I love
Miguel de Unamuno, because he cleanly and elegantly expresses some ideas pretty
core to my own worldview. “Whoever . . .
thinks he bases his conduct . . . on a dogma or theoretical principle which he
deems incontrovertible, runs the risk of becoming a fanatic; moreover, the
moment this dogma shows . . . any weakness, he finds the morality based on it
giving way” (Solomon, 158). What I can
say but that I agree? In my estimation,
any ideology expressed in its extreme tends toward nonsense at best and
atrocity at worst. Utter certitude,
indubitable justification—these are false gods, false lights, their illusory
aegis used to justify behavior running against the basics of human
decency. Yes, we have, at long last,
drilled down through my intellectual waffling to some of my visceral beliefs. I mistrust zealotry, for I know that even the
most seemingly immovable certainties cannot be proven, but can be overturned; I
think it better to operate contingently, with humility and sentiment, rather
than claiming to have ultimate justification for one’s thoughts, values, or
actions. I care about people—not because
it’s inherently right to do so, for how could I prove or demonstrate that?--but
just because I do. I like humans, due to
biology, or acculturation, or some combination of those two factors. Really, it doesn’t really matter why. It’s what I’m going to do, and there’s not
much I can do about it, “justified” or no.
I do
believe that systems of morality tend to be ex post facto attempts to justify
our actions; mine certainly is. My
morality is almost entirely constructed around identifying the things I already
care about as good, and most of what I already do as okay. I see little evidence of much else in others;
and in true converts to new moralities, I see most commonly aggressive judgment
and patronization. I mistrust anything
that leads someone to hold their own cares, values, actions, ideas, or self
above another; I see this as the path to dehumanizing others, to refusal of
empathy, to judgment, and to cruelty. Who am I do say what someone else does is
wrong in some universal sense? I will
fight action and happenings that threaten the things I care about, but I won’t
claim to be any better or worse than anyone else for doing so, won’t claim to
be somehow inherently right. That’s
imperialism, paternalism, Kipling with the White Man’s Burden. “I’m better than you, my way of living is
more correct than yours, so you should be like me.” I find it revolting, arrogant beyond measure,
pretending to some god’s-eye understanding of an inscrutable and indifferent
universe. And again, I’m not inherently
right to feel that; but it’s how I feel, and it’s what I’m going to act on.
This might
sound a bit hypocritical. I know I’m
prone to grand, generalizing statements about the nature of the universe, even
if the statement is “Nobody can really know anything about the universe.” Perhaps I fear and mistrust arrogance because
I am arrogant, after my own fashion. This
is a quiet mood, a soft one, at odds, perhaps, with the persona I live in hopes
of provoking discussion. A moderate
mood, rather than one to indulge the high flights of my more ridiculous ideas. I am a creature “of opposites . . . of
contradiction and quarrel . . . a man who says one thing with his heart and the
opposite with his head” (Solomon, 157). You see why I cling to Unamuno, how I use him
to validate myself? I’m not the epitome
of what I value, not of any of the contradictory, incommensurable things I care
about. I do not agree with myself, as, I
think, is best. Should I ever convince
myself to fully believe, without doubt or reservation, in a program (even that
of radical relativism), I fear I should be obliged to atrocity or apathy.
I’ve
mumbled long enough already, so I’ll keep my thoughts on Heidegger brief; but,
in short, I’m not convinced that his insights require his ontology, nor that
they can even be generated within it. I’ll
not pretend to fully understand him—for instance, I’m not sure whether he’s
making a claim to absolute truth, a rather important question, in my scheme—but
it seems to me that a construction of groupthink and abdication of agency to
the overarching “they” requires assumption of rather more than just the
self-reflective individual. Nor do I see
why agency should be more authentic than conformity, nor why angst and anxiety should
reveal it. It seems tautological, I suppose,
to propose that one is all of one’s possibilities and then conclude that
denying them is inauthentic; nor do I find it sensible to reject ideation of
multiple worlds and then claim that authenticity is existing in more than the present
one. Perhaps I’m just blinded by the writing
style, but for now, I’m just unsure of the utility of Heidegger’s ontology. Does it allow us to understand ourselves and
one another better? It hasn’t revealed
anything so far that can’t be reached more easily from elsewhere.
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