Topic: 13. RACE: PHILOSOPHIZING WITH A BIG STICK
Race is pure becoming. Nietzsche said, "Man is something that shall be overcome." Race in these terms is that process of transcendence of the species, Nietzsche's "arrow longing for the other shore." We shall not let our discussion degenerate, hopefully, into Nietzschian literary mush. We are saying simply that the human species as it presently exists, in its various forms and shapes, will disappear and be replaced by some new species. This, looking at the record of other species, can be our only conclusion. We may further say that human beings and humanity are only a small moment in the biological process. I am not going to concern myself here with the form or forms, whatever they may be--white or African or whatever--that will replace humanity; the only interest presently is in the process wherein this transformation takes place. Race, as an activity within what is otherwise a static form, plays a central role. Yet race, stigmatized by philosophers as somehow "anti-species" and "immoral," is widely seen by governments and institutions--which as I will show are formed around species as opposed to race--as in some way inimical to "humanity." But the species supports society; and, as the dialectical negation of species, race subverts society. I will show that the relation between race and species is one of (Hegelian) dialectical opposition and self-transcendence. A certain amount of exposition is needed to make this point clear.
Our discussion does not concern, say, what white traits are vis-a-vis black people. Science of any kind is really not my strong point. I generally accept the conclusions of what is called scientific racism as contributing positively to ideas of a future society in which white people can be secure. There is little more to say on this subject than this. But there is much more thinking that has to go into the word--the word and nothing more--race. As per the statement of the American Anthropological Society, "race does not exist." What the anthropologists are saying is that the phenomena attributed to "race" do not exist; they are a phantasm of someone's imagination. I would say that the anthropologists are within their rights to this extent: whether earth is surrounded by space aliens is, or should be, an issue of ascertainable fact. We can look and try to find these aliens; but if we cannot find them, we may just as well assume they don't exist. This would be our legitimate conclusion. And there are experts on issues of outer space who can help us find the truth. But we are not talking about such space aliens in the case of "race," we are talking about the legitimate place of a word--here, race--in the English language. I have called the word race "heavy with Being," to use Heidegger's phrase. The word race has a very general meaning that goes far beyond its particular limited reference to, say, black and white people. The word race means "root." Also it means "source of one's being." These meanings are tracable throughout the Indo-European language family--and beyond. Thus when I talk about race in this blog I am not going to quibble over who is smarter, white or black people, but rather the subject will be the importance of a word, here race, and all the meanings that inhere in this word. Race is fundamental, not so much society--which as an abstract-technical mode of human relationship is structurally and philosophically categorically opposed to race--but to philosophy. Theory is what interests us here.
Race is changing the species, not vice versa. Race in these terms is the creative principle within the species, which, as a distinct form in nature, that is in a certain balance or statis quo with other species. What justifies racial thinking, then, or so-called racism, is not any reference to specific traits or qualities of this people as opposed to that, but is in the recognition that it is through race that the species as a dead thing is transcended. I have tried so far to indicate how species can be thought of. Species is an entity that is "finished" and fulfilled in itself, in a so-called balance with nature. This we have already said. Race as a process, on the other hand, upsets these "balanced" relationships with other species and with nature in general. Within the species there is a process biologists call mutation; this is a random thing. Through race, as a process, these mutations are formed into a new entity within the species that will overwhelm the species simply, and subvert its established form. Among humans, for example, in Brazil white genes are crowding out African ones so that the whole Brazilian race is changing; these changes produce further changes. We can go on to suggest that the transformations of race upset the balance between the species and society. Society is based upon adaptations of the species, not with the creativity and change of race. It is not extreme to say that race is inherently confrontational, combative, "revolutionary," and in a struggle for survival within the more general challenge that faces the species. Race is more creative and imaginative, however, in this struggle than is the species. As I say, the species endures within nature; the race on the other hand subverts and creates at the same time. What is a tested strategy the race undermines and destroys
There is truth in this concept: that the race--the very fact that it exists--spells the demise of the species as a whole. Race generates within the species new forms inconsistent with the outward form of the species in general. The species changes through the race to become something other than what it, the species, was. This is the death of the species, while, on the other hand, the race is in essence change itself and therefore always lives. There are social issues. Society is a fixed concept that bases itself on another fixed concept, the species. A species, as a genetic and behavioral isolate, draws nothing new into itself and so cannot in this way change. A society will include the fixed concept--fixed in genetics and codified by moral and legal philosophy--"humanity" and so is threatened by whatever appears that is not humanity. A species does not so much change itself as it is changed from something within it.
