SLOUCHING TOWARD JOSEPH’S AI: Nietzsche and Weber’s criticism of Modernity, and their proposed solutions
Robert Bork, prominent conservative legal expert and politico, wrote a 1996 tract (Slouching Toward Gomorrah) that indicted American Liberalism as promoting values contradictory to American values and responsible for the decline of Western culture. Within his polemic, he defines modernity as an era embracing manipulation via the perception of ethics as artificial:
Modernity, the child of the Enlightenment, failed when it became apparent that the good society cannot be achieved by unaided reason. The response of liberalism was not to turn to religion, which modernity had seemingly made irrelevant, but to abandon reason. Hence, there have appeared philosophies claiming that words can carry no definite meaning or that there is no reality other than one that is “socially constructed.” A reality so constructed, it is thought, can be decisively altered by social or cultural edict, which is a prescription for coercion.1
Bork’s assessment of modernity frames it as problematic, as an era leading to a catastrophic turning point for humanity. He defines it through the trait of moral relativism, something which he finds to act counter to rationality, and the main force acting against the interests of Western culture.
If modernity is truly the child of the Enlightenment as Bork states, then the child’s caretakers are most certainly Nietzsche and Weber. Like Bork, the two view modernity as an era of crisis. Unlike Bork, they see this crisis as something to overcome as part of the human experience. In particular, they isolate the hallmark traits of modernity—secularism and individualism—as areas subject to enquiry, criticism, and then remedy. Answers to the philosophers do not take form as prescriptions for a simple procedural fix to the ills of society; they exist as a new way to view the world in total.
Defining secularism is a task that requires care. While it advocates for the public to remain atheistic, it neither suggests that society as a whole should, nor that it will ever, forego all religion. Such thought has had a following since the anti-clerical thinkers of the Enlightenment. In modernity, examination shows that society remains deeply affected by religion, even with the advent of secular values.
For Nietzsche, he cites the existence of a slave morality as evidence for the persistence of religious values. The disgust Jewish priests had for powerful aristocrats “[gave] birth to values: the resentment of those beings who are prevented from a genuinely active reaction and who compensate for that with a merely imaginary vengeance.”2 The problem with resentment is that it provides a disincentive for the weak to improve their condition, and it only gives them legitimacy in staying weak. What characterizes the vengeance is a system of values that places the weak as high status. Christ in sacrificing Himself for the sins of the wicked is the highest manifestation of this craved vengeance: it anoints the Church as an evolved form of slave morality3. Nietzsche imagines this behavior as a poison to the body of human culture, and finds that it has migrated beyond religion: “The church repels us, not its poison… Apart from the church, we love the poison”4. Ergo, to Nietzsche, the originally religious values of slave morality are a problem in how it invades modern secular society, and compels the populace to ignore their shortcomings and be satisfied as weaklings. [1]
As physician for the modern world, Nietzsche has medicine for the contagion of slave morality. The general panacea for the illness is to create oneself without external supervision. Without a deity to be subordinated under the individual has no ability to abstract a resentment of their own powerlessness into a divine form. Without a society to be instilled the value of slave morality, confidence in ones innate capacities takes the forefront. The specific antidote prescribed by Nietzsche is a practice known as “eternal reoccurrence”. Considering a subordinated existence is one of suffering, for a human to repeatedly experience any given instant in his or her life is to cower before the lack of fate guiding life to unfold an reaching a conclusion beneficial to the meek. If one overcomes nihilism, the koan is perceivable, as the individual is able to conceive of the world without seeking a transcendent meaning; he or she would be content to enjoy the absurdity of the experience. [2]
Weber’s conception of religion is similar to Nietzsche’s: he cites the existence of an underlying Protestant ethic in modern capitalism, exercised through vocation. Protestantism is of important to Weber’s analysis due to its “special tendency to develop economic rationalism… that materialism results from the secularization of all ideals through Protestantism.” 5 Provided that the spirit of capitalism is defined as “the attitude which seeks profit rationally”, one logically must define how rationality for profit was established—after all, man needs only to acquire subsistence to survive. Rationality is derived through a paradox in Protestant doctrine: whereas morality was acquired through labor for social usefulness6, immorality was derived from conspicuous spending on worldly temptations (according to Pietism)7. Instead of spending on excess products, money was invested to further the social usefulness of labor. Modern capitalism exhibits this paradox with one complication: secularization has killed the religion behind the practice, leaving only the ethic behind with no spirituality. No longer is it a cultural or religious value, but one of purely economic interest, and through economic means it keeps the citizenry of Europe locked into an “iron cage”, compelled to labor in the face of materialism8. Spirit without religiosity leads to dehumanization, in Weber’s analysis, and can be seen as a problem with modernity.
