In the crossing from conceptual thinking to inceptual, truth interpreted as relational and externally founded (correspondence theory of truth) is initially rejected by Nietszche as mere valuation, and not the 'highest' value. But with the second Nietszche remains wedded to the notion of valuation in general. Valuation goes hand in hand with the nature of technological (metaphysical, conceptual) revealing of beings in general. The enframing nature of technological revealing requires a posited identity between differentiable things, in order to be able to 'have' them at one's disposal - as a resource any given example is equivalent to any other of that type.
Nietszche then brings in the valuation of humanness as rank. Truth as valuation renders the difference null, they are both 'human resources'. Within any enforced Master/slave pairing the metaphysical notion of truth is always advantageous to those looking up. Maintaining the differentiation though is not merely in the Master's interest but in the interest of undermining valuation in general.
Within consensual Master/slave dynamics the metaphysical valuation is disadvantageous to both, since it renders them effectively equal, and their dynamic is posited on inequality as in itself desirable. Truth is re-posited in an inceptual manner, as the self-presentation of something to a human being, and thus founded on humanness in general.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Master, Slave, Humanness and Truth
Mastery / slavery ? Digressions in Terminology
How the more extreme forms of domination and submission oriented dynamics acquired the terminology "Master/slave" is an odd question at first glance, and one related to another form of terminology, that of "Owner/property".
A slave, defined by being-owned, would by definition have an owner. One who owned a human being would by definition have a slave, owning simple "property" would not distinguish one from any other in our current society. Masters in various areas of endeavour might have servants, novices, acolytes, initiates, apprentices, etc. But in the specific area of consensual slavery the slave's owner appropriates the designation "Master". Seemingly in reaction to the ability and responsibility mastery requires, some in domination/submission dynamics opt out of the issue of what mastery entails, preferring to return to simple ownership, but the simulaneous reduction of human property ("slave") to just "property" signals a felt lack, as if owning a human being without mastery is somehow inappropriate.
Consensual slavery has multiple defining features, but one of the principle features is a vow of obedience that overrules further need for consent, in most cases perpetual, at least in intention. Perpetual vows of obedience are found in a number of other areas of human endeavour, but are most associated with the religious life. Within many religious orders a vow of obedience to the order is prescribed. While it is unusual today, vows of obedience to a particular person were at one time also common within Christianity as in other religions.
The justification for vows of obedience within specifically Christian theology stemmed from the limited perspective available to any given individual, together with the notion that community ameliorated that limitation and provided a brake on unconstrained and potentially mistaken willing by the individual.
Will as Will to Power, in the consummation of metaphysics and therefore Christianity itself, however, is the term for the essence of being itself, rather than a specific faculty of a specific being. As the essence of being itself the slave's being is as fully Will to Power as the Owner's. Rather than ameliorating the expression of Will to Power, the being of the community, religious or otherwise, is also Will to Power. A vow of obedience could not in post Nietzschean terms accomplish any constraining of the Will to Power but would simply make the perspective panoramic, and as panoramic all the more perspectival.
A vow of obedience, as central to the slave's being-a-slave, and hence the slave's expression of Will to Power, serves two other purposes. First the vow is a shield against the tempting, in particular the most tempting itself. Second it is the focus for the more understanding and creative expression of that will demanded by its continuing alignment with the will of the Master.
It is in the radicality of the demand of obedience that it functions as a shield against the tempting. "The most tempting itself" is an odd phrase at first - temptation is often conflated with desire, yet in a sense it opposes and frustrates the pursuit of that which is most desired itself. Temptation diverts from the pursuit of desire as much as from the pursuit of perfection, or any other particular pursuit. As the "most" tempting fundamental temptation is something we always find ourselves in in advance. Radical obedience, in either expectation or fulfillment, opposes the most tempting in an essential way because it is an extraordinary expectation, and an extraordinary thing to attempt. "The most tempting", the founding temptation in which we always find ourselves immersed is essentially the temptation of the mediocre, the averageness of everyday understanding and levelling off any distinctions that might threaten that tranquillizing mediocrity of everydayness itself.
Expecting this kind of vow implictly requires a sense of one's own unique abilities, a sense that develops with mastery of those abilities itself, a sense that breaks and continually re-breaks the temptation towards a tranquilizing common mediocrity. Consenting to such a vow requires an honouring of the uniqueness of the Master's abilities that accomplishes the same severing from the temptation to mediocrity.
Obedience in an M/s Relationship
Within non-consensual slavery begun by the initial consent to becoming-a-slave, to obey is to hear and to follow-after the words of the Master. Following-after cannot be conceptualized, turned into a program that could be justifiable ethically or otherwise. To follow-after according to one's understanding is to negate following-after as obedience. Instead following-after involves obedience to what is at that moment beyond the understanding: blind in terms of comprehensibility, revelatory and immediately factical. Performing any act without the mediation of the understanding requires absolute trust and courage. It is a way of being resulting from one decision, and not a continual decision-making stance. There is no temporal cause / effect relationship between hearing and obeying, it is one and the same act.
