At 15, I discovered Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil in a used-book store. Nietzsche glared in angry profile on the cover. His gaze drilled into the surface of reality, and a walrus-like mustache covered his mouth. The publisher’s blurb on the back said that Nietzsche had “produced a devastating diagnosis of the worthlessness of contemporary existence.” Sold.
It was 1998 in the Massachusetts suburbs — basically, Ground Zero for the end of history. Reading Nietzsche was like sticking a fork in an electric socket. A jagged current raced through the prose. This “philosophy of the future” was about daring, transgression, experimentation — life.
The falseness of a judgement is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgement: it is here that our new language perhaps sounds strangest. The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, live-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding.
For Nietzsche, philosophy was not about abstract arguments — spiderwebs of pseudo-mathematical symbols — but about the marrow of living. Every work of philosophy had been “a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir” that revealed the inner pressures of the philosopher. A phenom of classical philology laid to waste by ill health, Nietzsche saw 19th-century Europe as mired in decadence. His most famous philosophical character, the prophet Zarathustra, warns of the blinking, diminished last men and points toward some future renewal as the Overman takes the stage.
Over the course of a year, I gobbled down his books: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On the Genealogy of Morals, Twilight of the Idols, The Gay Science, Ecce Homo. Nietzsche was so obviously smart. And well read. And imaginative. And clever. And funny. He is maybe the perfect gateway drug to philosophy. Even if you understand him on the shallowest level (as I almost certainly did), you still get some payoff. Yes, I found his dismissal of Christianity unpersuasive. But reading him was like witnessing a lion on the savanna: The muscles rippling under the flesh could not be denied.
Costin Alamariu also had a teenage turn toward Nietzsche. “My obsession with Nietzsche started when I was sixteen years old,” he writes in the preface to Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy, the published version of his Yale doctoral dissertation. At the core of his argument is that both philosophy and tyranny are essentially criminal — both call for the overthrow of convention and celebrate strength. Many have reported that Alamariu is “Bronze Age Pervert” (BAP), the pseudonymous Nietzschean epigone who has many readers on the further edges of the political Right — including many Trump White House staffers. Alamariu has never denied that he is BAP, and Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy offers a theoretical infrastructure for many of the central tenets of BAP’s best-selling Bronze Age Mindset. The reworked dissertation itself became one of the top-selling books on Amazon shortly after its release.
Following Nietzsche’s example, Alamariu sketches a genealogy of philosophy in the ancient Greek world. In the beginning, cities suffocate under the “totalitarianism of nomos” — the absolute rule of inherited custom. A foreign elite’s conquest of the city overturns this rule of custom. Distinguishing itself from the population that it rules, this elite turns to nature (phusis, in Greek) as a figure for power that stands outside convention. Alamariu casts nature as biological and genealogical: “All of the earliest mentions of nature . . . have to do with the physical body, with biological ‘vitality,’ and especially with blood or, again, breeding, eugenics, and heredity.” The Greek poet Pindar exemplifies this aristocratic celebration of nature.
Upon the decline of this aristocracy, the idea of nature becomes radicalized. The tyrant breaks free from the reins of custom that have restrained lesser kings. Alamariu relates that classical philosophers were often accused of teaching tyranny, and nature plays a crucial role in this accusation. “Philosophy and tyranny are means of carving out,” he writes, a space for “the preservation of nature” amid decadence.
In this analysis, Alamariu upends some conventional interpretations of Plato. He argues that Platonic dialogues that seem to condemn tyranny instead esoterically teach philosophers the best way to seize power in a political environment hostile to them. The Gorgias is the fulcrum of his argument. In the later part of this dialogue, Socrates enters into a conversation with Callicles, who celebrates the rule of nature and the strong. While Socrates seems to argue against Callicles’ endorsement of tyranny, Alamariu says that his objections are not meant to be persuasive. Socrates does not ultimately object to Callicles’ end (the rule of the naturally superior) but instead to his means. Callicles’ outright praise of tyranny will turn too much of the city against the philosopher. Plato’s “revolution” therefore means that, instead of rejecting convention outright, the philosopher should “insinuate [him]self as its ally and reform it from within.”
All this sets up a return to Nietzsche. The risk of annihilation becomes a crucible for forging an aristocratic elite characterized by strength, hardness, and cruelty. This elite is both cultural and biological; Alamariu emphasizes over and over again the importance of breeding for the formation of this elite, whose homogeneity is shattered by decadence. Some “luckily enhanced” individuals “take their paths in new and unexpected directions.” Alamariu suggests that classical political philosophy is one fruit of the onset of decadence in the classical world. Plato and other philosophers devised “emergency measures” to keep the philosopher and the doctrine of nature safe: The philosopher would overtly attack the doctrines of rule by force in order to allay the concerns of the city (even as he actually sought to gain the commanding heights). In Alamariu’s interpretation of Nietzsche, Christianity hijacked Plato by making that exoteric doctrine paramount. In teaching the importance of ethical restraints on power, Christianity led to the “misbreeding of modern European man.”
