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The Parable of the Madman

by Friedrich Nietzsche

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning
hours,
ran to the market place, and cried incessantly:
“I seek God! I seek God!”
As many of those who did not believe in God
were standing around just then,
he provoked much laughter.
Has he got lost? asked one.
Did he lose his way like a child? asked another.
Or is he hiding?
Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?
Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes.
“Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you.
We have killed him—-you and I.
All of us are his murderers.
But how did we do this?
How could we drink up the sea?
Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?
What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?
Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving?
Away from all suns?
Are we not plunging continually?
Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions?
Is there still any up or down?
Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing?
Do we not feel the breath of empty space?
Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?
Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning?
Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers
who are burying God?
Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?
Gods, too, decompose.
God is dead.
God remains dead.
And we have killed him.

“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?
What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled
to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?
What water is there for us to clean ourselves?
What festivals of atonement, what sacred gamesshall we have to invent?
Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?
Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us -
For the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all
history hitherto.”

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners;
and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment.
At last he threw his lantern on the ground,
and it broke into pieces and went out.
“I have come too early,” he said then; “my time is not yet.
This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering;
it has not yet reached the ears of men.
Lightning and thunder require time;
the light of the stars requires time;
deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard.
This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars -
and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day
the madman forced his way into several churches
and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo.
Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing
but:
“What after all are these churches now
if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”