Proper obedience as following-after negates the systematic and the conceptual apparatus of the understanding in an unjustifiable manner that brings together hearing and obeying as one movement. In following-after the words of the Master are heard-obeyed in a way that may negate even the teachings of the Master, since any such teachings would have to be interpreted anew by the slave rather than the Master. Interpretation and the resulting understanding is dispensed with in favour of a direct hearing-obeying of something said in a shared place, a sharing in which the self itself is the shared.
In hearing-obeying the words of the Master the slave responds to an external ground that names the way in which the slave's identity as a slave is formed and develops. The ground of following-after is outside the slave, shared by the Master through the sharing of the Master's own being-there, a being-there-with the slave. It belongs to the Master inherently as the slaving of the slave. A slave cannot supply the grounding - in being-a-slave and following the words of the Master the slave is moved according to the words of the Master in every specific facticity. This grounding is necessarily a grounding in the abyss brought about by not-understanding, where the void at the base of the slave's being allows the immediate presencing of the Master's will to the slave. It expresses the sheer facticity of belonging, a facticity that places the slave in the originary historicity of being-a-slave as having-become-a-slave. As such, obedience defines the slaving of the slave, thereby defining the slave as being-a-slave in the factical situation.
The slaving of the slave is the root of the historicity of being-a-slave. The radicality of this personal position is only to be uncovered within the progression initiated by having-become-a-slave. The courage required by such radicality is the courage that makes the slaving of a slave a constantly demanding and difficult task. The commanding that the slave hears-obeys is itself revelatory of the Master's being-a-master to that slave in all its particularity and within its own historicity of having-become-a-master to that slave.
Direction and Directives
Is it enough for Mastery that a slave obey his / her Master's directives, while his / her thoughts, desires and will remain free? Or does the act of directing implicitly require that the directed align those thoughts, desires and will with that of the Master?
In directing the Master points in a direction and sets the slave moving in that direction. This of course requires that the Master have a perspective from which to direct. The perspective itself comes from the positing of viewpoints inherent in mastery, power itself is perspectival in the sense that it is always an empowering of overpowering, a will towards a horizon, enacted through the slave, that comes back to itself in the slave's obedience and the Master's self obedience.
The slave's obedience in merely accomplishing the activity is never sufficient in itself to satisfy power. At best it can allow power to be maintained, but power is always overpowering as mastery - mastery of the slave and self mastery. If it is only maintained as measure it dwindles temporally. Mastery must empower its own overpowering and for this it requires the overpowering of its perspective itself via the merging of the slave's will with its own, the merging of viewpoints into one panoramic perspective.
Directives are obeyed by the slave in the sense of moving in that direction, but they empower the will of the Master when the directive's viewpoint and perspective are adopted, such that the slave's obedience returns and empowers the Master's self obedience. In this the directive reaches its panoramic completion, empowering further perspectives, viewpoints, and directives.
The Enchantment of the Extreme
One thing that I've tried to be clear in discussing M/s with other subgroups within the BDSM community is that I don't consider M/s "higher" or "more developed" than other relationship types, but I do consider it more *extreme". While many are wary (for good reason) of extremes I believe the extreme carries with it its own special fascination.
Nietzsche talks about "us immoralists" as the "outermost", the extreme. As such "we" do not need the lies of other powers. All other powers are force hiding behind the semblance of law, hence lying and dissimulation are necessary to veil true intentions, to display goals that are ostensibly sought after, and so make the subjugated happy.
Within the M/s dynamic, Masters refer to themselves as such, slaves know themselves as slaves. There is no false set of goals promulgated by the Master in order to underhandedly subjugate the slave. There is no expectation of eventual equality or even a specific reward for servitude to be sought after. The power differential is decided on in advance, and maintained and welcomed by both sides. The extremism of the dynamic, far from putting people off, exerts a powerful fascination, seduction and enchantment.
The "magic" of the extreme is the power of the most powerful. Most powerful because it hides behind no false pretenses of humility. Masters do not seek power over slaves "in the slave's interest", nor govern "as servants" (think public servants). We seek power solely and purely for its own sake and enjoyment. Slaves do not submit to their enslavement in order to gain a future advantage. This power transports members of the dynamic to another world with its enchantment and there brings them to themselves in a different way.
Who are, then, "we immoralists"? Are we an unethical gang of bandits on the fringes of society? No, we immoralists are those who stand outside the distinction between the true and the apparent worlds promulgated by metaphysics, and the hierarchy of moral rules and values that sustains it. We stand outside the distinction that sustained metaphysics and all its correlates, instead standing in the seduction of truth. We know that ethics is always concrete, always particular to the situation and are not confused by childish a priori rules.
Topology and M/s
In the topology of an M/s situation the members are situated in such a manner that the "between" of each member's place is the conjoining of the members themselves, in that they are not isolated subject-things but are the "open" that creates the place in which they can appear to one another as the people they are. As a result there is no "between" in the common sense of a space between objects (subjects) but a shared place that is constituted by the members themselves. Each "place", and the situation-place as a whole has differences that imply what is appropriate for each member as far as duties and comportment to the other members and to any other beings that appear in that clearing. Since there is nothing fundamentally relational about the topology I dislike referring to it as a relationship.
