Nature and Will
It is interesting that the question of will becomes so prominent in the very era that it disappears. Is this not the very reason for the end of the monarch? His will can no longer hold power, just as we can only imagine describing our laws of violence and power to alien beings visiting our world. This says something of our natural instincts when they must be adorned with such intricacies and abstractions - romanticism as the death of morality, but also its last festival.
Also interesting is that de Maistre can clearly see the inability of the savage to appreciate civilised finery, and yet he cannot make the simple connection that the modern state does not repeat the intricacies of Roman law - specifically the code of the stick - because it too is savage. He lacks the subtle perception of Rousseau even as he mocks him. More clearly, de Maistre cannot imagine that the delicately clothed monarch and aristocrat of the modern era would appear the fool to monarchs of other eras. Such a man must be armoured in his own refined tastes from head to toe: his stockings, silk cape, corset and permanent wig deny the very being of nature. The decadence of city walls infiltrates the physiognomy of man. Stand this man next to the Roman in his toga and the laurel appears as punishment all on its own, only in an opposed manner to de Maistre's desired laws. Such differences are even greater than that which separates the noble and the savage.
The simple question, why does the Christian hold such hatred for his ancestors, the first beings of this world? There is in this a history of self-masochism, and it lacks the duality of stories of the Golden-souled beings who once lived in idyllic forests, passed on by the Greeks and others. In this Rousseau's subtlety once again shines through, while de Maistre's own savagery limits him to his age.
Savagery and nobility is a mark of character, what is taken from man through his will to civilisation is a natural freedom to which no law can ever become sovereign. For civilisation is also an end to will, and as clumsy as the liberal philosophies of law and state were, they approach a truth that all the conservatives have never been able to reconcile. The savage turns away from civilisation to his own because they are of different worlds. The Christian too can only see his own world, and so too turns away from what is offered him - the civilised and the savage are one. In this the profanity of the humanist sees beyond the moral will of the Christian. Punishment of the other must be combined with his own elimination - execution until he becomes the last man standing. Thus too all opposed nobility, which is nothing other than an object of nature.
De Maistre asks another strange question in this, even as he heralds the willless nature of war (we won't say that he'd ever frame it in such terms), and the state's cowering before much simpler problems: he questions why the state has not mirrored the presence of the individual. The state itself has entered a state of nature, a realisation that he almost stumbles upon but fails to notice. Instead he admonishes the foolish theory of the state of nature while demanding that the state replace the individual as its subject of law. This is, of course, a hardening of the mythic nature at humanism's core and can only result in a brutal end to the state within the society of nations. The Burning Legions give way to the legions of atheists, even become their forward units, as the Thirty Years War revealed. God becomes impossible in a foxhole, or at least his religion is sacrificed to the soldier's basic survival. Thus his being hung from the endless trees of the world.
De Maistre asks another strange question in this, even as he heralds the willless nature of war (we won't say that he'd ever frame it in such terms), and the state's cowering before much simpler problems: he questions why the state has not mirrored the presence of the individual. The state itself has entered a state of nature, a realisation that he almost stumbles upon but fails to notice. Instead he admonishes the foolish theory of the state of nature while demanding that the state replace the individual as its subject of law. This is, of course, a hardening of the mythic nature at humanism's core and can only result in a brutal end to the state within the society of nations. The Burning Legions give way to the legions of atheists, even become their forward units, as the Thirty Years War revealed. God becomes impossible in a foxhole, or at least his religion is sacrificed to the soldier's basic survival. Thus his being hung from the endless trees of the world.
For de Maistre, war is divine because its end is divine, all outcomes are the law and morality of divine providence. A state and its people are gutted because it is the will of god, the blood of the earth is merely the occasion of heaven; the worm, the robin, the eagle, man, and God are one. But only through the will of God do they exist, and may the blood be washed away through him to which all else is nothing. A powerful position, yet devastating and completely self-destructive, contradictory to even its own internal logic. It holds nothing, and in it the laws of morality and religion give way to the processes of the mundane and technical. In form it is without will or essence, morality appears as machine-like necessity and the Christian becomes servant to his dying nation. He who sees certainty, and his religion which is nothing more than the devouring of all other religions. One need only imagine the Christian qualities of the Russian peasant pressing forwards against the machine gun - the victory of imagination. Hence the romantic qualities which must be attributed to all of the self-sacrifices that would otherwise be forgotten; and hence the laws of nature which must be hardened to appear as warlike and eternal for a figure of man lost to all of nature. Mechanical time becomes the triumph over the will of death, which in turn becomes total. Divine nature demands its greatest sacrifice, approaching by the turn of hours and seconds.