In opposition to that, Alamariu aims in Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy to recover the tradition of natural force and superiority. At the core of the political life is “an instinct that binds the lower classes to the growing power of the state precisely on account of its force, power, and violence.”
Alamariu’s dissertation provides a crucial theoretical (even apologetic) context for the exhortations of Bronze Age Pervert. Bronze Age Mindset celebrates force, power, and violence. BAP encourages his readers to make their bodies like those of the Homeric heroes of old. Central to BAP’s account of power — real power — is the ability to do what you want, unbound by any strictures. He sneers at billionaires like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg because their net worth does not allow them to murder and rape on a whim: “They could never just kill a man and take his wife, but even the ruler of the smallest African country has this power, this true wealth.”
Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy offers an account of how such violence could be legitimized, though BAP regards legitimacy as another affectation of the herd. Nature is the supremacy of the powerful over the weak. Murder and rape are simply the means of asserting this supremacy. The aristocracy of the ancient world chiseled bodies and hearts of stone in order to confront the danger of extermination. Modern-day followers of BAP might embrace that same hardness. He calls upon his readers to find their own band of brothers (pointedly, not sisters). His followers should infiltrate the military, police forces, and intelligence services. Others should work to escalate vice and internal disruption: “The increase of chaos, confusion and pressure on the Leviathan will lay it low.” The legions of the Bronze Age will thus be ready for some new Caesar to come and wipe away the rule of the “bugmen,” the bureaucratic clerisy he portrays as dominating the American political system.
BAP’s “vision of true justice, the justice of nature” demands that “the zoos” be “opened” and “predators unleashed by the dozens, hundreds,” to ravage the cities of the world. The “lord of beasts returns.” In this image, BAP offers an alt-right complement to the images of natural “reclaiming” — nature “taking back” city streets and buildings — that permeate the social-media feeds of radical environmentalists. But he’s not talking just about (or even about) the release of animals. The “zoo” is conventional society. The “predators unleashed” are human beings unchained from the conventions of morality and reveling in their red-in-tooth-and-claw supremacy over others. This is back to nature, Bronze Age Pervert style.
Fire and the edge of steel call to some depths in the human chest. Many gawk at car crashes or click anxiously on a video showing a brawl or vicious personal confrontation. People thirst for the sense that something matters — the desperate casting of the self into some project, the chance of danger, the sense that high stakes are involved. There, on the bleeding edge of exertion, some potent recognition can be found.
The Nietzschean project speaks to those passions, and Alamariu offers a mythology of natural supremacy. Part of the provocation of his work comes from the way it conjures echoes of that desire for meaning and of that esteem for excellence.
And yet, those echoes can also distort. I’ll admit that my view of philosophy leans more in the erotic direction: questing, incomplete, and wonder-filled. In Plato’s Symposium, the priestess Diotima, whom Socrates calls “wise in many things,” says:
No one of the gods philosophizes and desires to become wise — for he is so — nor if there is anyone else who is wise, does he philosophize. Nor, in turn, do those who lack understanding philosophize and desire to become wise; for it is precisely this that makes the lack of understanding so difficult — that if a man is not beautiful and good, nor intelligent, he has the opinion that that is sufficient for him.
Philosophy in the erotic tradition is not the security of absolute knowledge but the recognition of the lack of total wisdom. The theme of philosophy as falling short permeates not only the Symposium but also Phaedrus, the Republic, and other Platonic dialogues. The wonder that gives birth to philosophy (as Aristotle and others tell us) arises from the collision of our recognition of the lack of knowledge with the hope that this knowledge can be pursued. And I fear that, if philosophy fails to keep that sense of wonder, it degenerates into either the physical sciences or the creation of ever more refined logical calculi.
Taking seriously the erotic component of philosophy might reveal the utility of non-absolutist forms of politics — that is, orders in which a single political actor cannot simply impose its will upon the rest of the world. Because absolute wisdom has not yet been found, any ideological plan will inevitably falter. There’s a reason why Leo Strauss, responding to the Hegelian polymath-statesman Alexandre Kojève, wrote that “the coming of the universal and homogeneous state will be the end of philosophy on earth.” The absolute control of a single person would not be the realization of philosophy but its extinction. A more open political system — one with mixed powers and protections for the person — might be better aligned with the human condition and the hopes of philosophy.
The philosophical usefulness of the mixed regime is not the only argument on its behalf. But it is an argument for democratic liberties and against tyranny.
