Odradek reads The Conspiracy Against The Human Race

Odradek · 2014-05-16 19:30:04

So if you know me, you know that antinatalists have been a point of interest and contrition to me for a long time. In fact, I'm probably one of the few non-antinatalists who even knows about them, or has spent much time arguing with them, rather than passing on in silence.

And there's one book that's about as close to an antinatalist bible as you can get. Horror writer Thomas Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against The Human Race a work of philosophy that Ligotti spent a long time working on, and which marked basically the end of his creative output as, far as I'm aware(although he's not dead yet). The book is a summary of the work of a group of philosophers Ligotti calls pessimists: not, in his terms, people who believe that the worst will come, but those who believe that the worst is already here in the state of being alive. The book provoked a flurry of discussion, but one thing about all the ensuing discussion interested me: the vast majority came from non-philosophers or fans of the book's project.

This series of posts summarizing, critiquing, disagreeing, and even occasionally agreeing with Ligotti should fix that.

One thing: this is about Ligotti's book, not Ligotti, the movement he spawned, or anyone calling themselves an antinatalist. I do not mean to attack anyone, just to understand and firmly disagree.

Obā-san · 2014-05-16 19:30:51

i remember hearing about antinatalism in like 8th grade and thinking it sounded cool

Odradek · 2014-05-16 19:47:16

We begin with a forward by Ray Brassier, a philosopher who's work I happen to find interesting. His polemical, strongly realist, and anti-phenomenological writing is a big breath of fresh air in English-speaking Continental philosophy, and his work on the reception of Wilfred Sellars is of particular interest to me. For our purpose, the important thing is that Brassier self-identifies as a nihilist.

We know what verdict is reserved for those foolhardy enough to dissent from the common

conviction according to which “being alive is all right,” to borrow an insistent phrase from the

volume at hand. Disputants of the normative buoyancy of our race can expect to be chastised for

their ingratitude, upbraided for their cowardice, patronized for their shallowness. Where self-love

provides the indubitable index of psychic health, its default can only ever be seen as a symptom of

psychic debility. Philosophy, which once disdained opinion, becomes craven when the opinion in

question is whether or not being alive is all right. Suitably ennobled by the epithet “tragic,” the

approbation of life is immunized against the charge of complacency and those who denigrate it

condemned as ingrates.

He is also allergic to small words.

Brassier starts by linking Ligotti to his own project. Just as Brassier tries to show, against figures like McDowell and Dreyfus, that the world does not need a counter-enlightenment re-enchanting of the world, Ligotti is trying to show that the life that McDowell and Dreyfus try to defend does not have the value they tend to put on it. He and Ligotti, then, come to destroy the life-world, not to praise it.

This seems to me, a bit of a case of stacking the deck. If Ligotti can show that life does not have the value that others place on it, Brassier can place knowledge above life without much dissent. It should also be asked whether Brassier's views are as destructive as he seems to think they are. In the words of Anthony Paul Smith "I don't care whether I have a Cartesian Ego, oh my God."

That said, Ray Brassier sets high praise of Ligotti's novel. In his words

The Conspiracy against the Human Race sets out what is perhaps the most sustained challenge

yet to the intellectual blackmail that would oblige us to be eternally grateful for a “gift” we never

invited

We shall see how true this is.

Odradek · 2014-05-16 19:48:02

Look at your body—

A painted puppet, a poor toy

Of jointed parts ready to collapse,

A diseased and suffering thing

With a head full of false imaginings.

—The Dhammapada

I have no commentary on this epigram, other than to say it was in obscure 90s FMV game MODE

Odradek · 2014-05-16 20:11:59

Ligotti starts by citing German philosopher Julius Bahnsen, who once said that "Man is a self-conscious Nothing". Bahnsen believed that "that, appearances to the contrary, all reality is the expression of a unified, unchanging force" which is "monstrous in nature, resulting in a universe of indiscriminate butchery

and mutual slaughter among its individuated parts". This, incidentally, is roughly the same view as the more famous philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, leading me to believe that Ligotti used Bahnsen because he liked the bit about man being a self-conscious nothing. Bahnsen is fairly obscure today, a fact with Ligotti attributes to "As a rule, anyone desirous of an audience, or even a place in society,

might profit from the following motto: “If you can’t say something positive about humanity, then

say something equivocal.”"

This would be the same society that gave accolades to Samuel Beckett, HP Lovecraft, William S Burroughs, and Charles Bukowski, wouldn't it?

For not the first time in the book, Ligotti laments his own incapacity to convince anyone of his beliefs and the interminability of debates on this subject. Not much to say on this, other than that, while I can see where his frustration comes from, it still gets a bit annoying to hear this refrain.

Ligotti starts an analysis of puppetry, a theme that is a favorite of his. Puppets, Ligotti notes, are designed to be similar to humans, but not too similar. To approach humanity would invoke a sense of uncanny unease. Ligotti explains that this unease may come from our own view of ourselves as free agent clashing with the view of puppets as mindless, well, puppets. If we view ourselves as not determined by our own wills, Ligotti, feels a sense of horror begins to arise. Or, in the words of They Might Be Giants "Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of"

Finally, in this chapter, Ligotti links his own project to his work as a horror writer. Before, Ligotti showed horror outside our world. Now he opens the door to horror inside our world.

Salix Babylonika · 2014-05-16 20:24:23

I remember hearing about this book a few years ago and basically considering it a personal affront.

I still kind of do, only because I cannot stand people who hate people categorically. There is a special kind of immaturity reserved for people who talk about humans as though they're not one.

Odradek reads The Conspiracy Against The Human Race

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