Talks by John Meechan
PhD Thesis by John Meechan
Drafts by John Meechan
In this paper I focus on a key site of experimentalism in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Nietzsche cites... more In this paper I focus on a key site of experimentalism in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Nietzsche cites a number of bold experimental thoughts within his work, such as the causal hypothesis of the world envisioned as will to power, and the question of how much truth one can incorporate. It is especially pronounced, however, in his revaluation of morality. Nietzsche orients himself against a negative brand of morality, hegemonised under what he calls the ‘Moral World Order’, and the lynchpin of this ‘order’ is its conception of free moral agency. Nietzsche attacks this from numerous angles, but fundamentally condemns it as a particularly acute instance of nihilism: the unconditional moral will stands apart from the sensuous body, tyrannising over it and recommending the extirpation of its passions and instincts. This is the basis of Nietzsche’s claim that Judaeo-Christian morality has ‘translated the human out of nature’. But it is also the departure point for his pursuit of a superior morality which inverts the relationship between body and will, and affirms ‘freedom of the will’ as an emergent affect that accompanies processes of mutual interpretation among bodily drives. This superior kind of morality turns on two principles. First, an effort to embrace the totality of one’s drives, such that the freest kind of will expresses the fullest economy of one’s self. Second, an experimental approach to organising this economy, requiring that one remain open to varying the internal hierarchy of one’s drives in order to experience the diverse affectivities of ‘free willing’ that novel arrangements generate. On this basis, I elaborate Nietzsche’s revaluated brand of morality by importing ideas from complexity theory, proposing that the experiment of becoming a superior moral agent involves making of oneself a non-linear system. To conclude, I use this cross-fertilisation to illuminate some key areas of Nietzsche’s naturalism.
In this paper I explore Henri Bergson’s notion of the meaning of life by focusing on two places w... more In this paper I explore Henri Bergson’s notion of the meaning of life by focusing on two places where he discusses it in his work. The first is Creative Evolution (1907, CE), where a bio-ontological meaning of life is proposed in terms of the ongoing ‘advance’ of the élan vital. Bergson conceives of this vital tendency towards freer activity in terms of nature’s pursuit of a mechanics that would triumph over mechanism. The second is a lesser-known paper called ‘Psycho-physical Parallelism and Positive Metaphysics’ (1901, ‘PPPM’), where Bergson articulates the same themes concerning the evolutionary relationship between life and matter, only this time gives an ethical rendition of the meaning of life. Discerning the true sense of the distinction between mind and body, he claims, will allow us to understand the reason they ‘unite and collaborate’, and thereby to speculate on thought’s apparent trajectory towards an independence from matter. While the latter position appears to be inscribed within the former, this continuity nonetheless resists reducing the ethical to a biological essentialism. This is ensured by the ‘virtual’ nature he ascribes to life’s movement, which shows that the ethical meaning of life is ultimately grounded in an ontology premised upon the irreducibly open and inventive rather than on the reductively closed and repetitive. In turn, this conception of life’s virtuality further illuminates what Bergson might mean, from an ethical perspective, as regards a progressive independence from matter, which I propose in terms of a withdrawal from the body and the present, with a view to a superior moral activity.
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Talks by John Meechan
PhD Thesis by John Meechan
Drafts by John Meechan