Each M/s topology, as well, is unique, being a topology of the individuals within it and their proper places. The event of appropriation itself determines what "proper" means in this instance, made more explicit through the alternative translation as the pairing of enownment/enslavement.
The underlying difference between the Master and slave in their comportment is that the Master's comportment is always firstly a listening, while the slave's is always firstly a hearing. The similarity is intentional, but the implied difference is crucial. Hearing, horen in anglo saxon, meant both to hear and to obey, with no differentiation. A proper hearing, then, implies obedience. The Master, though, listens. Any speaking, especially an ordering speaking, is simultaneously a careful listening. The care taken in the listening is what determines the appropriateness of the ordering. Without careful listening the ordering is arbitrary and leads to tyranny rather than mastery.
Mitdasein and Enslavement
"Mitsein and Mitdasein are posited as co-essential to Dasein's essence,that is,to its property as an existent for which Being is not its ontological foundation but rather the bringing into play of its own sense of Being as well as of the sense of Being itself. Therefore, Being-with, and more precisely Being-there-with,constitutes an essential condition for Dasein's essence."
"This is a property of Dasein as da-sein, as Being-the there:it is,or rather,it has to be the ''there''of an opening, that is,of its own(or in each case its own) way of letting itself be or of deciding to be according to this exposition which is also its Being-in-the-world.
.(Let/decide:two faces,two possibilities or two aspects of the same exposition.)
Dasein has to be the singular ''there'' of an ownmost way of wording that is of making and/or opening onto a totality of sense. In sum, the da of sein is its exposition. Therefore,one can say Dasein is a singular, unique possibility of making/letting an ownmost sense of the world and/or the world of an ownmost sense open itself. This sense has as an essential property; its ultimate sense in its own suppression. Death,or the cessation of this da, means as well that the da does not open onto anything but its own opening. To assume this horizon, which is precisely not a horizon, to assume the finite
horos of an infinite apeiron , is exactly what is at stake in Dasein's Being at stake.In sum,is it the making mine of that which cannot be mine,or the letting myself be disappropriated at and from the fullest point of mineness(an inverted version of the Hegelian death)."
- Nancy, Jean-Luc - The being-with of being-there
Moreover, Dasein is essentially Mitdasein. This means that Mitsein is essential to Dasein : it is a Being-with unlike the putting together of things, but an essential with , intrinsic to Dasein's own Being..
That Dasein is also and essentially Mitdasein ensconces the relationship between Master and slave with the there of the Master's da. Since the Master opens that world and invites the slave to be an integral part of it, joining their own da, their being, or in Nietszche's term, their will, to that of the Master, Mitdasein provides the shared space, meaning, and equipmental totality that allows both the Master and slave to "be" in an appropriate place and manner.
Discourse of Mastery and Unlimited Responsibility
"
Unlimited responsibility is both a theme that pervades the space of intersection in which
Heidegger and his best readers meet, and also the challenge that Heidegger offers us in reading him. Heidegger is one of 'the few and the rare' who set a standard by which even those who disagree with him may be judged.
"
David Wood, Thinking After Heidegger.
One of the things that caught my attention in reading this book was it's wariness of anything that might resemble a "discourse of mastery". It interested me because, in my terms, vom Ereignis could be translated as "from Mastery", as much as "from Enowning" or "from the Event of Appropriation". Heidegger does certainly mean the term in multvalent ways, but the intersection of mastery, particularly the discourse of mastery, with unlimited responsibility seems like an appropriate place to begin
What, fundamentally, is wrong with a discourse of mastery? Mastery involves many things, not the least mastery-over in the sense of over another. This is where, I believe, mastery becomes problematic in a postmodern scenario. Mastery over another without their choosing is the real issue, rather than mastery over another in general. Without a common goal the postmodern situation is indeed an-archic, and this an-arche can and should precede any defined and chosen arche, or goal (telos). So a discourse of mastery that doesn't accept its own limitations and does not choose its own field of endeavour is precisely to be avoided. In other words, WIITWD is solely and simply for us meaning myself, mitda, and emmie, and any discourse that comes out of it can only be judged as it applies to our situation. Applying it elsewhere is to be done at the reader's peril and only to the degree that it resonates with the reader's own state of being.
Unlimited responsibility, then, is itself a chosen situation, or a decided event. Why would a master choose to be a Master, if it implies unlimited responsibility? Because that responsibility is the appropriate response to his/her slave's giving up their self-ownership. Dasein (human being-there) is always, in the first instance, mine to each individual. Only in that situation of personal freedom can a truly consensual giving up of freedom occur. Only to the degree that my slaves were their own persons can they give up that ownership, in which they enown their Master to mastery in the first place. And only in a situation of personal freedom can the Master enslave the slave and take ownership of his/her being-there. This is the foundation of our Mitdasein (being-there-with) in which we choose and have chosen to exist. From the beginning this unlimited responsibility was the focus of my longing, the prize for which I endeavoured to become who I am. I didn't 'accept' unlimited responsibility 'in return for' my slaves' being-there, I responded to their giving of their dasein with the willful and appropriate response of appropriating their responsibility in an unlimited manner.