Socialism: Communism and The Manifesto

Socialism is a belief which states that the means of production of a society must be publicly owned and managed. Historically speaking, socialism is a modern conception; not only was the socialist means of production impossible during the ancient and medieval times, it was even unconceivable. Production back then took place only in scattered workshops, stores and agricultural strips, each known for their valued trademarks. The idea of amassing all resources and placing them under the sole management of the government goes beyond, theoretically and realistically, the system of ancient and medieval commerce. It was only at the very threshold of the modern period that the first authentic socialist position was formulated. In his Utopia, Thomas Moore spoke of a society free of money, wherein people share meals, houses, and other goods in common. The problem, however, is that Utopia was the work of an individual genius and not the reflection of a social movement. It was only in mid 17th century, during the English Civil Wars, that socialism took the shape of a social movement and had its first practical expression. During this period, Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1660), who led the Digger movement, fought for an “agrarian communism,” believing that the earth is a common treasury. This movement, however, was short lived, as it was century and a half later in the movement led by Babeuf during the French Revolution. But in the 19th century, as a child of the Industrial Revolution, socialism emerged as a significant issue immensely affecting the political and economic life of the advanced western countries. It presented itself as a socio-economic structure which could (or for the socialists, should) alter the 18th and early 19th century capitalist Europe. Socialism, although full of brilliant insights, was still not systematized. It was just that – a collection of passionate beliefs and hopes. Then just at the right time, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels entered the picture; it became their historical mission to integrate and systematize the variegated socialist beliefs. Thus, the Manifesto was born, the profound synthesis of socialism. It was the embodiment of socialist thoughts and the crystallization of the socialist vision. It raised socialism as world force and changed the direction of history. As such, not only was the Manifesto one of the most important documents in the history of socialism, but it was too in the entire history of the human race. What was the message of socialist Marx and Engels in the Manifesto? What made it so profound and life-changing? With such a compact message, it is hard to divide the Manifesto into chewable parts. But for discussion purposes, and with the hope of penetrating the communist thought, we divide the document into five central concepts: (1) historical materialism, (2) class struggle, (3) the nature of capitalism, (4) the inevitability of socialism, and (5) exploitation and alienation. Historical Materialism. History is a dialectical process; it is not a collection of unrelated facts, but a universal process in which everything is related. Borrowing the idea of G.W.F. Hegel, Marx and Engels believed that history follows the dialectical pattern of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Social structures, as theses, are countered by opposite social structures, the antitheses; and from their interaction is the birth of a new social structure, which is a synthesis or advancement beyond the previous social structures. However, unlike Hegel, they thought that what governed the pattern was “matter,” and not the Geist (Spirit); that the controlling forces of history are the material forces and especially those of economic production. Thus, their historical dialectic is called historical materialism, in contrast to Hegel’s historical idealism. Marx and Engels believed that through this philosophy they could see, even predict, the destiny of humankind. History’s movement has been decoded, its logical pattern has been revealed. The central project of human history is nothing less than the production and reproduction of material life. Part I of the Manifesto brilliantly speaks of this pattern as it maps out the rise and development of capitalism from its primitive beginnings in the medieval period to its full-blown form in the 19th century. Class Struggle. History is essentially social, and not one directed by individuals. The Manifesto speaks of this social history as a “history of class struggles” between “the freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf… oppressor and oppressed.” Ancient Rome was divided into patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; Middle Ages into feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, serfs, and other subordinate gradations. Capitalism emerged from feudalism, until what remained now is the basic division of bourgeoisie and proletariat. The bourgeoisie class owned the means of production and employed labor, while the proletariat class sells its labor power to live. The former is the class of capitalists, while the latter is the “class of laborers, who live only so long as their labor increases capital.” Engels explained that all existing societies before this were also based on basically the same economic system – some people did the work and other appropriated the social surplus. In securing their livelihood, some work; some own. The materialistic, social history created groups of fundamentally antagonistic interests. These conflicting groups, and not individuals, underlie the socio-historical movements. Nature of Capitalism. Although the word “capitalism” does not occur in the Manifesto, it was nonetheless profoundly discussed. Capitalism, the bourgeois society, is Marx’s main subject of interest. He describes it as a form of economy which “has left no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest, than ‘callous cash payment.’” It is an economy which converted everyone, from physicians and lawyers, and priests and the scientists, into paid wage-laborers, and has reduced family relation into mere money relation. Furthermore, capitalism, after having destroyed all hitherto industries, constantly revolutionizes its means of production, constantly expands itself throughout the whole surface of the world. Clothed with its identity as “civilization,” capitalism draws nations together but concentrates property in the hands of few. Through this form of economy, the bourgeoisie “created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.” But this immense productivity will ironically turnout to be capitalism’s own downfall. It has conjured up such gigantic means of production that, like a sorcerer, it can no longer control the powers which its spells summoned. Not only has it forged the weapons that bring death to itself, it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons, the proletariat. The Inevitability of Socialism. Marx and Engels categorically state, in the last sentence of Part I of the Manifesto, that the fall of capitalism and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. Aside from the mere fact that capitalism is the cause of its own doom, it also creates and trains, by virtue of its nature, the proletariat which at certain stage of development must overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism. Victory of the proletariat entails the emergence of a classless society wherein the proletariat and bourgeoisie disappear, and everyone is equal and entitled to the effects of his own work. Since it is private property or ownership of such property that constitutes the division between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, “abolition of private property” and its attendant form of consciousness that manifest this proletarian victory. This is at the heart of Communism. Exploitation and Alienation. In In Tucker, Marx said, man, even though bestowed with natural capacities, is a “suffering, conditioned, and limited creature,” dependent on nature for his sustenance. Man must therefore interact with nature, i.e. through labor, in order to satisfy his needs. Thus, labor is essential to human existence, for what man is, is how he produces – people are defined by the work they do. The first historical act of man was his attempt to control the world in a way that serves his interests. He developed tools, technology in the broad sense, that eventually led to the creation of more needs. During the industrial revolution, technology and human needs and wants simultaneously developed and escalated in unimaginable proportions. Under capitalism, owners are in the position of dominance to increase their own gain; that in the struggle between the capitalist and the workers, the owners of capital have a distinct advantage. While capitalists are driven by their interest in personal profit, workers become impoverished as they are provided with only those wages necessary to continue production. In addition, bureaucratic capitalism depersonalizes production. It removes the unique stamp of the individual on his work. Everything becomes a routine, workers become automatons. The quality of work is no longer important, only the quantity matters. Labor is no longer seen as an expression of creativity, but an object apart from man. In capitalism, man becomes alienated from his own work. As Marx said, the worker “is at home when he is not working, and when he is working he is not at home.” If we are defined by our work, yet that work is taken away from us and made into an object, then we are separated from our own sense of self. We forget that our basic character as human beings is to creatively produce – work is our end in life. What happens in capitalism is that we see work as something reprehensible, as something to be avoided. We work only because we have to, because we need the money or because we are forced to work. Not only are we alienated from ourselves, we are also alienated from one another. We see others as mere components in our instrumental world. The distance between ourselves and others become more and more unbridgeable, and the conditions, which this bureaucratic capitalism create, give rise to a society devoid of human qualities, best described as a society of machines. What is worse is that we submit to this dominance and exploitation, believing that things are supposed to be this way. More than the system itself, what enslaves us is our false consciousness. We are afraid to question the circumstances under which we live, and we fail to uncover the underlying reason of our suffering. Marx and Engels are firmly convinced that capitalism “has resolved personal worth… for naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.” Thus, communism, as an ideology and social theory, intends to clear the clouded conceptions of men by illustrating the conditions of domination that chain us. It challenges us to bravely saunter the path towards freedom. The reality of our condition compels us to act. “From each according to his ability,” said Marx and Engels, “to each according to his needs!” The Manifesto ends with a serious caveat and a vigorous exhortation, “Working men of all countries, unite!”

