GA are not Christians nor is there anything necessarily Christian about the theory. One can take GA and read it in light of Christian truths, as I do. One can also read it in light of Nietzschean philosophy, which is what Dionysus does.

I do recommend reading Dionysus’ essay in full, as he did put a great deal of effort into it. For the sake of brevity, however, I’ll summarize his argument. According to Dionysus, humans are moral creatures insofar as they decide what is the right course of action in any given moment based on “moral instincts.” However, identifying general moral principles is impossible, so the enterprise of ethics as Aristotelians and Kantians see it is futile. The closest thing to a real ethical theory we can achieve is a phenomenology of ethics, a description of how morality is formed in our conscious.

In Dionysus’ view, the best phenomenology of ethics was developed by Adam Katz in his reading of GA. Katz’s theory is that ethics were created by authority figures to defer violent conflict. The “moral instincts” that people act upon have their origin in imperatives laid out by these authority figures and were internalized by mimesis. This view of morality is Nietzschean because it denies that moral norms have a higher purpose than survival. However, given GA, humans cannot help but ‘do’ morality since human sociality cannot be entirely negated. Even a nihilist who denies the objectivity of morals cannot help but act morally since morality is inherent to us. We must therefore give a nihilistic affirmation of life and morality despite their absurdity. Of course, moral realism, including the realism of Aristotle and Aquinas, must be discarded in the process.

Dionysus’ argument, while persuasive on its face, contains many errors, many of which stem from his Nietzschean nihilism. Right off the bat, he asserts that “Theory only has value insofar as it is instrumentalised towards that always coveted praxis. Theory could only possibly have value insofar as it helps and orientates you towards the most effective practices.” However, no useful theory can fail to be true in some fashion. The concept of truth precedes the concept of practicality because one cannot be useful if one is not first real. This is true of both speculative sciences like physics and normative sciences like ethics.

The reason Nietzsche claims otherwise is that he rejects the very concept of truth itself as a consequence of his anti-teleological views. Without teleology, there’s no such thing as a “theory” that is “scientific” and “rational” and “supported” by the “evidence.” All of these concepts presuppose some level of human intentionality, which is irreducibly teleological. Those who abandon teleology must follow Nietzsche in rejecting truth itself. All we’re left then are “new myths.” Thus, Nietzsche rejects objective truth as illusory and redefines knowledge as “a tool of power,” a means by which men better control their environment and nothing more.

But not even that remains. Nietzsche’s position faces obvious incoherence problems. The very attempt to dismiss truth as illusory itself presupposes that it is true since the very notion of an “illusion” presupposes an appearance that fails to correspond to reality. Likewise, Nietzsche’s pitting of a biological account of knowledge-as-will-to-power against traditional metaphysics itself presupposes that this account is true (in the traditional sense of truth-as-correspondence-to-reality) in a way that traditional metaphysical theories aren’t. The number of ways this is incoherent can be multiplied, but I think you see my point. Nietzsche exemplifies the modern man: full of bluster and light on substance.

At this point, I could stop here. If Dionysus is consistent in his Nietzscheanism, then he is, by his logic, not telling us the truth but instead trying to create a new myth to delude his readers. Thus, he would necessarily be a deceiver and not worth the time to engage honestly. But in all fairness, it could be the case that Dionysus is only partly imbibing Nietzsche, borrowing ideas he thinks are useful without regard to their logical conclusion. In light of this possibility, I will continue, but I will return to this point about deception at the end of this essay.

Later on in the article, Dionysus cites Deleuze to refute the natural law arguments of St. Thomas Aquinas and the deontological ethics of Immanuel Kant. He argues that, because no two individuals are interchangeable, there are no universal natures that transcend the individual. He applies the same logic to moral singularities. If there cannot be universal natures, he says, then neither can there be universal moral principles. Yet no classical realist would argue that physical objects that share the same nature are interchangeable. Thomists, for instance, would argue that even if two objects were identical in their form, they will have a different matter that separates them as individuals. Species within the same genus are only equal on an abstract level. Thus, the “interchangeable” argument is a non-sequitur.

For his argument to work, Dionysus would have to argue that there are no generalities that we can make, or if there are any, they are so abstract that they’re useless. Such an argument, however, would prove too much. Scientific laws and classifications – including the rules and categories of generative anthropology that Dionysus makes use of –are general or universal in their application. Generative anthropology itself necessarily refers to universals, as do all scientific theories. Hence, to accept them as true is to accept that there are universals whose existence does not depend on the human mind.