The solution to this lack of spirituality is to find a way to instill the religious values into society. Progress without a soul is not progress at all, and the difficulty is that spirit and material fetters are linked. Weber’s goal to correct this imbalance is the aim of his writings: to describe the system at hand as opposed to taking a normative stance. It can be said that the focus of Weber’s solution to modernity’s problems with materialism is to stop looking at issues through the scope of either materialism or “one sided spiritualistic causal interpretation”; focus should be placed upon each in defining their reciprocal relationship, in a technique known as “elective affinity”9.
The second problem with modernity is the notion of individuality. Individuality can be defined as individual sovereignty. Society defines individuality, because it does not exist if members of a collectivity are not recognized; choice must exist for an individual to assert oneself in a group. It is a matter of liberty that individuality is defined.
Nietzsche, as a champion of individual choice, finds slave morality to be an agent diminishing the liberties of the individual: he refers to the group of slaves pejoratively as a “herd”10. A group of slaves under a “herd mentality” are homogenized to believe that any one person’s values do not trump the others. This is true in the scope of Nietzsche’s focus on slave-master morality. To homogenize on the worst possible terms would signify that the slave is tricked into misrepresenting their interests. The prudent example for this misrepresentation is the case with pity signified by the allegory of the bird of prey and the lamb. “To demand that strength does not express itself as strength, that it must not consist of a will to overpower…” says Nietzsche, “that is as unreasonable as to demand that weakness express itself as strength.”11 The powerful are born as such: individual freedoms dictate they act in accordance to their birthright. To act differently is to constrain individual choice and limit genius in society. The decision to act weak as a powerful individual is not for he or she to make, but rather based upon the all-pervasive nature of slave morality. Modernity accordingly has a problem with the powerful and the weak in establishing their true freedom: the weak are given moral agency to stay weak, whereas the strong is persuaded by pity to embrace weakness. There is no room for individual interests in a world where they cannot be expressed.
Solving the constraint on individual action can be as simple as overcoming pity. Yet, one’s ability to do this is still contingent on the fact that they have inborn strength. Embracing one’s genius to the point of disallowing it from constraining one’s actions is the appropriate action. Internalized morality, Nietzsche laments, causes individuals to “turn away from action, sometimes brooding…[appearing] almost unavoidably [debilitated by illness].”12 The prescribed solution is not acting as the priests dictate, but to shrug off internalized moral concerns of the weak and focus upon achieving one’s own success through the capability of affirming reality. Although it goes without saying that the weak must overcome the moral disincentive to become powerful, due to the fact that power does not hate weakness as weakness resents power, as per the case with the bird of prey loving the lamb, the focus lies upon the naturally powerful to overcome slave-master morality13.
Freedom for the sake of individual expression for Weber is based upon the iron cage of economic norms. The spirit of capitalism is a cultural facet that is “bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determines the lives of all individuals who are born into this mechanism”14. If striving to find a calling is an expression of freedom, certainly striving to not find a calling is an equal expression of freedom. Striving to do any action that occurs within system that runs as utilitarian as clockwork and there is not much choice for the individual. As Benjamin Franklin’s quotes read, the virtues of an individual in a modern society are based upon industry, frugality, justice, and punctuality: a set of ascetic norms mandated by the Protestant ethic to be operative traits running society15. Self-sacrifice, creativity, and wisdom have nothing to do with being a virtuous person in modernity according to Weber: who you are is determined how you operate as a function of industrious society, period.
