From Kant's Cave to Nietzsche's Kindergarten (Confessions of a Children's Entertainer)

Me in my role as a punk children's entertainer 

(c.1985)

 

Now watch closely little girl as I prick your red balloon 

with a safety pin ...

 

I. 

 

Last night I gave a short talk to the crowd gathered at Kant's Cave; a monthly meeting organised by Philosophy for All [1] and held in a first floor function room at the the famous Two Chairmen pub, in Wesminster [2].

 

The paper addressed the question of what constitutes dark enlightenment [3], so perhaps not ideal material for "shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats" [4] - or indeed young children. 

Nevertheless, I was delighted to discover that one of the people Zooming into the event was watching it accompanied by her precocious four-year-old son, who was equally fascinated by my public persona and appearance as he was by the contents of the paper itself:  

 

Mummy, why does he talk so fast? Why is he wearing such funny clothes? What's a zombie apocalypse?

 

 

II. 

 

Deleuze says that children are born philosophers or, more exactly, natural Spinozans; by which I think he means they instinctively know how to map real (rather than imaginary) trajectories and experiment with immediate (rather than representational) affects. 

 

That may or may not be the case. 

 

But what is undoubtedly true is that I should never have abandoned (my very short-lived) career as a punk children's entertainer in the mid-1980s, in order to become a failed artist and spectacularly unsuccessful poet-philosopher. 

 

For it seems I have a real knack for amusing little ones (and corrupting young minds in the manner of Socrates), whereas I have strictly limited talents as a grown up intellectual and adult educator. 

 

Not that I'm unhappy about this: for like Nietzsche, I think it is only by remaining a little childlike ourselves that we remain close also to the flowers, the grass, and to butterflies ... [5]

         

 

Notes

 

[1] Founded by Anja Steinbauer in 1998, Philosophy for All is an independent non-profit organisation that welcomes everyone with a love of wisdom - whatever their intellectual background or IQ - to attend its various events; walks, talks, film screenings, etc. Click here to visit the PfA website for full details.

 

[2] The Two Chairman is thought to be the oldest public house in Westminster and is housed in an 18th-century Grade II listed building in a part of Town at one time as notorious for cockfighting as political intrigue.        

 

[3] I published a four-part series of posts on dark enlightenment on Torpedo the Ark in July 2024: click here for part one, on the politics of hate; here for part two, on exiting the present; here for part three, on the zombie apocalypse; and/or here, for part four, on rejecting universalism. These four posts essentially formed the heart of the paper given at Kant's Cave.

[4] Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1990), 'Expeditions of an Untimely Man', 38, p. 102. 

 

[5] See Nietzsche writing in Human, All Too Human, Vol. II, Part 2 ('The Wanderer and His Shadow'), section 51. 

 

 

Worse Than Hitler

Several years ago, I gave a paper to the Philosophy For All crowd entitled Carry on Nietzsche: How One Becomes as Queer as One Is. Concerned primarily with the question of style and camp aesthetics, the paper was a playful comparative study of the German philosopher and Oscar Wilde and a promotion of what the former called die fröhliche Wissenschaft.   

At the end of the presentation, however, an East European woman stood up and accused me with a voice full of rising and righteous emotion of being morally bankrupt and politically suspect; she, she said, had seen for herself where my kind of nihilism leads (for she had visited Auschwitz). With tears in her eyes and a tremor in her voice - and all the while jabbing a finger in my direction - she concluded her case against me with the almost insane accusation that I was worse than Hitler. Not as bad, or in some way similar - but actually worse!

Thinking about this incident now, I see that her attempt to dismiss my work and shut-down discussion of it by playing the Nazi card is a classic example of what Leo Strauss termed reductio ad Hitlerum; an association fallacy which marks her intellectual desperation or lack of legitimate counterargument. She was simply attempting to distract people from what I had said, rather than debate the work.  

Further, one might wonder if it is in fact possible to be worse than Hitler - for doesn't Hitler serve as the absolute last word in evil within secular culture, much as the Devil used to serve when we were more religiously minded? Nick Land comments precisely - and brilliantly - on this:

"Hitler perfectly personifies demonic monstrosity, transcending history and politics to attain the stature of a metaphysical absolute: evil incarnate. Beyond Hitler it is impossible to go, or think. ... In this regard rather than Satan, it might be more helpful to compare Hitler to the Antichrist, which is to say: to a mirror Messiah, of reversed moral polarity. ... Hitler is sacramentally abhorred, in a way that touches upon theological 'first things'. If to embrace Hitler as God is a sign of highly lamentable politico-spiritual confusion (at best), to recognize his historical singularity and sacred meaning is near-mandatory, since he is affirmed by all men of sound faith as the exact complement of the incarnate God ... and this identification has the force of 'self-evident truth'. (Did anybody ever need to ask why the reductio ad Hitlerum works?)

- Nick Land, The Dark Enlightenment, Part 4: Re-running the race to ruin

Philosophy For Everyone and No One (Not For All)

Owl logo of Philosophy for All:  

pfalondon.org

Philosophy for All: a phrase and a London-based, non-profit organization designed to dismay or make laugh those perverts who value the fatal love of wisdom, just as it flatters those who subscribe to the moral ideal of equality and the notion that all souls might know Plato.

From the PFA Secretary I receive news of a masterclass [!] that teachers and would-be teachers of philosophy are strongly encouraged to attend; a class that promises to show how philosophy can be made accessible, inclusive and relevant to people of all ages and from all backgrounds.

Prospective students on the day-long course are also assured they will be taught how to deal with the tricky questions that often arise within philosophy and which can cause some students a great deal of difficulty. 

Now, as regular readers of this blog will know, as a post-Nietzschean philosopher I'm all for models of thought invested with an ironic, joyful element. But la gaya scienza doesn't mean dumbing-down in the name of democracy, nor attempting to make thinking fun in a manner that robs it of all seriousness, all challenge, all danger.  

When Zarathustra speaks, he speaks to everyone and no one, never simply to all. And he expects his listeners to have first grown new ears ...

Note: Readers might be interested in Anja Steinbauer's position on this question which can be found in an article published in Philosophy Now, issue 22. Click here. Dr Steinbauer is founder and president of Philosophy for All and co-founder of the London School of Philosophy.