John Locke

Soon after Descartes embarked on the search for true and certain knowledge, philosophy shifted its focus from “being” (Ontology) to “knowing” (Epistemology). What can we know? This unassuming question boggled the great minds of philosophers in the modern era (15^th-17^thc.), proving itself far more complicated than it first appeared to them. As commonly thought, the world is nothing more than everything that the mind ought to know. The world is there, and the mind is bound to know it. But if one thinks deeper, as the philosophers did, the world “as we perceive it” might be totally different from the world “as it objectively is.” We, for example, see tall trees and their green leaves, taste sweet candies, or touch hot objects. But we ask: Are trees “in-themselves” really tall or do we only see them as tall? Are their leaves really green or is it only “our eyes” that see green? Are candies really sweet or is it only “our taste buds” that make them sweet? Are objects exposed to fire really hot or is it “our sense of touch” that projects them to be hot?

The more there are advances in the sciences, the less likely we admit that what we know are indeed true. The world is more than what it meets the eye. According to the physical sciences, the true nature of matter lies on how its atoms combine together to take a definite formation, and not on our individual perceptions of it. Man’s sensory organs perceive these atomic formations, and simultaneously create mental images of these objects. Thus the object of man’s knowledge are not the objects in themselves but his own mental representations or ideas of these objects. Now, how sure are we that our ideas give us a correct picture of the world?

John Locke (1632-1704), a British empiricist and political philosopher, was confident in saying that the mind can grasp, how crude it may be, the reality outside itself. Although for Locke the human mind cannot know directly the world, his ideas, which serve as link between the mind and reality, represent the world as it is. Yes, there is still a dichotomy between the knower and the object known, but the possibility of the non-existence of an external world and entrapment of man in his mind are implausible for Locke. Let us now see how Locke advanced these ideas.

 

 

What can we know according to Locke?

In his work An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke identified how far human understanding can extend its view. At the outset of his work, he humbly accepted the limits of human understanding saying that we can never achieve absolute certainty. Ultimately, Locke asserted that knowledge extends no farther than our ideas. But, as he enjoined us, this must not lead us to doubt the ability of our understanding in knowing the world. We know the world through our ideas that represent it, however crudely the representation may be.

In his Essay, Locke defined idea as “whatsoever the object of understanding when man thinks.” It is anything that the mind uses in the process of thinking, such as our imaginations, phantasms, notions, beliefs, and projections. Simply speaking, for Locke, we know through our ideas, and what we know are our ideas. Now, how do we acquire all these ideas?

 

 

How do we know according to Locke?

As an strict empiricist, Locke explains that we get all our ideas from our experiences, either through sensation or reflection. I know the idea of a “girl” because I already had encounters with a girl. If I did not encounter one, then I should have not known the idea of a girl. Could I know a girl even without encountering one, such that I know them since birth? For Locke, such is inconceivable. Thus, for him, to have innate ideas is impossible because it carries with it the vague suggestion that some ideas are imprinted in the mind since birth and are in no way acquired through experience. Nothing is known that does not pass through the senses.

