Today’s Zeitenwende from Kant to Nietzsche
I always felt that I am living during a Zeitenwende. The German word stands for a change in times, a period when huge shifts happen in all fields that concern a society — social norms, economy, technology, arts, everything is changed during a Zeitenwende.
I saw changes in technology happening with the advent of computers for all in the 1980s and then the internet in the 1990s. I saw the fall of the Berlin Wall in what looked like the victory of freedom over socialism and market economy over central planning to a 20 year old born and raised in that very city at the forefront of the Cold War. I heard how Techno music turned from a fad to a lasting musical influence with one million people dancing through the center district of my city. I saw a cultural conflict between the West and nations influenced by Islam break out and turn violent.
I could not put into words this Zeitenwende, could not describe it until I read newspaper articles and comments in the last days before the Brexit-Vote, the EU Referendum in the United Kingdom. Now I can put it into words (well, let’s say: I believe, I can ;-) ).
KANT
For in so many of these articles the authors wrote how a Brexit, how leaving the EU, would be a decision without reason, with no consciousness. And while one can find millions of reasons to claim that people are stupid or primitive or whatsoever, I am unwilling to accept that people take decisions on the future of their nation lightly, especially if it is one with such a unique role in the recent history of mankind!
For reason can be found in decisions taken which seem to lack reason. It is the way one does approach the search for reason which dictates if and which reason can be found. And as a German I equal any reasoning about reason with Kant!
For me, Kant stands for reason and the ability to practice ambivalence where reason lays the foundation for doing so. Accepting that 51.89 percent of voters do not fall into the category of being mentally insane and thus unable to reason, there has to be a cause, a reasonable cause why people did chose a Brexit.
While the cultural conflict between the West (culturally based on Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment and Modernity) and Islam (not subject to any of these culturally fundamental periods) can be indeed broken down to different levels of reasoning and a lack of ambivalence in the latter culture, most changes, conflicts and occurrences within the Western hemisphere do not fall into this category.
And while of course Kant is taught to little, everything being taught post Kant is including his train of thought. The rational, the critique, the reasoning is there somehow. It may not be fully developed in all, but it is not absent, as it is in public life in societies and nations never subject to Enlightenment.
And while on a subjective and personal angle of view a decision like the Brexit may lack reason, the same may be said from the single point of view by someone who sees no reason, no reasoning in any decision or conviction to stay in the EU! While opposing positions are something we have to live with in western societies, the tendency to abuse Kant, to abuse morals and ethics to put once angle of view above that of someone else citing reason is dangerous and - in the most narrow sense of the word - fascist. In any case it is definitely lacking ambivalence, however also here not without cause, not for occurrences accessible to reason.
NIETZSCHE
The cause we may — without reason — find in nature, in our nature, in the way who and what we are beyond reason. I can not tell if this side to us has always been there or if it is nurtured by and growing out of reason. But as a German I put living, feeling, acting, put “being” in the purest sense of being equal to Nietzsche.
Supposedly he advised people not to think too much. Over-reasoning just as over-ambivalence indeed seems to lack reason. Probably reasoning needs internal breaks or rather acceleration when reasoning puts breaks on doing. Just entrust the foundation of everything we find in and around us! If not for a lack of reason, why do people who cannot swim into water and save the lives of drowning people?
Here some of Nietzsche reflects in start-ups in Silicon Valley and the idea of a agile development, where your focus is on doing and not do much on first and foremost going down to the reason of things. While doing so would save some lessons learned and train people in developing reason and improving reasoning, it would keep them from experiencing the direct contact with whatever is the underlying nature of the things they involve with.
In this a serial entrepreneur is a serial diver into the underlying nature of things from the economical perspective on things and those successful there going into philanthropy may be seen as serial social divers towards the underlying from a social or human perspective.
With all land taken, grabbing what is there intellectually spurs today’s passion for life. IT, AI, robotics, information theory. They are not so much accessible through reason but through working with life, hacking life, hacking the body, not reasoning it. That is the true revolution caused by the advent of computer technology. And this all is Nietzsche.
Yes, cynics may hint at him having turned insane in life — at least to some degree. Well, isn’t it that more people seem to act without reason and insane? From shooting at others to bombing them, to drive over them at will: Don’t we feel like we witness a lack of reason in people’s behavior? Don’t we wish sometimes that who kills somebody at will would first reason about their desire, understand cause and effect and find a morally and ethically prosperous answer, an answer other than killing, one enriching him/her and saving others?
ZEITENWENDE
Of course my contribution here does not meet the standards of an academic analysis, of a profound philosophical study and neither can it withstand any falsification attempt (Popper).
Still it is where we are in my option!
We are leaving, in this very moment, the age of reason and reasoning which brought us so far for so good. We go for the new, for the unknown. We choose the danger of failing going for new horizons within our being whilst hoping for the beyond.
In the Brexit vote 51.89 percent of voters ignored what they were told about inflation, job losses, higher taxes, loss of income, recession, trade deficits, loss of national security, loss of international influence, about the upcoming meaninglessness of their country, which only 100 years ago reigned over the larger part of this planet!
They chose the unknown, the evident danger in the face of what was at least looking like reasonable arguments by those in favour of staying in the EU. This is contrary to the behavior of any democratic nation state so far. People usually defend at all costs what they have. Here a nation puts all it has up to coming challenges — challenges unknown to the people even more unknown than those a start-up entrepreneur faces.
BREXIT is the first time in history that an electorate chose the path of an entrepreneur in the sense of Tom Peters, who stated that in order to succeed in the future, one has to tear down what made the past prosperous. The British people wish to engineer and re-engineer themselves under the unknown circumstances yet to come, circumstances which most are unforeseeable in a globalised world (as would many things have been unforeseeable in case of remaining in the EU; just think of a military confrontation between Asia and China ).
Maybe it is the Adam Smith gene of liberslism in their cultural genes that made the people of England and Wales vote to exit the EU, while the more socialist Scots and the largely Catholic Northern Irish voted for the status quo of remaining.
In all cases, the future is an empty piece of paper written upon by all. While past centuries saw kings, queens and dictators lead the way or politicians in recent days, with the BREXIT people have made a collective choice beyond Kant and philosophically in line with Nietzsche!
Their success will be the success of all mankind. Or as Sir Winston Churchill once put it: There is a different destiny awaiting Britain than the rest of Europe. Leading the way in a profound cultural Zeitenwende is indeed a very different destiny. It is like Italy once at will having chosen to bear Renaissance or a large part of Germans to turn their back on the Catholic church rather than following Martin Luther, the one man at the head of the movement.
While we as mankind had too little teaching of Kant in life, we already embarked onto anew ship. And yes, I think we probably switched the train of thought too early. But as it happens we have to face the fact, that things can not be stopped.
So our post Enlightenment world faces one where Kant would have been prohibited. A world without reason (as viewed by Kant) meeting one which is dropping out of it for the wild seas of whatever it will find. It sounds to me, that we in the West better find a way to unite Kant and Nietzsche in a way or another for the better of our own advancement!
Until then: Welcome to the doorsteps of a New Age opening up to us during this Zeitenwende! I have no idea how this plant will look like at the end of it, nor how history 300 to 500 years down the road will call today. Only one thing I am sure of: Things will be accompanied by a lot of collateral damage — as always. Humans just lack the reason to do things differently or probably we can’t!
