In truth, the matter is altogether different: while you pretend rapturously to read the canon of your law in nature, you want something opposite, you strange actors and self-deceivers! Your pride wants to impose your morality, your ideal, on nature--even on nature--and incorporate them in her; you demand that she should be nature "according to the Stoa," and you would like all existence to exist only after your image--as an immense eternal glorification and generalization of Stoicism.
Neitzsche, Beyond Good and Evil Part 1, "On the Prejudices of Philosophers," pages 205-206
One of Neitzsche's points presented in other parts of the readings as well as here is that, as thinkers (and philosophers), we humans project our ideas onto nature--that when we interpret things like nature, we believe we are merely reflecting what is there but in reality are reflecting upon it and projecting our beliefs and experiences onto those "interpretations." Stoics in particular were concerned with living according to nature--with accepting things wholeheartedly that happen as unchangeable and focusing one's human power on what it can control, one's internal reactions to those circumstances. So for Neitzsche, these Stoics are defining a very particular value of nature which they believe to reflect how it actually is, but which really is merely an interpretation.
Neitzsche uses profound language to point out the hubris and even god-like self-image that these Stoics apparently possess. The phrase "after your image" especially stresses that Stoics (and other interpreters and philosophers) continue to see the world as they themselves would have it be.
In a sense, I think Neitzsche is right. In the film we just watched, Grizzly Man, Timothy Treadwell gets mauled by a bear, and when people come and find his corpse, they come fully prepared to kill the murderous bear, which they succeed in doing. There are characters in the film, however, who make it clear that Timmy would not have wanted any bears to die, and he says this multiple times himself in his own footage. "I would die for these bears" he says. "I came with no weapons" he stresses.
But didn't all those people who came out looking for his remains--those people who might represent the greater Western society--impose their morals in particular on the bear when they decided they would kill it for what it did? Perhaps they did want what was left of Timmy and his girlfriend, but I find it hard to believe that there was no vengeance in their method. Timmy too, undoubtedly, imposed his ideals onto the wilderness when he continuously mourned animals' deaths and desperately believed that a "just" nature would bring rain for the bears. I suppose this is what Neitzsche is referring to--in involving ourselves with nature at all (which is definitely impossible not to do), we impose ourselves upon it.
Is this right? Is there still a way you can impose yourself on nature correctly or, at the very least, least harmfully? Is Neitzsche correct in saying that we impose ourselves onto nature very selfishly and assertively? And could that be a good selfishness?
In response to your question about whether or not we can interact with nature without harming it, I am somewhat optimistic about the plausibility of a solution existing. I do agree with Nietzsche's claim that the human mind cannot avoid imposing itself on nature, although my view is probably closer to that of David Hume's understanding which is something along these lines: causation is just something that the human psychology "vomits" onto our ideas, experiences and memories. Wendell Berry echoes similar concerns about anthropocentrism and proposes that any life form is inherently unable to escape its own way of thinking and I'm of the position that this is self-evident. I also go further than Berry and think that we should not try to make an escape from our human point of view.(If anyone is interested in the discussion on to what degree we can understand other life forms mental states through study and interaction I highly recommend Thomas Nagel's paper What is it like to be a Bat? which can be found here:http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf)
ReplyDeleteI also think that the proper response to discussions on Timothy Treadwell is that Treadwell failed to understand that nature is indifferent to any moral, aesthetic, or emotional concern. "There is nothing, after all, more natural than the extinction of species; the extinction of all species, we must assume, would also be perfectly natural" (Berry 147). Treadwell represents an overreaction against the problems in the modern worlds disrespectful view of nature,.
It seems that no matter what action we take we are disturbing some aspect of the ecological system that was already established without us. Even if we think we are helping. Take, for instance, when Timothy tried to help the bears by straightening the flow of the stream. He was attempting to change that aspect of the ecosystem to get the outcome that he wanted. Treadwell assumed nature to be perfect and reacts somewhat unhealthily to instances of imperfection.
ReplyDeleteIn this sense I agree that Timothy failed to see nature in general as lacking any moral/emotional concern for him. What convinced me was the scene where he pets the foxes near his camp—one particular fox-friend was curious and sniffed Timothy’s finger. Instead of licking his hand as you would expect an affectionate animal companion to do, it attempted to bite him (or “test” his flesh).
I am not completely sold on seeing all creatures in nature as purely immoral, because they have been known to show profound amounts of affection and loyalty toward their own as well as other species. I do think it is naïve to assume that an animal is fond of a human simply because he hasn’t been eaten right away. Timothy’s concern and actions are admirable, however.
I very much agree that we impose things upon nature and that it is something that comes naturally to us. But we're also capable of reason, and we can (at least hypothetically) think selflessly. We can imagine what might be in the best interest of someone completely separate from us, and I think we could also imagine the same for parts of nature. So I think we could set aside (but never remove) our selfishness to help nature. Everything we do seems in some way selfish--even deep ecological changes that would worsen our quality of life could be argued to be good for us (morally or because the planet and the environments are a part of us). I think we could be selfish in a less harmful way by leaning on these kinds of benefits instead of economical/materialistic gains.
ReplyDeleteI believe completely that we naturally project ourselves onto nature and I, too, found myself comparing Neitzsche's ideas from this reading to that of the film Grizzly Man. In the film, I personally think that Treadwell put himself in harms ways by attributing human qualities to the animals around him, forgetting that he was living with creatures which act solely based on instinct. This kind of thinking on Treadwell's part led to his own demise. Yet while we do inherently impose things on nature, we still are capable of thinking and coming to realizations. It is our reasoning that could provide mankind a reality check on the actual essence of nature, keeping us from harmful situations. In many previous readings, it has been established that human beings are in fact selfish beings but we are no different from other species as all living things have one goal: to survive. For this reason, I do think that our perception of nature is a selfish one. This projection of ourselves onto nature, while harmful, does provide us with a sense of some kind of connection with nature that many of our readings argue that we have lost.
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