Yet moral and ethical philosophers direct our attention to this entity, species, as though there is something ethically relevant about being "human." It would be helpful here to trace the genesis of the concept of "mankind" as basic to world philosophy. One hears the phrase "We are all human beings." This way of thinking needs to be scrutinized, which we will do here. The species, because it has become, is veritably a dead thing. The species in itself is a finished thing in the two senses of the word finished: something complete and something at its end. [Compare Spengler: analogy of an organism.] All species by themselves are per se decadent, simply by virtue of the fact that they are finished. And what is of or pertains to the species in the individual person is decadent. It is precisely through the species that the individual dies. The species is an entity outlined by academic taxonomists. Thus to say that an individual person is a human being is to refer to what is already dead in him; that which, in the words of Nietzsche, is to be surpassed. Through the species the individual dies; through the race he lives. There is little more that we need to say on the issue of the species, human or otherwise. Race in this context on the other hand is an active, vital process.
The species simply provides the miscelaneous and diverse materials that the race has to work with. In these terms the species is simply there, in its diverse forms, as various possibilities and various avenues of development. Race then is the biological activity itself--the engine or motive energy--wherein these diverse materials, that as I say are already there, are shaped into something meaningful and vital. I was talking earlier about the relationship between the species as conceived by taxonomists and by moral philosophers: together they come up with the concept of "humanity." What is suggested in this collusion is that there is something "moral" about the human species. That is, that just by virtue of being a member of a species one has something of "value." Hence the "human race" is an entity that "should" be affirmed, insofar as it is within the human capacity to uphold anything. Social institutions are built, as per the documents--the sacred writings--set forth, upon the idea of "humanity." Just the very words "men" and "man" in documents such as the American Constitution suggest moralism as opposed to science. The species is a record of past effort and in that sense supposed to beworthy of admiration, much like old objects in a museum. In the public mind and among laypeople the concepts of "man" as a biological species and as an entity with special inherent "value" are confused.
"Man" as a static entity, describable and therefore presentable as a definite biological entity, has a certain "social" validity that the race concept does not have. I have already talked about agreements--this was a major part of the early blog--as an attempt by persons to "fix" their relationships; while society meanwhile is simply the total of these agreements. Agreements come and go; but the human being focuses upon what is permanent and "eternal" and consistent with the mentality of agreements. Later I will try more seriously to connect the elements of man, society, agreements and race. For the moment we can only say that race for its part is dynamic and unfolding; humanity is static and passive. A society based on race would be itself in flux insofar as race is always changing. Race is the very principle itself of biological change. Societies that, as I say, exist base themselves on the species-concept, not the racial idea. The word race is a verb connotating action. For that reason, race for society is inherently destabilizing.
Race is personality. Earlier [cite] I faulted Fascist theory for exhalting personality. The Fascist movement was born out of the personality of a leader--first and foremost Mussolini--but the movement also faded with the death of that leader. Yet always Fascism has focused both upon personality and race. The present writing continues that tradition, with the further observation that race and personality need a much tighter theoretical connection than Fascist theory has yet given them. Theory, such as is presented here, consists of charting the stages wherein, through oppositions, a complete society emerges. The individual entering an agreement--society is little more than many disconnected agreements--is essentially self-ish, that is, focused upon himself. The persons reason for entering an agreement is essentially a personal--in the sense that it is of his personality--reason. The agreement itself, as we have already determined, is self-less. I talked about the human need to abjure weaponry when entering into an agreement; the agreement we are saying is a place of peace. "Leave weapons at the door," is the motto of agreements. It is also correct to say that the agreement opposes the individual and the individual self or personality.
The agreement is the place of entrance wherein the individual passes beyond his individuality and becomes a social being. Earlier I proposed that human beings, by virtue of their symbolic and logical capacity, show distinctive species behavior in opposing existing facts with logical negations of these same facts. Thus the human being will oppose A with not-A when A clearly exists. A does not cease to exist through the logical negation not-A. This human tendency--which is at the root of the categorically impossible social policies that plague human life--carries into human agreements. I have talked about agreements extensively in preceeding sections. Agreements suppress human individual personality; on the other hand agreements prepare the way, finally, for the super-personality, or race. Through the process of agreements, wherein individual persons or personalities are subjected to their own negation, an abstract "legal person" emerges which, in turn, faces himself as he was--a real personality. Here the personality is that of the race, which is the only personality the individual human being has in the face of modern or democratic society. Race is, as I say, personality in the modern world.