Yet, there is room to change the conception of reality based upon individual virtues. According to Weber, “the proponent of an ethic of absolute ends cannot stand up under the ethical irrationality of the world. He is a cosmic-ethical ‘rationalist.’”16. The significance of this is that the reality of the world changes depending upon the ethical scope we look at it. Ethical action in a society constrained heavily by norms is still possible through politics provided one gains legitimacy in his actions, through any of the three methods Weber suggests. The path of legitimacy in this fashion is a two-way street: the spirit of capitalism took the road of legitimacy; it follows that anybody can take this path. It is especially promising for the articulation of individual interest considering that values are not as universal as his bleak message of an iron cage in the Protestant Ethic. Weber suggests that there exist status groups that have values that are not explicitly tied to how they best serve the utility of capitalism. In these value groups, an individual would have better results representing their views, as opposed to trying to be heard in society at large. If modernity’s problem is with individual participation in a cultural and economic regime that fight non-conformity, the solution is to air grievances in an arena that allows it. Weber’s view towards the actual process of legitimizing an ideology bestows upon everybody the ability to rationalize an ideology in these arenas. And what short of political momentum divides change at a regional, group-oriented level and wholesale change at a broader, societal level? Individual influence over environment is sustained through modernity in this fashion. [3]
Discussing the problem of modernity between Nietzsche and Weber requires defining the problem into two elements: secularism and individualism. Both authors see secularism as a misnomer, considering they find traits latent to religion surviving the wave of anti-clericism characterizing the Enlightenment era. For Nietzsche, it is the spirit of a idealistic battle against powerlessness (slave-master morality), and for Weber it is the spirit of work tempered by an economy of over-indulgence in the fruits of one’s labors (Protestant ethic). Both authors also find individualism as inherently wracked by problems in modernity, by the weak and powerful being compelled to deny their true position in society (resentment and pity) and by the conformity demanded by the individual by an all-encompassing social order (the iron cage).
Yet despite these problems, both authors find potential solutions. Both authors claim that ascetism and spiritual overcoming can help society mitigate social issues, to a point. Nietzsche cites a mindset of skeptical autarchy (via enternal reoccurance) as useful for overcoming nihilism, whereas Weber found that simply forgetting about causality (via elective affinity) allowed the thinker to free himself from a world of infinite piossibilities. In terms of the freedoms reinforcing individuality, Nietzsche believes that an introspective awareness (via the bird of prey-sheep example) can allow one to focus one’s natural abilities, while Weber is determined that through a cursory glance of social groups, one has the ability to voice one’s concerns (via the link between group values and processes of establishing legitimacy) despite the apparent immutability of capitalism.
Optimism in the face of modernity on part of the forerunners of postmodernity allows one to wonder if Bork in the face of postmodernity is but a cultural pessimist. With regards to modernity: is it conceivable that society did not abandon religion, and turned to reason to explain its persistence? Is it possible that social constructivism via moral positivism, as an organ of “coercion”, acts as a measure of control for the entirity of society rather than an oligarchy? In other words, could we as a people be slouching towards the Ai of Joseph instead of Gomorrah? [4]
[0] Format for in-text citations: author. title (chapter: section, paragraph no.)
[1] I think the subject for the second quote (who is exactly repelled by the church) is the anti-clerical people of the enlightenment. This shows the explicit migration of slave morality into modern culture: it was smuggled aboard the values of the philosophes.
[2] Section strictly from class notes (Thursday of week 5). I believe the discussion focused upon The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, however. A conclusion beneficial to the meek is an afterlife plain and simple. Example of this St. Thomas Aquinas’ quotes: “In the kingdom of heaven the blessed will punish of the damned, so that they will derive all the more pleasure from their heavenly bliss.” Found in paragraph 3 of section 15.
[3] Main source for group-based politics and the processes of legitmation is found in Thursday week 7 notes. Additionally, it can be found in Politics as a Vocation, PV 7-15,
[4] It’s not an important point of the essay, merely something to consider. I try and attack a religious concept in a philogical method that I think Nietzsche or Weber may approve of. Gomorrah, according to Bork is a den of sin, and in modernity the term is linked to unnatural vice, in particular homosexuality and deviant sexual activity. In Hebrew, Gomorrah is “to be buried” , and refers to the city’s destruction by directly God. Ai, on the other hand, is razed by Joseph and totally destroyed, under God’s command. Ai in Hebrew is depicted as “a heap of ruins”. Both ai and gomorrah have similar meanings in the context of divine destruction, yet in one the destruction is only abstractly accomplished by God. I am attempting to critique Bork’s title by saying that if man is to destroy himself, it won’t be through sin and the directly God-like acts, but through action legitimized by the divine. There’s a lot more analysis that could be drawn from this juxtaposition, but I just think it is neat to leave as a point of reflection.
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