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The Tragic Sublime: Libidinal Pessimism and the Problem

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The Tragic Sublime: Libidinal Pessimism and the Problem THE TRAGIC SUBLIME: LIBIDINAL PESSIMISM AND THE PROBLEM OF EXISTENCE By Sean G. Elbourne A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The Faculty of Arts The University of New South Wales 2005 Originality Statement I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged. (Signed)…………………………………………………………….. iii ABSTRACT In this thesis I explore the attempt by Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche and Georges Bataille to confront the problem of the meaning and value of existence. I consider each of these philosophers as involved in the development of a stream of post-Kantian thought that, following Nick Land, I call libidinal pessimism. Libidinal pessimism is both the metaphysical principle of the primacy of willing as the fundamental reality, and the moral principle that the greatest value to our existence is to be found in liberating willing from the small-scale concern of the good of individual beings. Each sees a crisis in the dominance of optimism: the belief that willing is commensurate with the good of individuated beings. They attack the dominance of optimism not just in the history of philosophy, but also in the values that dominate the culture at large. My contention is that these thinkers were provoked to think about the meaning and value of existence by encountering the tragic sublime: a pleasure in the destruction of the happiness of the individual. This affective intensity provokes them to the realisation that our will is not directed towards the happiness of the individual, contra the dominant values of our culture. Yet since the tragic sublime is non-conceptual, its implications for the meaning and the value of existence are not explicit. The task of philosophy is to conceptualise this affective intensity to specify the inadequacy of the i values that dominate the age, and to assert the values that can liberate human possibility from its current wretchedness to a new glory. To structure the thinking of these philosophers on the problem of existence, I analyse their thinking using the following logical model: 1) specifying what they regard as the predominant symptoms of the problem regarding existence, our current wretchedness; 2) their diagnosis of the source of this wretchedness in the dominant optimism; 3) their pronouncement of the solution to this problem, through liberating willing from the small-scale; and 4) their prescription for how to overcome this problem, for how the tragic sublime can liberate willing from the fetters of a concern for individuated beings. In elaborating upon the thinking of these philosophers as a definite stream of post- Kantian thought, I also highlight how each engages with the thinking of the earlier of the philosophers. I explore how Schopenhauer’s philosophy develops out of Kant’s philosophy, how Nietzsche develops the thinking of Schopenhauer and how Bataille develops the problematics of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Through this I attempt to explore how these three philosophers mark a development in the attempt to conceptualise the tragic sublime as the key to address the problem of the meaning and value of existence. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would firstly like to thank my supervisor, Associate Professor Rosalyn Diprose, for the opportunity to be supervised by her during my candidature. Her expertise in the field of Continental Philosophy, her attention to detail, constructive criticism and strong encouragement have been a guiding force and a source of inspiration that has enabled me to successfully complete my thesis. I would also like to thank my former supervisor, Dr Lisabeth During for stimulating my interest in philosophy while I was an undergraduate. Her guidance and encouragement, particularly during my Honours thesis and in the initial stages of my doctoral thesis have been invaluable. Many thanks as well to Dr Daniel W. Smith for supervising me during a critical period of my thesis. His insight and enthusiasm were crucial for me to bring together my interests into a coherent theme. Lastly, I would like to thank my wife, Kathryn, for her love and support during my candidature. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................i DECLARATION .....................................................................................................iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .......................................................................................iv INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1. SUFFERING IS SUBLIME: SCHOPENHAUER CONTRA COMPASSION......................................................................................20 1.1 INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................21 1.2 THE WORLD AS WILL...............................................................................25 1.3 THE METAPHYSICS OF EGOISM.............................................................39 1.4 THE METAPHYSICS OF COMPASSION...................................................51 1.5 THE RENUNCIATION OF THE WILL .......................................................63 CHAPTER 2. NIETZSCHE’S LIBERATION OF PESSIMISM FROM MORALITY...............................................................................................88 2.1 INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................89 2.2 THE LAST MEN..........................................................................................94 2.3 THE PROBLEM OF EXISTENCE ...............................................................99 2.4 ‘WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS?’ .............................. 104 2.4.1 THE WILL TO POWER AND SUFFERING.............................................. 115 2.5 SUFFERING AND THE ASCETIC IDEAL................................................ 124 2.6 PERSPECTIVISM AS COUNTER-IDEAL ................................................ 158 2.7 GREATNESS AND THE TRAGIC SUBLIME........................................... 172 CHAPTER 3. VISIONS OF RUIN: BATAILLE ON THE ANGUISH OF DESIRE ........................................................................................................ 194 3.1 INTRODUCTION....................................................................................... 195 3.2 MATERIALISM AND INDIVIDUATION................................................. 197 3.3 ANGUISH AND THE REDUCTION TO USEFULNESS .......................... 223 3.4 RELIGION AND THE LIBERATION FROM THE ORDER OF THINGS...................................................................................................... 233 3.5 THE EROTIC SUBLIME............................................................................ 245 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................... 273 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................. 290 v INTRODUCTION So far all these extraordinary furtherers of man whom one calls philosophers, though they themselves have rarely felt like friends of wisdom but rather like disagreeable fools and dangerous question marks, have found their task, their hard, unwanted, inescapable task, but eventually also the greatness of their task, in being the bad conscience of their time. By applying the knife vivisectionally to the chest of the very virtues of their time, they betrayed what was their own secret: to know of a new greatness of man, of a new untrodden way to his enhancement. Every time they exposed how much hypocrisy, comfortableness, letting oneself go and letting oneself drop, how many lies lay hidden in the best honoured type of their contemporary morality, how much virtue was outlived. Every time they said: “We must get there, that way, where you today are least at home”.1 1 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, #212 in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Random House, New York, 1992, p.327. 1 As Deleuze has noted, thinking is not something we normally do. Our customary state is not to think at all, but merely to reiterate the beliefs and values we currently hold, which are those that have been handed down to us: “ ‘Everybody’ knows very well that in fact men think rarely, and more often under the impulse of a shock than in the excitement of a taste for thinking”.2 What can shock our habitual stupidity? What can force us to think? Deleuze states that to be made to think, we must encounter something, which rouses us from the slumber of our stupidity: “What is encountered may be Socrates, a temple or a demon. It may be grasped in a range of affective tones: wonder, love, hatred, suffering. In whichever tone, its primary characteristic is that it can only be sensed”.3 The second
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