In this is revealed the extent to which the Christian relies on the ancestors it repudiates - a religion of patricide in law rather than myth, and perhaps the source of its self-masochism and devouring qualities. Saturn-like in its human moralising. Also in this, the very contradiction of the modern period can be understood as the failure of the Katechon against laws of time, demanding ever more of the material world what may never fall from heaven. And so all ages become lost, all men the caricatures of their fabled warnings. Death may only struggle against itself, as nature too must feed upon its carrion and be given rebirth into divine form.
In this is revealed the extent to which the Christian relies on the ancestors it repudiates - a religion of patricide in law rather than myth, and perhaps the source of its self-masochism and devouring qualities. Saturn-like in its human moralising. Also in this, the very contradiction of the modern period can be understood as the failure of the Katechon against laws of time, demanding ever more of the material world what may never fall from heaven. And so all ages become lost, all men the caricatures of their fabled warnings. Death may only struggle against itself, as nature too must feed upon its carrion and be given rebirth into divine form.
Perhaps the tale of the werewolf is revealing here: he whose appetite can never be satisfied; he who must devour the vitality of lost youth; he to whom no sacrifices can be made. The absolute return of man to nature, the myth of Actaeon in a peasant song. There is power in the tale, but only as it is enslaved to another world, an unknown sovereign law. The monstrous thus appears as the rightful heir to the fallen angel, he for whom only primordial wealth will suffice. Christianity loses its own being in such a world, gives way to the earthly forces, that which resides beneath it and presses the Christian to his vice. He who has become the bestial politician sides with the peasant, but mostly his death within brutal nature. He who is without decision and will, yet writes them as tales of war in themselves. One can thus see the proximity of modern masters to old world slaves, and the living death of noble character. The realpolitik of Chiron-figures gives way to the bestial character of which it was but a means. The monarch continues his existence only through lycanthropy, and even the divine renounces the silver gown for youthful blood.
The necessity of sacrifice returns along with the duality of material qualities. Tyr's hand in the grips of the world's end. Nothing worldly will suffice in this, this is written into the necessity of the tale, and yet it is all we see. Decision cuts out from the world its moral qualities - but the moral is not of its own world, not a dominion in itself. Opposed to morality the decision completely lacking in certainty. Between the youthful blood and the werewolf.
https://youtu.be/Lv8nz1BWetE
The necessity of sacrifice returns along with the duality of material qualities. Tyr's hand in the grips of the world's end. Nothing worldly will suffice in this, this is written into the necessity of the tale, and yet it is all we see. Decision cuts out from the world its moral qualities - but the moral is not of its own world, not a dominion in itself. Opposed to morality the decision completely lacking in certainty. Between the youthful blood and the werewolf.
https://youtu.be/Lv8nz1BWetE
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Conversational Note
Yes, but I don't mean it so literally. We are discussing the politics of de Maistre and Nietzsche in relation to nature, so the Darwinist evolutionary theory in its mistaken form is a bit of shorthand. Of course, the valueless theory - which in its form is the same as that of the separation of powers necessary for freedom of speech - is even more apt and self-destructive.
The most basic question at the center of this is, What is Nature? This question becomes difficult once we realise the unwillingness to consider it in its nontechnical form, hence the various objections to what I have said which are simply in regards to the technical approach rather than the essence of what was said. Whether this misunderstanding is intentional or not is of no concern here, as the mistake can be even more revealing.
I would prefer to speak of evolution in general rather than any of its specific types, it is simply interesting the extent to which de Maistre and Nietzsche had theories of nature and power that are effectively one, all while coming from a Christian and anti-Christian position respectively. One would think that they would be opposed, but not only are they equal, apart from inessentials, the two ideas are formed within the abstraction of nature of the age. They share its force, even if their authors would claim to be opposed to the nihilism and atheism of the age. They are both as lost as Simplicissimus and his Father in the forest. The world goes on without them, even if they catch glimpses of its changing. And their virtue may only increase next to its isolation beneath vice, increasing in force like a machine in the final press of its product - the world of morality gives way to the technical.
The most basic question at the center of this is, What is Nature? This question becomes difficult once we realise the unwillingness to consider it in its nontechnical form, hence the various objections to what I have said which are simply in regards to the technical approach rather than the essence of what was said. Whether this misunderstanding is intentional or not is of no concern here, as the mistake can be even more revealing.