Just because ideas are universal, it does not automatically make them innate. Locke asserts that universal ideas are still known through experience. For example, the universal moral principle that “we desire for happiness and dislike misery” is never known to us since birth, but was only revealed to us by experiencing life itself. The existence of universal truths is not evidence that we know them at birth. There is simply no connection between the two. This is also evident in the fact that idiots, children, and a great part of mankind do not know universal truths.

One of Locke’s intentions in rejecting innate ideas is the avoidance of authoritarianism and laziness of thought. To claim that everything comes from sense experience impels us to examine the foundations of knowledge. But believing in innate ideas impedes us from rediscovering the origins of knowledge.

In Book II of his Essay, Locke said that the mind, like a blank tablet (tabula rasa), is void of all ideas at birth, and it will be furnished with content only through sense experience and reflection of sense data. I know, for example, that “it is painful to get hit by a ball,” and I know this idea in the following manner: First, my senses are affected by an external object that is round, hard, orange, and something that gives pain. Through this “sense experience,” I acquire the simple ideas of round, hard, orange, and pain. These simple ideas are the building blocks of my knowledge. Then I reflect on these simple ideas, and concluded that the round, hard, orange object that hit me was a ball, and that I perceived pain when it hit me at a certain speed. When I finally make a resolution to dock whenever a speeding ball approaches me, I used my experience to arrive at this knowledge. The product of my reflection about all these simple ideas are complex ideas.

Moreover, unless one actually experiences the pain of getting hit by a ball, he will never know that idea. In the same way, all the other ideas and knowledge are known if and only they are experienced. A blind person can never know the idea of green no matter how much one explains it to him, because he can never experience the sight of green. For Locke, to know always means going back to experience itself.

 

 

Do the ideas represent the world accurately?

After a thorough examination of the origin of knowledge, Locke is still confronted with the important question of whether or not these ideas really give us an accurate picture of the external world. Ideas represent reality, but how well do they do so? In order to explain this, Locke gave his theory about primary and secondary qualities.

Qualities are those that have power to produce ideas. Shape, extension, motion, mass, color, taste, warmth, odor, and sound are qualities because they trigger the mind to create ideas. Some qualities, however, are utterly inseparable from the object itself. They really exist in the object and they exist even if the mind does not perceive them. Locke calls these qualities which are present in the object as primary qualities. Example of these qualities are shape, extension, motion, and mass. Whenever we perceive an object, these qualities are always present.

Some qualities, on the other, are dependent on “our” perception. These qualities produce ideas like color, warmth, taste, odor, sound, texture, and various sensations. In no way do they resemble the qualities of the objects themselves. Although the objects have the power to cause us to experience them, they do not exist in the objects themselves. The idea of sweetness, for example, is caused by how the particles of a lollipop trigger our sensation. Nonetheless, sweetness in itself does not exist in the lollipop, but it exists dependently with our senses. Locke called these qualities which produce various sensations as secondary qualities. Thus, there are primary qualities that exist in the objects themselves, and secondary qualities which are dependent on these primary qualities and our senses.

Furthermore, these qualities are properties of substances. Substances bear all primary qualities and create secondary qualities as the senses perceive them. Matter, which bears the physical qualities of sensible objects, is the first kind of substance. On the other, mind, which bears the activities of thinking, doubting, willing, sensing, and reflecting, is the second kind of substance. Now, substances compose reality; they are the reality. Unfortunately, what we know are just their qualities, and not the substances themselves. This is because substances elude human understanding. With this, Locke underscores the limitation of human knowledge.

Going back to the question of whether or not ideas accurately represent the external world, we could say, using Locke’s epistemological theory, that we know the objects in themselves, however meager that knowledge may be, through the ideas which are triggered by the objects’ primary qualities.

 

 

 

What did Locke say about human nature?