Furthermore, the denial of universals leads us to nominalism and its sequel conventionalism. To reiterate what I wrote in a previous essay, conventionalism is self-refuting in two separate ways. First, any argument made against the existence of any given universal or essence must give an account of how we came to believe in that universal. This account will necessarily appeal to various universals, like imperative language, authority, and social scenes. However, to be consistent, the conventionalist would then have to explain how we came to believe in these universals. This creates an explanatory infinite regress that can only be terminated with the existence of some natural kind – a universal, in other words. The second incoherency of conventionalism is its inability to explain the essence of the human mind itself. What makes the mind what it is cannot itself be a product of the mind because this would require the mind to exist before it existed, an impossibility. Once the existence of one essence is admitted, you’ve opened the door to full-blown essentialism.

Dionysus’ argument against general moral principles also proves too much. Moralists like St. Thomas have always acknowledged that particular circumstances can change the application of a general moral principle. “The practical reason,” the Angelic Doctor says, “is busied with contingent matters, about which human actions are concerned: and consequently, although there is necessity in the general principles, the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter defects.” Thus, “in matters of action, truth or practical rectitude is not the same for all, as to matters of detail, but only as to the general principles.” However, to argue that general principles must therefore be discarded would be a step too far. Why not then reject all laws and general principles and instead have each case be ruled by judges operating on a case-by-case basis?

The reason general principles are true and useful is that different moral cases share similarities, just as different individuals share similarities. These similarities are caused by their shared nature. The natures of things are the source of general principles. If we discover that a given kind of action is, of its nature, immoral, then that action is immoral no matter the circumstance. For example, if we can say that intentionally taking an innocent human life is an intrinsically wrong act, then the act is wrong no matter the circumstance. And we can say that this act is intrinsically wrong because all humans share the same nature.

Dionysus then cites Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, arguing that his description of the moral confusion that plagues modern life is a result of the very impossibility of ethics. To Dionysus, ethical theory cannot be applied to the complexities of everyday life, and the moral confusion MacIntyre describes is a confirmation of this fact. Ironically, MacIntyre himself argues that this moral confusion is caused, not by the impossibility of ethical theory, but by particular historical processes. MacIntyre argues that it was the Enlightenment’s rejection of Aristotelian formal and final causation – a rejection that culminated in Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy – that lies at the root of modern moral confusion. Modern moral reasoning has as its origins Nietzschean nihilism, which was absorbed by modern technocratic elites through Max Weber and his critics:

And it at once becomes relevant that Weber's thought embodies just those dichotomies which emotivism embodies, and obliterates just those distinctions to which emotivism has to be blind. Questions of ends are questions of values, and on values reason is silent; conflict between rival values cannot be rationally settled. Instead one must simply choose-between parties, classes, nations, causes, ideals. Entscheidung plays the part in Weber's thought that choice of principles plays in that of Hare or Sarte. 'Values', says Raymond Aron in his exposition of Weber's view, 'are created by human decisions …' and again he ascribes to Weber the view that 'each man's conscience is irrefutable' and that values rest on 'a choice whose justification is purely subjective' (Aron 1967, pp. 206-10 and p. 192). It is not surprising that Weber's understanding of values was indebted chiefly to Nietzsche and that Donald G. Macrae in his book on Weber (1974) calls him an existentialist; for while he holds that an agent may be more or less rational in acting consistently with his values, the choice of anyone particular evaluative stance or commitment can be no more rational than that of any other. All faiths and all evaluations are equally non-rational; all are subjective directions given to sentiment and feeling. Weber is then, in the broader sense in which I have understood the term, an emotivist and his portrait of a bureaucratic authority is an emotivist portrait.

[…]

Weber's general account of bureaucratic organizations has been subjected to much cogent criticism by sociologists who have analyzed the specific character of actual bureaucracies. It is hence by experience and in which accounts of many sociologists who take themselves to have repudiated Weber's analysis in fact reproduce it. I am referring precisely to his account of how managerial authority is justified in bureaucracies. For those modern sociologists who have put in the forefront of their accounts of managerial behavior aspects ignored or underemphasized by Weber's – as, for example, Likert has emphasized the manager's need to influence the motives of his subordinates and March and Simon his need to ensure that those subordinates argue from premises which will produce agreement with his own prior conclusions – have still seen the manager's function as that of controlling behavior and suppressing conflict in such a way as to reinforce rather than to undermine Weber's account of managerial justification. Thus there is a good deal of evidence that actual managers do embody in their behavior this one key part of the Weberian conception of bureaucratic authority, a conception which presupposes the truth of emotivism.