I would prefer to speak of evolution in general rather than any of its specific types, it is simply interesting the extent to which de Maistre and Nietzsche had theories of nature and power that are effectively one, all while coming from a Christian and anti-Christian position respectively. One would think that they would be opposed, but not only are they equal, apart from inessentials, the two ideas are formed within the abstraction of nature of the age. They share its force, even if their authors would claim to be opposed to the nihilism and atheism of the age. They are both as lost as Simplicissimus and his Father in the forest. The world goes on without them, even if they catch glimpses of its changing. And their virtue may only increase next to its isolation beneath vice, increasing in force like a machine in the final press of its product - the world of morality gives way to the technical.
Another idea of nature is lost to us, but is worth mentioning as it begins to form once again. The simple dominion of Artemis and Actaeon; the youthful blood and the werewolf; or Fenrir's biting grip upon the world in its end. This is the dominion of nature where all the differences between creatures and their types disappear, or even become one. This is not only a descriptive difference, it affects our very relation to nature and earth forces. The evolutionary theory is one without end, the taxonomical system must be complete and become a world all its own - both for the vital extraction and refinement of materials and the survival of its life in its own territory.
This is the contradiction at the heart of technical nature, and we can look to Darwin's own theory to further explore this. He does not begin from such a position, rather he looks to the idyllic exception of nature, that which has survived the brutal war of nature. In one sense, a break from the modern conception of nature occurs; in another, the technician brutalizes the romanticist politic and returns him to the state of nature. Man disappears from the picture even as he is its heart - another of the great paradoxes of the secular world.
Darwin's Galapagos is the state of nature to the society of nations - the idyllic to be carved out into the future where the technician leverages the world without need of refinement and death. It is also the force at the horizon of Westphalia which drains upon conservative theories of war. De Maistre imagines the will overcoming even material war and the triumphant return of authority, missing that the theory of 360 degrees only makes enemies who encircle one another. Hubris against nature does not differentiate, neither the Christian nor the Atheist hold a taxonomy. They are one, lost to the hidden world where the huldra seduces the creation of God.
This is the contradiction at the heart of technical nature, and we can look to Darwin's own theory to further explore this. He does not begin from such a position, rather he looks to the idyllic exception of nature, that which has survived the brutal war of nature. In one sense, a break from the modern conception of nature occurs; in another, the technician brutalizes the romanticist politic and returns him to the state of nature. Man disappears from the picture even as he is its heart - another of the great paradoxes of the secular world.
Darwin's Galapagos is the state of nature to the society of nations - the idyllic to be carved out into the future where the technician leverages the world without need of refinement and death. It is also the force at the horizon of Westphalia which drains upon conservative theories of war. De Maistre imagines the will overcoming even material war and the triumphant return of authority, missing that the theory of 360 degrees only makes enemies who encircle one another. Hubris against nature does not differentiate, neither the Christian nor the Atheist hold a taxonomy. They are one, lost to the hidden world where the huldra seduces the creation of God.
Technical nature is no different from Christian moral authority, Nietzsche's power, liberal freedom of speech, Kantian duty, de Maistre's legitimate usurpation, scientific analysis. They are one, good in themselves and free from all constraint. For where the valueless reigns one approaches the being of nature - at least in one of its instances and taxonomies. The world is open to any possibility.
De Maistre's nature is thus formed of necessity, a Christianised theory of the earth which must give way to its own forces - increasing its religious power where its essence has been lost. This is where valueless power takes up its form - and even value - where morality loses its sense of dominion and becomes nothing more than a technical instrument or bare sense of duty. The romantic is injected into the refined product to give it a vital shell, a container. The paradoxical and contradictory become the only dominion. The Christian seeks return to all that his religion had plundered, the triumph over death seeks the nature of desecrated statues, monuments, and temples. A festival of those who are total instruments of power, but a form of power complete in its being equally lost to us.
https://youtu.be/RUlaiQc9Vpg
De Maistre's nature is thus formed of necessity, a Christianised theory of the earth which must give way to its own forces - increasing its religious power where its essence has been lost. This is where valueless power takes up its form - and even value - where morality loses its sense of dominion and becomes nothing more than a technical instrument or bare sense of duty. The romantic is injected into the refined product to give it a vital shell, a container. The paradoxical and contradictory become the only dominion. The Christian seeks return to all that his religion had plundered, the triumph over death seeks the nature of desecrated statues, monuments, and temples. A festival of those who are total instruments of power, but a form of power complete in its being equally lost to us.
https://youtu.be/RUlaiQc9Vpg
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