Among hunters, because their groups are so small, every person knows every other person as an individual. Every individual has attached to him or her and individual personality. This is obvious; even among small groups within large civilizations there is some sense of the individual personality. As human beings are subjected to the "legal process," however, and enter into any or many of the countless agreements that make up society, this individual personality is effaced both to the larger group and to the individual himself, so far as he thinks of himself. In the face of such a large society every individual personality is seen as somehow anti-social or pathological. It is not too much to say that the definition of psychopathology is the individual personality. Of course there are extreme cases called psychotic; most of us, the present writer included, are simply neurotic. Cricitical allusions to our individual personalities are heard everyday; we never escape hearing about it. Personality itself has become objectionable in the face of the larger groups; that fact--that personality must be hidden--was perhaps the basis among white people for the sudden popularity of fascist ideas, which were accepting of personality--if only in the leader of the people. To this "negative" personality humans in their capacity as humanly social animals oppose the "negation"--the logical opposite--called "the citizen." The citizen is an idea of the Enlightenment. Hegel made the citizen the focal point of this "positive" sociology. The concept of the citizen opposes but does not obviate personality.
It is not that the individual and the group are incompatible, precisely, if we are speaking of a group or pack or flock of animals. It is in the human grouping we've called the agreement that the individual comes to oppose the group and vice versa. This is because the personality of the individual is also his weapon, or an extension of his weapon. The personality of the person is what there is in him that is self-ish, or serving the individual as such (as opposed to the group). We are now beyond talking about weapons as merely physical, non-living and artificial extensions of the power of the limbs of the individual. At this time in our argument we must see weaponry as bound inexorably to the deepest psychology of the individual, as he has evolved over the countless millenia. In the agreement--essentially society--there is the implicit or explicit stipulation that the person within the agreement is not a person in the original sense--as a personality capable of selfishness--but a sort of legal person, defined, in other words, by the terms of the agreement itself.
The opposition of the individual and the social group (constituted through the agreement) is settled by society through the agreement, but not resolved. In opposition to the agreement there is a "larger personality," we are saying--that of the race.
Earlier, and especially in my writing for PhilTalk.de, I talked about race as a subjective presence. In other words, just as there is a form of the body identifiable to taxonomy, that can be classified among other forms, so there is also an internal form of the person that the person can, within himself, experience. My hand has an outline that I can see, visually, as it were from outside, in the same way that any other person can see my hand. But I can experience my hand within. The race has this same internal and external reality. Thus, for instance, I can feel my own race, which is more than than some datum on an animal or plant collector's specimen on his shelf. Personality in these terms we are calling a person's experience of himself. This personality is under continual attack, however, by the needs the person has to adapt to his social setting and to the more or less abstract conditions of practical existence. Here the individual personality is essentially denied. On the other hand, in the adaptation that the individual must face to all the agreements that he has, there emerges stronger and more defined the racial personality. Finally, the personality of the race becomes the individual.
I said above that race opposes the species by creating within the species new forms which finally supplant the species. For every external form there is an internal form to which the external form corresponds. We call the internal form that is in this way created the personality. In light of this--that new forms always appear--we may say that personality is the internal form of the race as the creative force of nature.
White culture does now what it always has done: its central ideas negate personality. The dress and manners of white people show this tendency clearly, as opposed to people of other races who oppenly show personality. For the white person, any show of personality is inherently a racist gesture. Thus white culture shows most clearly the dialectical opposition of the negation to the negative, the principle which I have made central to my thinking. White culture advances dialectically, as the negation of personality, which is a logical thing, is set in opposition to personality which is a factual thing. The negation of personality through the logical denial of personality (the negation of personality) constitutes, in opposition to an obvious existing fact--that personality exists--is, we are saying, the dialectical mainspring of Western culture. But there is more. It is precisely this denial by white people of themselves that constitutes the progressive advancement of Western civilization. In the long term it is the actual suppressing by white people of their selves that forces to the surface the true concept of race; and the priority of that concept in everything about humanity that is progressive and creative. In Spengler's words, the white man "hat Rasse
Last edited by richard_swartzbaugh (2010-08-27 12:34:59)