Alamariu is quite right to notice the intertwining of philosophy and tyranny. Philosophers in the ancient world often joined the courts of tyrants. Alcibiades was one of Socrates’ most famous companions — and a monster of political ambition. Among the most important philosophers in the 20th century, Martin Heidegger was an apologist for the Nazi regime. That affinity goes deeper than quirks of biography. Both philosophy and political ambition are manifestations of the erotic yearning for transcendence. Their paths differ. Philosophy is the quest for the stars of the ideas — for a clarity of vision. Political ambition can instead seek transcendence in glory and the exercise of power over others. If it is untempered by moderation, by philosophy’s recognition of limits, and by tradition, that ambition can lead to an impulse for tyranny.
Taking the erotic seriously recovers the virtue of vulnerability. A Bronze Age project of simply pursuing power — looks-maxing, six-pack abs, and aristocratic cruelty — may actually be a retreat from the true source of vitality. Human vulnerability is part of what makes life precious and what opens us up to higher causes. Socrates suggests this point in Phaedrus. He says that the experience of beauty provokes the growth of wings but also discomfort and inner disruption:
As nourishment flows in, the feather shafts swell and rush to grow from their roots beneath every part of the soul. . . . Now the whole soul seethes and throbs in this condition. Like a child whose teeth are just starting to grow in, and its gums are all aching and itching — that is exactly how the soul feels when it begins to grow wings.
In On Beauty and Being Just, the literary scholar Elaine Scarry references this passage in discussing how gazing at a thing of beauty reveals the “vulnerability of the perceiver.” To be able to experience beauty (and many would count that experience to be a great joy) means to open oneself up to vulnerability. And the creators of beauty are often those most attuned to the experience of it. Vulnerability, then, is an essential element of creation.
So is it with other valuable enterprises. Caring for a spouse or child or other family member means opening oneself up to great potential pain. Echoing Pausanias from the Symposium, Bronze Age Pervert is dismissive of women and of men’s relationships with them. “A family,” he laments, “is the end of a man.” Instead, he celebrates male–male relationships as the foundation of great political change. Yet even the war bands that BAP valorizes depend upon the awareness of weakness. It is the danger they face that helps to give soldiers on the field such a unique connection. (If inflicting violence were the singular source of soldierly bonds, people sitting in a cubicle farm directing drones to drop bombs would have with one another the same connection as soldiers serving in the same squad on a battlefield.) To find value is to be vulnerable.
In his dissertation, Alamariu is explicit about the requirements of a Bronze Age restoration. From this perspective, the “absolute value of existence is nil, and man as such has no dignity and no value: mere life is repudiated by itself.” The assertion that “mere life” is without “any value” seems in many ways to run counter to the idea of human beings as some imago Dei that threads throughout both the Jewish and the Christian religious tradition. The tradition of imago Dei does not hold that all ways of living are equally valuable: There are causes worth sacrificing “mere life” for. But it does insist upon the potential within each person, and it attributes to each person an importance that sickness, lack of accomplishment, or poverty does not efface.
“Returning to the Greeks” in this sense would be a radical enterprise. Infanticide pervaded the ancient world, even though the exact percentage of disabled or unwanted children either murdered or left to die of exposure remains contested. The precept that life is only for the worthy leads soon enough to Treblinka and Auschwitz. Ancient warfare was a horrific and brutal enterprise, as any reader of Homer knows. The sack of Troy was a smorgasbord of rape, enslavement, and slaughter. And all that horror was accomplished with only Bronze Age weaponry. In an age of Zyklon B and nuclear missiles, the capacity for genocide is that much greater, as may be the importance of the bulwark of human dignity in countering the vanity of the powerful.
Speaking to the Puritans as they began to settle the Massachusetts Bay region in 1630, John Winthrop offered a rejoinder to the temptation to erase the dignity of others. He argued that human differences had a divine purpose, ensuring that “every man might have need of others, and from hence they might be all knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly affection.” For Winthrop, difference is an important foundation of sociality. We are all “in need of others,” though the precise needs may differ.
One of the ironies of a politics of vitalism is that it often seems to embrace an exaggerated strand of the liberal modernity that it purports to oppose. Moderns are at times tempted to confuse freedom simply with the expansion of power and the escape from restrictions — Thomas Hobbes’s “absence of external impediments” or Isaiah Berlin’s “negative liberty” radicalized. Post-Nietzschean vitalism offers horizons of endless domination.
‘The worthlessness of contemporary existence” — that phrase struck the 15-year-old me as polemically thrilling, even if not entirely true. Contemporary existence seemed to have so much worth. There had to be something of value in drama-club rehearsals, dating, daydreaming, long walks through suburban streets, and even reading Nietzsche. As I’ve grown older, the sense of the dignity of our day-to-day life has only intensified. Yes, a miasma of vanity and distraction so often surrounds our customary habits. But — also yes — there are great currents of meaning, heroism, and significance, too.
