Anthropocene and Technocracy

Recognizing the influence of human activity on the terrestrial ecosystem, geologists are considering formally declaring that the Earth is now in a post-Holocene Age--the Anthropocene.  While there is debate as to the beginning of the latter, it is generally agreed that the emergence of its defining characteristics is accelerated by the Industrial Revolution, circa 1700.  Now, since Industrialization has been peculiar to no specific Political or Economic system, Modern Political Philosophy has been neither illuminating or effective in the formulation of the social organization that best conduces to these most salient and epochal developments in human history.  However, an alternative that is at least akin to such progress, but is rarely taken into consideration by theorists, is what can be called Technocracy, meaning the rule of Know-How, not to be confused with the most usual use of the term, which connotes a mechanistic social order.

Nominalism, Platonism, Reductionism

Nominalism and Platonism are inverses--according to the former, Individuals are real, and Universals are not, and the reverse, according to the latter.  Schopenhauer also inverts Nominalism, but while for Platonists the Universals are Ideas, for Schopenhauer there is one Universal--the Will to Live, e. g. the reproductive drive.  Regardless, he does not resolve the problem that he shares with Platonists--explaining any divergence from the Universal, i. e. appearances, individuals, illusions, etc., even if 'irreal'.  In his case, the divergence is the Principle of Individuation, which, qua Principle, is real, and, hence, can be ascribed only to the Universal, from which it follows that the produced Individuals are real.  But, even if he were to retract Principle status from Individuation, thereby reducing it to mere illusion, the possibility of illusoriness still requires a ground.  So, what the conflicting inverses share is unsuccessful Reductionism, leaving both Universal and Individual intact.

Nominalism and Capitalism

Beginning with Hume's associate Smith, the regular flagrant violation of Nominalism by Capitalism continues to be the conceiving of the 'invisible hand' as anything other than a past repeated association of phenomena projected as obtaining in the future.  A less obvious violation follows from the previously discussed Nominalist analysis of the I.  For, if the latter dissolves into a multiplicity of perceptions, then so, too, does any concept expressed as 'self-interest', and, hence, Egoism does, as well.  So, the vehemence with which Capitalism is frequently defended is not based on any methodological rigor.

Nominalism and the 'I'

Nominalists, for whom the Individual is real, but the species is not, tend to overlook that Hume demonstrates the irreality of the former, as well.  For, if the 'I' is nothing but a bundle of perceptions, then it is a entity in name only.  Now, while Kant rescues the concept from that conclusion, by attributing reality to the 'bundle', and, thus, to the 'I think' that effects the bundling, Schopenhauer denies even that attribution, thereby dissolving the presumed Individual completely.  Thus, his occasional individuation of the Will to Live constitutes a lapse in that skepticism.  Regardless, his anti-Individualism is a reminder of the arbitrariness, if not inconsistency of Nominalism.

Nominalism, Species, History

One of the shortcomings of Nominalism, i. e. Atomist Semantics, is its inadequacy to organisms.  For example, that "forest" signifies a multiplicity of trees, while "tree" does not signify a multiplicity of leaves, branches, etc., is arbitrary.  Furthermore, it cannot represent growth, e. g. the "Jones family" before the birth of the second child not only means something different afterwards, Nominalism cannot connect the two meanings.  So, there is no adequate Nominalist objection to the proposition 'The human species is governed by a principle of Diversification', i. e. the history of the species cannot be reduced to an account of all the individual humans in a time-span.

Individualism and History

Nietzsche's Dionysian anti-Individualism is a continuation of Schopenhauer's quasi-Buddhist undermining of that central tenet of Modern Philosophy.  But, an earlier, alternative, means to that end is implicit in the works of Vico.  For, his hypothesis that human history is constituted by a general pattern entails that the activities of individual members of the race are determined by a force other than self-motivation.  Now, whether or not Schopenhauer is familiar with Vico, he surely is with Kant, and, hence, with the latter's thesis that human history is secretly determined by Nature, from which the illusoriness of individual volition can easily be inferred.  So, though Schopenhauer does not recognize the anti-Individualism that is potential in any concept of History, Nietzsche does.

Camel, History, Redemption

Zarathustra himself becomes the Camel of one of his earlier speeches, when he assumes the burden of the entire human past by affirming it.  He foreshadows that moment while addressing "fragments and limbs of men", characterizing it as "redemption".  The implicit contrasts are clear: Christian salvation of individual souls from the history of the species, secularized in Modern Philosophy as a-temporal Individualism, e. g. the Cartesian Cogito.