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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 231 enough to make any such failures seem insignificant - abundant enough, in effect, to instill carelessness as a way of life. Spontaneous agents who have survived material deprivation with their spontaneity intact undergo no very profound transformation when supplied with material abundance. Wealth of resources in conjunction with spontaneity of action thus lead this community of agents to be self-anointing in their value judgments. Because material abundance enables their lifestyles and empowers their choices, they naturally regard their unending supply of material abundance, and the power and status it confers on them, as confirming their inherent worth; as both motive and reward for the spontaneity of their behavior, and for the particular thoughts and desires they spontaneously express. Thus their wealth, their power and their position lead them to evaluate themselves, their actions and their circumstances - regardless of their soon-forgotten consequences - as intrinsically valuable; and others who are unlike them, conversely, as lacking in value; as insignificant and uninteresting afterthoughts. Although spontaneous agents lack self-respect, they do not lack self-worth or self-confidence. Their material abundance, power and status confer their sense of self-worth on them, confer authority and legitimacy on their actions, and so confer a sense of entitlement to perform them. Wealth, power and status make them who and what they are, and enshrine their dominance. That is why Nietzsche describes such a community as one of Übermenschen. A community of spontaneous agents (or, if you will, Übermenschen ) is not capable of engendering a recognizable morality, i.e. a set of motivationally effective practices that establish and govern equitable relations between individuals with competing or conflicting interests. It is not capable of generating such a set of practices toward others who are unlike or outside that community, because spontaneous agents accord such others neither value nor influence in their affairs, and therefore have no incentive to engage with them. But such a community is equally incapable of engendering a recognizable morality to guide interactions even within that community itself. The pervasive preoccupation with self and immediate satisfaction is too overpowering, and the concern for long-term consequences too underdeveloped. Relationships within such a community, both personal and social, are a series of shortsighted and unregulated power struggles in which influence and status trump principle. This ideal of spontaneity is recognizable as a variation on the limiting case of the utility-maximizing ideal described in Volume I, Chapter IV.4. We saw there that in this ideal case, the utility-maximizing agent achieves his ends instantaneously, with no expenditure whatsoever of time or energy - thereby achieving the smallest possible fractional proportion of resources expended to ends achieved. I also observed there that the limiting ideal of utility-maximization implies that the agent's adoption of an end physically © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
