I recently listened to your latest episode and was somewhat surprised to hear you describe 5's view's on slavery as Aristotelian. While I can see why one might argue that, since Aristotle does talk about natural slaves, I thought it would be a better fit to describe 5's anthropology, and probably his morality, as Nietzschean. However, I think this is interestingly contrasted by his existential questioning, which I think would best be described as Kierkegaardian. I think Five is at the point in his existential thought that Kierkegaard would describe as needing to take the "leap of faith". Five can't seem to do this, however, and I think this is portrayed in his rejection of the humanities and his retreat into the sciences, the idea that, if he just looks hard enough, he can bootstrap himself out of his problem by his own sheer force of will. This would be where his Kierkegaardian leanings end and his Nietzschean tenancies begin.
Hello, first time poster here. I have been following the podcast cover Fifth Head of Cerberus at work and in Episode 44, the Wrap Up, Brandon and Glenn briefly talk about Neal Stephenson's Anathem and how its use of leaves as paper could be a nod to Fifth Head. Glenn also says there are several Book of the New Sun references in Anathem. I'm a big fan of Anathem and read the Book of New Sun last year, but I'm at a loss of spotting the references. Can anyone help me out, or is this discussed in another episode?
Hi James and welcome to the forum! I agree that Number 5 does not buy into Aristotle's Natural Slave Theory. This line from the slave market stands out to me. “I spoke to him and would have bought and freed him, but he answered me in the servile way of slaves and I turned away in disgust and went home.” Clearly he doesn't think that it is the nature of this person that makes him a slave because otherwise he, too, would be servile since they share the same nature. Therefore, it is something in his nurture that made the slave this way.
I'm not familiar with Kierkegaard or Nietzsche on slavery, though, and would love to know more about where you see Number 5's comments lining up with them.
Hey James! Thanks for your insightful comment. I think You're right in saying that if Number 5 had had a copy of anything kierkegaard on hand, he would have been in better shape. The big blocker for number 5 in my mind is that he really had nothing hopeful to hang his hat on that would cause him to make the leap of faith. His only desire seemed to be to free himself from the presence of his father, and he does make a rather large leap, so to speak, in the sense that he believed that all would be well if he murdered his father. But this action only leads him to the pit.
I can see how number 5 forcing his way on the world could have overtones of nietzsche, but the ending of the book, including his judicial punishment, seems to indicate that wolfe is condemning such a notion.
Wow! Both Glenn and Brandon. I feel like I'm talking with a couple of celebrities!.
Let me further elaborate on what I was thinking. This is, of course, going to be in broad strokes and I'm sure someone more familiar with both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche could to a better job, but here goes:
Like I said, I think 5's existentialism is stuck at the point of needing to take the leap of faith. I think the reason for this is that he cannot, as Kierkegaard puts it, "move beyond the Socratic". In a certain sense, 5's entire project, and that of his father, and perhaps all the way back to whoever it was that became Mr. Million, is entirely Socratic, they want to "Know Thyself". And they're doing it in a very Socratic way. As I'm sure you guys know, Socrates\Plato's epistemology was one of aletheia, of un-forgetting. For, in the transmigration of souls, the soul would pass into the after life, come to know all things, and then pass thought the river lethe and forget it all again before being re-ensouled in a body. Thus, for Socrates\Plato, the process of coming to know something wasn't really learning something new, but remembering something you had forgotten. Thus the entreaty to "Know Thyself" was entirely appropriate for Socrates because one only needed to look into oneself to find knowledge. 5 is doing the same thing, and is, in fact, trying to do it so hard that he has made copies of himself to that he could come to know himself all the more. He also literally looks inside of things in his laboratory work. But Christianity changed all this. Christianity, of course, claims that there are truths that are beyond our ability to reason to. That, in fact, there are truths that must be revealed to us by God. Thus, Kierkegaard says we have to move beyond the Socratic to come to know those things because they cannot be found within, they are radically different than us despite them also being what makes us up at our very metaphysical core. Thus the irony is, to come to know ourselves more perfectly, we have to give up ourselves entirely, take the leap of faith, and hope that God will catch us and return us to ourselves.