 

“Man… by nature are all free, equal, and independent… The only way whereby anyone can strip himself of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and to unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties and a greater security against any that are not of it.”  (The Second Treatise of Government)

 

Aside from his epistemological theory, Locke is also known for his political theory. In the quotation above taken from his work The Second Treatise of Government, Locke gives us a picture of man’s natural state and the condition by which man enters a civil society. He says that man, by nature, possesses freedom to do things as he wills, and because of this freedom, he is equal with other men. In the state of nature, man has absolute freedom of choice. But to avoid inconveniences in his interaction with other men, he must enter into a compact which limits his freedom as prescribed by the terms of that compact. However, unlike Hobbes, Locke says that the sovereign ruler is accountable to his subjects, and the government’s main goal is to preserve, nurture, and protect the rights of its citizens.

Although they have stark differences, Thomas Hobbes’ and John Locke’s (political) philosophy also have striking similarities. For one, they make use of similar themes, such as “the state of nature,” “natural law,” “right of nature,” and “social contract,” in discussing their political theories. It is therefore important to distinguish the ideas of the two in order to know their respective tenets.

Unlike Thomas Hobbes, John Locke is firm in saying that man is naturally good and reasonable in his dealings with other men. In the “state of nature,” for example, he says that man follows the dictates of his reason, and, consequently, the laws of nature, which reason conforms to. Using reason, men discover their basic equality. This is very similar to Hobbes’ idea of the absence of natural authority amongst men; that the weakest can be at par with the strongest because anyone can be a threat to all. However, the original root of this equality is human liberty; being a threat to all is just secondary and not the real basis. As Locke clarifies, even if everyone is equal in the state of nature because of their absolute freedom of action, the state of nature is not necessarily a state of war. Rather, it is a state of peace, good-will, and mutual assistance.  Even before man’s entrance to a government, reason and conscience exert an influence to his judgments. Using reason, man knows that he ought not to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or properties. Thus, for Locke, although it is true that in the state of nature, one is a judge for his own cause, it is not the case that man wages war against all.

 

 

What is the role of government in the social life of men?

 

“…the chief and the great end… of men’s uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property.”(The Second Treatise of Government)

 

In Locke’s statement above, he proposes that, by uniting and putting themselves under a government, men preserve their rights, thus their lives become more comfortable and peaceful as compared to the state of nature.

Moreover, contrary to the idea of Hobbes, Locke says that the sovereign ruler is not exempted from the norms of the government. He is still accountable for all his actions. The power of the sovereign is limited to the protection and preservation of the natural rights of the people. Man, for example, has the natural right to self-preservation. From this basic right comes his right to sustain his life through reasonable means. If the government fails to protect this basic right, then the people could resort to a justified rebellion.

Locke then advances the idea of a “limited government.” The power of the government is constricted to its task of securing and nurturing the rights of the people. The government is designed to make lives peaceful precisely because of this reason. Anything beyond this duty is a sign of an abuse of power.

Moreover, Locke uses the term “property” in two senses. In its first sense, property is the general name for “lives, liberty, and estates” of individuals. This is the inclusive sense of the term. In its second sense, on the other hand, property means the “product of one’s labor.” Thus in the quoted statement above, property is used in the first sense to mean anything that is present and owned by men.

Furthermore, Locke justifies the right to property (as a product of labor) by citing it as a necessary means in sustaining our lives. Before the emergence of civil societies, men toil the soils, which are not their own, in order to meet their needs. Their labor, however, transforms these publicly owned things in the state of nature into privately owned properties. Nonetheless, there is a limit to the amount of accumulated properties. According to Locke, it must just be enough to meet our needs, so that nothing is spoiled. The right to property is a natural right of man. This natural right is secured through a government.

Unlike Hobbes, Locke believes that the mutual consent of men to form a social contract does not result to an absolute sovereignty. For him, the intention of the subjects in mutually consenting to form a compact is the protection of their rights. This is effectively carried out by dividing the government into three powers, which are the legislative, executive, and the judicial, and by majority representation in the legislature. Moreover, it is not the sovereign that confers the rights to his citizens, as Hobbes believes, but these rights are naturally owned by the citizens, and must therefore be retained and respected by the sovereign. These rights are deduced from man’s nature, and they are not products of a sovereign’s freedom of choice.