For me, that basic affirmation of the ordinary drains the charm from radical critiques from either the left or the right. Rage over the reign of the “bugmen,” despair over human annihilation by “climate change,” and other flavors of catastrophism seem to have, at most, a hollow thrill. The head bent in prayer, the soft flesh of a newborn’s cheek, a movement from Stravinsky — life is shot through with moments of grace, instants of renewal.
In the early 20th century, Hart Crane saw those opportunities in the Brooklyn Bridge, one of the great emblems of industrial modernity:
And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride, —
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!
Arching over the East River, the “silver-paced” Brooklyn Bridge carries something of the sun’s charge. The industrial does not stand in disenchanted remove from the natural world.
Like John Winthrop and the Brooklyn Bridge, American life more generally complicates these declinist narratives about modernity. Maybe Alexander Hamilton isn’t the Overman, but he’s closer than many public figures, ascending from Caribbean obscurity to become a war hero in his twenties and secretary of the treasury and an architect of American political economy by his thirties. He was also a married man and a Christian, two traits scorned by online reactionaries.
Hamilton and the other Founders offer a profound counterpoint to Alcibiades and Napoleon, whom some vitalists celebrate. Both men burned white-hot with the flame of ambition. They would do anything — overturn any precept — for worldly power and glory. Alcibiades betrayed ancient Athens, and Napoleon led hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen to death in his pursuit of European domination. But Napoleon’s empire collapsed with Waterloo, and Alcibiades is more known for the philosophical dialogues that include him as a character than for anything else. In America, the Founders helped build a continental republic that has lasted for centuries. Indeed, it was Hamilton’s pride of ambition that destroyed him — alienating him from political allies and dragging him to a fatal duel with Aaron Burr.
Within the lifetimes of many Americans, the United States accomplished great, ambitious projects — from winning the Cold War to putting a man on the moon. Strong communities of faith endure. High culture persists. While the internet has flattened and coarsened our culture, it has also allowed for a proliferation of reading groups in philosophy and poetry. And it’s arguable that the survival of high culture will demand leaning in to the democratic resources of American life. One is more likely to hear the heartfelt praise of beauty from a person on the street than in many graduate-school seminar rooms.
Our days are not as exhausted as declinists allege, nor is our decadence as total. This is not to deny that there are real dissatisfactions. In recent decades, the American elite has often failed to uphold its end of the social compact. Economic growth has been uneven, one major foreign-policy gamble after another has ended in debacle, and doctrinaire rigidity risks poisoning many elite institutions. The surge of populism — personified in the rise of Donald Trump — should have been an occasion for introspection and reform, but it has all too often resulted in a paranoia that undermines robust democracy. There are very good reasons to want our current elite to be reformed.
Much of our public square is just ugly, and experiencing a note of revulsion is simply evidence of functioning eyes and a working heart. But that note should not overwhelm the deeper symphony of resources within our moment. Achieving something better doesn’t require throwing out the framework of democracy, rejecting religion, or embracing an ethos of cruelty.
Alamariu seems a master of the discourse norms of the internet, including the way that Being Very Online compresses the distance between seriousness and satire. The troll pleads most devoutly. Perhaps that challenge is offered in the register of mockery. In any event, it is a challenge.
Responding to that challenge means a combination of argument and policy. Recovering the deeper resources of our condition — its capacity for excellence, its demands for moral seriousness, its potential to meet our erotic yearning — is a part of addressing radicalism. Policy efforts to restore the legitimacy of those who have been invested with power and to address the concerns of alienated youth can also lessen the appetite for political radicalism.
Istill have that copy of Beyond Good and Evil on my bookshelf. It sits right next to the used Portable Nietzsche from my high-school girlfriend (now that we’re married, she still indulges me). But it has other companions, too. Plato, of course. And Aristotle. And Augustine. And Aquinas. And Alexis de Tocqueville. And Frederick Douglass. And Iris Murdoch. Nietzsche’s fiery provocations helped draw me into a bigger tradition — and to discover the riches within it.
I’ll admit that ending on this note risks the complacency of the normie: the teenager who experiments with Nietzsche, gets older, marries his youthful love, and then waxes belle-lettristically about the dignity of everyday life. That “normal” life, some fear, is the diminishment of horizons. So I’ll conclude instead with two points in behalf of the normies.
One is that normie, bourgeois life very much has depths. William Shakespeare was a middle-class kid from the ’burbs. Marcel Proust did not have normie habits, but his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, shows the range and depth of emotional experiences amid bourgeois modernity. A second is that part of a serious vision for political renewal means expanding access to normie life — to make it easier to find a job, get married, and have a family — and recognizing the potential within ordinary freedom.
Comments