(After Virtue, pg. 26-27, emphasis mine)

Modernity’s problems, rather than being evidence for Nietzscheanism, are the result of the implicit Nietzscheanism of our managerial elite. It is Nietzscheanism, not Aristotelianism, that is a reification of bureaucratic management.

Dionysus argues for a nihilistic view of ethics that sees it only as a tool of survival. He claims that morality cannot be natural because it’s derived from imperatives set by some authority. This is an inversion of the Aristotelian-Thomist view that authorities command people using reason to judge the truth and goodness of things and make decisions based on this knowledge. The perfection of the faculty of practical reason is prudence, and the part of prudence that pertains to wise rulers is regnative prudence. Just as the citizens are expected to obey the law, the authority is expected to make good laws by understanding what is true and good. Truth, goodness, and beauty are not constructed by authority but are inherent to existence itself.

The Nietzschean view obliterates this understanding, leaving us with bureaucrats manipulating their subordinates for the sake of survival. Rulers are reduced from teachers of virtue to mere managers, and authority itself is reduced to power. Joel Davis describes this reductionism in great depth in his critique of sociological functionalism. Sociological functionalism, “the presupposition that society can be best understood a system and is therefore descriptively reducible to a nexus of functions,” is the preeminent ideology of our age and greatly resembles Nietzscheanism. Davis states that:

There are two fundamental modes of sociological function; collaboration and conflict. Both presuppose survival. Collaboration, the survival of the society as a holistic unit. Conflict, the survival of one part of the society. Of course sometimes conflict is key to collaboration, it can be seen as necessary to the survival of the whole to protect parts of society against the interests of other parts of society. It can also been seen as necessary to stage controlled conflict (competition) within society to facilitate the demonstration, selection and reward of functions performed to the benefit of society's survival. So why do I have a problem with this 'sociological functionalism' thing? This all seems pretty reasonable doesn't it? In short the problem I see can be distilled to the question of why we must assume that 'survival' is the only purpose served by society. Why is society trying to survive? Survive to do what exactly? Are conflict and collaboration the only things society ever does, or are these merely the two modes by which it survives?

We can't answer such questions of the purpose of survival within sociological functionalism. This is because the very notion of function presupposes a purpose. Purpose cannot itself be a function, functions have purposes. So we can never derive a purpose for society from a model of society. This is why the only purpose for society that sociological functionalism can come up with is the tautological assumption that society must keep functioning (surviving). Sociological functionalism then in its application, is the institutionalized denial that society serves a purpose. Placing a model of society in authority over a society will make that society nihilistic. It will make its political system incapable of serving any purpose beyond its own survival, in other words power for the sake of power. Conflict and collaboration are the means of society, to posit them also as its ends is to deny that society has any.

Of course, explicit nihilism isn't a particularly functional means of running a political system. Rationalizing and motivating political action generally requires more than the mere proclamation that we live in a society. Political discourse within a nihilistic paradigm incapable of affirming anything but "survival" has no option then but to engage in conflict analysis. Politics under a nihilistic backdrop can only be understood in defensive terms. The survival of Group X is under threat, Group Y is responsible. This is true even for self-proclaimed "individualists" who reject "collectivism", as their primary concern is that these individuals are threatened by those pesky collectivists. In all cases the purpose of society is either the oppression of one group by another or their liberation. Enemies meet in reciprocal belief that they are the liberators and their opponents are the oppressors. Liberated for what exactly? For the survival of the group? Why must it survive? Only an traitor would ask such a question.

Within the paradigm of sociological functionalism then, the political can be understood only through the binary of domination/liberation. Such a rationalization for pursuing liberation (or domination, if one dares to make this explicit) can only be understood in negative terms. We can only oppose domination or liberation, we cannot affirm either in themselves for we are trapped in nihilism. We are ruled by an intellectual model which infinitely recurses in self-referential presupposition. This abstract vortex alienates us from the possibility of encountering any authority which transcends this idolatrous act of worshipping our self-enclosure in its denial. The act of subordinating society to our model subordinates us to its meaninglessness. In a society where authority has no meaning, power can only be grasped through acts which conceal it. Delusions of liberation are cultivated by our sorcerer ("intellectual") elite as the means of this subtle domination. The denial of an authority which supervenes upon the projection of a model by the intellect upon society rendered this inevitable.