The other point I had in mind is that I think that 5's is, more or less, Nietzschean in his moral and social outlook. I think that the quote that Glenn brought up above illustrates this well. In that quote, 5 at first sees the slave as something that he might buy and help until the slave shows himself to be truly slavish by responding in that "servile way" of slaves, and he is disgusted by it. Why is he disgusted by it? Perhaps because he sees himself as a wolf and the people below him in social standing, and perhaps in intelligence as well, as prey. This, Nietzsche says, is the trick of the slaves, to make the "non-slaves" feel bad for them and to then elevate them to equal status. Nietzsche says that not only is it absurd for the predator to feel sympathy for the prey, it is also absurd for the predator to be held accountable for being a predator and killing prey. This was also one of Nietzsche's critiques of Christianity, namely, that it wanted to invert the power structure between the slaves (the Jews \ the early Christians) and the masters (their many oppressors \ the Romans).
Anyway, I've written a huge wall of text now so I think I'll stop. However, I think there are also interesting metaphysical questions like the ones you have both brought up in your recent episode. I think the question of who are human and who are rational \ intellectual creatures is an important one. A creature can be rational \ intellectual and be not human and a creature can be rational \ intellectual and not be part of Christ's salvific work. Perhaps very few of the character in the story are humans and were thus not saved by Christ's salvific work and are therefore in hell. Perhaps David is the exception, which is why he was able to leave the brothel permanently.
This is great. The whole society reads this way. Deeming empathy and compassion as weaknesses that result from deception and classifying people as predator or prey might be a better explanation for the cruelty that Aunt Jeannine sees around her than aliens.
The relationship of the various beings within the story is incredibly complicated. What I mean is, Nietzsche says that the slaves trick the masters into thinking that they are the same, affirming that there is some significant difference between them. This is, of course, not true, the masters and the slaves are both of the same kind, viz., human beings. On St. Croix , however, not only may there be actual non-humans (abos, half-abos half-humans, human clones that may have had their DNA so altered that they can no longer properly be called human), but, moreover, some of those non-humans (the abos) may, in fact, be tricking the actual humans into thinking that they (the abos) are actually human by imitating them. I think the important question then becomes, what is the true nature of the Abos. Are they truly rational animals - are they persons - or are they simply able to pass the Turing Test? This, of course, would then make us think of Mr. Million. Is he a human? I would say no. Is he a person? He certainly seems to be able to pass the Turing Test, but that does not a person make, and personally I am sympathetic to Searle's Chinese Room argument. I'm not sure Wolfe gives us the information we need to make a conclusive judgement.
I think you're hitting on something that is a big theme in Wolfe's whole oeuvre, which is the question of personhood. It is a theme that dominates this trilogy of novellas in particular and glen and I spend a lot of time talking about this issue.
What makes a person a person? How do we ascertain whether a person should be offered certain rights or have those rights withheld from them? How do we determine who is allowed to participate in our society? Who should rule? who should be excluded?
We see this question examined in many future Wolfe novels. I'd be interested in learning more about how Wolfe utilizes ideas found in Nietzsche or Kierkegaard, or whether he's engaging with those philosophers just on the basis that their ideas have trickled down through culture, or their conclusions are drawn by other folks that Wolfe is engaging with. I had not really thought to put Wolfe in explicit conversation with Nietzsche or Kierkegaard because I've not considered Wolfe to be making a statement about the Existentialist movement or even the debate between existentialists and Essentialist. I look forward to keeping an Eye on this line of thought in the future.
To be honest, I haven't read that much Wolfe. I have read BotNS, UotNS, 5th Head, and I'm about halfway through The Sorcerer's House. BothNS, UotNS, and 5th Head all, to me, smack of existentialism. The reason for that is that the driving question behind existentialism, and what differentiates it from other philosophical realms of thought, is the question of, "Who am I as an individual and what is my relationship to the world?" I think it could be argued that this is the central or foundation question of BothNS, UotNS, and 5th Head. The existentialists are a funny lot. Most of them are given to atheism but there are a few notable exceptions, including Kierkegaard, who is considered the founder, and Dostoevsky. Christians, and especially Catholics, are also incredibly interested in the question of personhood, they may have even invented the concept. The reason the two, that is to say, Essentialism and Existentialism, come together in Catholicism is because, as I'm sure you know, Catholicism works, more or less, within the Aristo-Thomistic metaphysical framework (i.e. Essentialism), but has to be concerned with the person-as-individual (Existentialism) because Christ was an individual person and therefore lived a person-as-individual life that was peculiar to Him. In some sense the marrying of the two philosophies is the project of Christianity.
Haha, this seems about right.