When most people think of virtue, the think — with Kant — of a burdensome duty. But the true cynic virtue is joy, the joy of resistance.
In the beginning are the objects. They give us pleasure and resist us at the same time.
The German word for object (“Gegenstand“), is a synonym for resistance (“Widerstand”). But also the Latin origin for a thing, an object, literally means that which is thrown against us. And also the original meaning of thing means an assembly of armed opponents, but who do not make use of their weapons.
Anyone, I guess, who has experienced deep blue while diving will never forget the shock for the rest of their life. For me, at least, it was the greatest horror of my life: While diving in the Red Sea in Egypt, I lost all reference point for a moment: When I looked up, all I saw was blue. I was too deep to see the surface. And a look down: the absolute blue void, no ground in sight. And my field of vision straight ahead was also completely devoid of any object for a moment, no fish, nothing, just the deep blue. Within the fraction of a second, I lost all orientation, all grip. Where was above, where below? Total loneliness. More in a stagger, I involuntarily turned back and saw the coral reef saving my soul and the other divers of my group.
My heart beats faster even now, years later, when I recall this experience. We need objects that resist us, like the air we breathe.
We are not made to live in Cockaigne
The first object of the infant is the mother, or her bosom. As seductive as it is, the mother’s breast is also not a symbol of the Cockaigne , where everything can be had without any effort. Already as babies we have to fight for our mother’s milk, we have to conquer the breast, which also withdraws from us again and again.
Life is from the beginning war and will to might. We could not survive an “eternal peace”, like the deep blue. We are not created for the Cockaigne, we are created for war. Because that is war: the eternal will to might, the eternal process of growth, of self-assertion in a world full of resistance to this very self-actualization. The pleasure of the struggle for this self-realization, the overcoming of resistance within us and outside us, that is parrhesia, the only, the great, the beautiful virtue of the Cynics.
The world is not evil, but a challenge
While still with Thomas Aquinas ethics ultimately served the achievement of eudaimonnia, in modern times, especially with the German philosopher Kant, it has degenerated into a fight against evil. For Kant, the natural world is the realm of evil. And man must therefore constantly fight against this evil, which also corresponds to his own nature.
Kant also degenerated the concept of virtue into a constant duty devoid of joy and happiness. As with Hobbes, man in the state of nature is also defenselessly at the mercy of evil.
Now, further, just as the state of lawless external (brutal) liberty and independence of coercive laws is a state of injustice and war of everyone against everyone, from which man is to go out in order to enter into a political-civil one, so the ethical state of nature is a public mutual feud of the principles of virtue and a state of internal immorality, from which the natural man, as soon as possible, is to endeavor to come out.
Kant, Religion within the Limits of Bare Reason (quoted from German edition, p. 118, the link to the english edition did not work when creating this text).
With Kant, we cannot escape the realm of darkness; we can only constantly fight against the evil within us. It is easy to understand that this Kantian concept of virtue is exactly the opposite of parrhesia, the cynical virtue. We want to realize, not improve, our self. With Kant, we have to suppress it for a lifetime.
Read on: Refuse self-improvement
Nothing is free, least of all happiness
Having this knowledge is not enough for a good life. Pessimists like Schopenhauer despair of it and it leads them to think that it would be better not to be born. For a good life it is necessary to love the resistances while overcoming them, “the feeling of power growing, – of a resistance being overcome. Not satisfaction, but more power; not peace at all, but war”, says Nietzsche.1NF-1887,11[414]
And it is not only the objects that want to elude us that challenge our will to might. It is equally the seductions that are presented to us as seemingly free.
In The Odyssey by Homer Circe transforms the companions of Odysseus, who blindly succumb to her power of seduction, into pigs. Today, we just as aptly call those who blindly trust the electoral gifts of the states and free offers from Google etc. sheeple.
All vulgarity is based on the inability to resist a stimulus.
[Nietzsche, GD § 6]
The ability to resist is not to be confused with the dull apparent willpower of the jaded slave who no longer notices anything or the overconfidence of the loser. So I only managed to get away from my nicotine addiction when I realized (as with the Alcoholics Anonymous rules) that I was not strong enough to simply say “no” to the next cigarette in any situation. Once I confessed this weakness,I could, for example, literally run away when a situation became too dicey for me.
And even today, I don’t hate the smell of fresh tobacco smoke, nor do I hate smokers. I am even happy when people smoke near me. Meanwhile, I also enjoy being able to resist the still present desire to light up a cigarette myself.
One does not have to become callous, to reject all inclinations, in order to lead a good life, as it would correspond to Kant’s ethics. Nor does one have to always choose only the middle way, as according to Aristotle’s misunderstood ethics, and reject all excess.
Parrhesia, that is, The Will to Might, as the joy in the constant development of virtue in the Joy of Resistance, is definitely also the will to danger, the will to romantic ecstasy. If we have to let ourselves be tied up for this, like Odysseus, then this is in no way unworthy; on the contrary.
Parrhesia: a Virtue not about moral at all
I tried to make virtue palatable to you after the moralists managed to deprive most of the joy in it by re-evaluating virtue as a burdensome moral duty. Not only does virtue give you joy as a goal, even while you are practicing virtue, it must be joyful. Otherwise, you are doing something wrong! Do not forget this.
- 1NF-1887,11[414]