However, if Dionysus’ arguments are correct, then the situation that Davis describes is universal across all human societies throughout all of history and transcendent authority is impossible. Humanity is forever trapped by delusions, and “authority” is vested in the intellectuals who can craft the best, most popular, and most convincing delusions. This tautological, deceptive view of governance lies at the heart of liberalism, as I argued in a recent video on the subject. Liberalism is built on moral skepticism and a nihilistic denial of virtue. Liberal philosophers thus reduce morality, the pursuit of eudaimonia, to a mere tool of managing social orders to perpetuate human survival. Nietzsche, and by extension Dionysus, is just more of the same.

Dionysus would probably respond to this by claiming his theory isn’t liberal because liberalism denies human sociality and mimesis, and granted, this is something that gives his Nietzscheanism an edge over basic liberal theory. Given GA, society constitutes humans as much as humans constitute it. Even if our moral norms are all tricks created by intellectuals to perpetuate society, we cannot help but affirm them since it is our nature. From developing a phenomenology of morality, which Dionysus claimed was a mere description, he’s suddenly concluded that we must affirm survival as our ultimate end because we can’t help but do so. This is rather similar to Thomism’s natural law axiom, whereby the obligation to do and pursue good and avoid evil is established by the fact that all things, humans included, are inclined to seek what is good for them. The only difference is that the Thomistic natural law is explicit about what it is trying to do (set up an axiomatic justification for an objective moral framework) while Dionysus explicitly denies that this makes morality objective.

It is the rejection of moral realism that sets apart Dionysus’ nihilistic affirmation of life and St. Thomas’ first principle of practical reason. Dionysus and his fellow Nietzscheans can get the benefits of moral realism without committing themselves to it. His theory justifies a moral society while giving those with knowledge of the theory freedom from inward piety. Because of this, the Nietzschean always has the option of being a moral free rider. He can accept that (for example) getting drunk and having adulterous sex would be bad and see the reasonableness of rules prohibiting these things while, at the same time, having no personal reverence for these rules. After all, Dionysus “knows” that such norms exist to defer violence and for no higher reason. And in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a “full negation” of sociality to break a few rules here and there, right? So long as he and his Nietzschean cohorts are the only ones aware of the “true” purpose of moral rules, they can get away with anything in moderation. Truly, Dionysus’ clever musings are worthy of his bacchanal namesake!

Okay, I know I’m being a bit facetious here. I can’t judge Dionysus’ heart. I don’t know whether he intended to create a rationalization for ignoring moral standards. I am confident, however, that his theory is easily used as rationalization for sociopathy and degeneracy. This leads us back to the topic of deception and why, more than anything, I find Nietzscheanism despicable. The Nietzschean “pagan” might claim to believe in a myth, but only because he thinks everything is a myth. He might claim to follow the rules, but he only does so out of self-interested survival. The Nietzschean might praise his ancestors for their outward practices, but he can never do more than pretend to be like them because he, unlike them, believes in nothing. Insofar as one is consistent in his Nietzscheanism, his piety toward his gods, his reverence for his kin, and his honoring of tradition are shams. Manipulation is an inevitable part of Nietzschean sociality, as the obliteration of the power-authority distinction that both MacIntyre and Davis point to is, in the words of the former, “a special instance of the disappearance of the contrast between manipulative and non-manipulative social relations” (After Virtue, p. 26). This applied even to the original Nietzschean, for MacIntyre proved that Friedrich Nietzsche was, at the end of the day, a nineteenth-century liberal reading his parochial views into the ancient past.

Perhaps Dionysus as an individual is sincere in his beliefs, but his Nietzscheanism allows for and even justifies such deception. It is for that reason that Nietzscheanism goes against the very spirit of the Western canon, which affirms perennial truths that enrich all who read them with clear eyes. In the pages of The Iliad, one will find men who believed moral truths were real and followed them even unto their deaths. It’s their example that we ought to follow. Those who truly want to honor their ancestors, worship the divine, and defend the West must reject Nietzscheanism.