We've discussed before how modern anti-anthropology views humanity: as radically autonomous individuals, self-created through reason and will; and how this anti-anthropology results in a politics of abstractly equal freedom, in which substantive right and wrong, good and evil, are replaced by what is willed or chosen by the free and equal new man. When this anti-anthropology encounters the real world one result is the untermensch, the Low Man, chained to nature, history and tradition, standing in the way of the full emergence of the free and equal new man. While liberalism claims to be radically opposed to authoritative discrimination, in the real world politics or government just is authoritative discrimination. Human authority which discriminates, binds us to its discriminations, and enforces its discriminations legitimately is essential to, is virtually a definition of, politics and government.
So we can see that the requirements of reality, nay of basic rationality, are set radically in opposition to liberalism. Because liberalism is a political doctrine, and despite its genuine and absolute commitment to political equal freedom, liberalism must itself act as an authority: it must authoritatively discriminate between different conceptions of the good. Because it at one and the same time must authoritatively discriminate and must deny the legitimacy of authoritative discrimination, there is in liberalism necessarily an anthropological bifurcation or splitting of humanity into "high men" who are free and equal supermen to whom the anti-discrimination rule applies absolutely, and "Low Men", the untermenschen, who are not fully human. The Low Men are those against whom liberalism must discriminate authoritatively; and because it must do so, and at the same time it is in liberalism's view inherently illegitimate to authoritatively discriminate between differing freely chosen substantive conceptions of the good and the meaning of life, it is simply incorrect to view the Low Men as fully human in the pertinent, politically authoritative sense.
So we can see that the requirements of reality, nay of basic rationality, are set radically in opposition to liberalism. Because liberalism is a political doctrine, and despite its genuine and absolute commitment to political equal freedom, liberalism must itself act as an authority: it must authoritatively discriminate between different conceptions of the good. Because it at one and the same time must authoritatively discriminate and must deny the legitimacy of authoritative discrimination, there is in liberalism necessarily an anthropological bifurcation or splitting of humanity into "high men" who are free and equal supermen to whom the anti-discrimination rule applies absolutely, and "Low Men", the untermenschen, who are not fully human. The Low Men are those against whom liberalism must discriminate authoritatively; and because it must do so, and at the same time it is in liberalism's view inherently illegitimate to authoritatively discriminate between differing freely chosen substantive conceptions of the good and the meaning of life, it is simply incorrect to view the Low Men as fully human in the pertinent, politically authoritative sense.
Obviously liberalism, particularly in prosperous times, is uneasy with the untermensch built into the combination of its view of the world with the actual reality of the world as it really is. But the less-than-fully-human untermensch always lurks right beneath the surface; and sometimes pokes his head above it. The Low Men are those against whom liberalism must substantively discriminate in order to keep the way cleared for the free and equal new man to live as a self-created, fully autonomous being who has transcended nature, history, and tradition. The Low Men are those who are impediments to the will of the new man, impediments to him realizing whatever he wills himself to realize subject only to the constraint that his rights are absolutely equal to the rights of others. The Low Man can be anyone at all who is not fully autonomous, fully free and equal, self-created through reason and will.
Who is the Low Man required and entailed by the fact of liberalism holding and asserting public authority, entailed by the collision of liberalism's incoherent politics with the hard cold facts of reality? Dear reader, if you are reading What's Wrong With the World with an even somewhat sympathetic ear, why, the Low Man is you.
http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2009/02/the_low_man.html
Who is the Low Man required and entailed by the fact of liberalism holding and asserting public authority, entailed by the collision of liberalism's incoherent politics with the hard cold facts of reality? Dear reader, if you are reading What's Wrong With the World with an even somewhat sympathetic ear, why, the Low Man is you.
http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2009/02/the_low_man.html
posted by martin at November 07, 2018
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