The Closed Commercial State

Eighth Chapter: The actual reason why one will take offense at the theory we have presented

Eighth Chapter The actual reason why one will take offense at the theory we have presented In the course of this investigation I have tried to remove whatever objections one could raise against individual parts of our theory. Yet with a great part of mankind, it is fruitless to go into the reasons of things with them, since their entire way of thinking has not arisen in accordance with reasons but through blind chance. With every passing moment they will once again lose hold of the thread offered to them, forgetting what they just knew and had insight into, and from which a conclusion is now being drawn, and thus are ever again torn back to their customary manner of thinking. Even if such people can offer nothing against any of the parts of which the whole consists, they will nevertheless remain averse to the whole itself. [140] It is often more useful to search for the reason, itself hidden from them, for their way of thinking, and then place it before their eyes. Even if this will not improve men who are already formed, one can nevertheless hope that those who are still developing, and the generations of the future, will avoid the mistakes and errors of their predecessors. Thus, I regard the following as the true reason why the ideas set forth here are most profoundly displeasing to so many, who cannot bear to think of the state of things at which they aim. It is a characteristic feature of our age, standing in sharp relief to the seriousness and sobriety of our ances‑ tors, to wish to play and madly swarm to and fro with its fantasy, and since there are few other means available to satisfy this play‑urge, it has a strong inclination to turn life itself into a game. Some contemporaries, having also noticed this tendency, and not themselves of a poetic or philosophical {511} nature, have blamed poetry and philosophy for this phenomenon, whereas in fact the former diverts that urge toward something else than life, and the latter challenges it to the extent that it concerns itself with life. We believe that it is a necessary step, induced through nature alone, on the path that leads our species forward. 197 198 Third Book As a consequence of this tendency, one never wishes to obtain anything by following a rule, but instead to have everything through cunning ruses and luck. Acquisition and all human commerce should resemble a game of chance. One could allow these men to have, keeping to the straight and narrow, the very things they hope to gain through intrigues, cheating, and chance, save on the condition that they now be content with it for the rest of their life. They would then not want it. It delights them more to strive for things cunningly than to possess them securely. It is these people who incessantly call out for freedom—freedom of trade and acquisition, freedom from supervision and policing, freedom from all order and moral‑ ity. Whatever aims at strict regularity and at things taking a firmly ordered, thoroughly uniform course will appear to them as an infringement on their natural freedom. Such people must be repelled at the very thought of an arrangement of public commerce in which swindling speculation, accidental profits, and sudden wealth would no longer occur. This tendency alone gives rise to that frivolity which is more concerned with the enjoyment of the passing moment than with the security of the future, and whose chief maxims are: things will take care of themselves, who knows what will happen in the meantime, what kind of stroke of fortune will occur. Its life wisdom for individuals, and its politics for states, consists only in the art of getting out of the present jam, with no care given to the future difficulties that one is thrust into through the remedy that was taken. For such frivolity the security of the future [141], which one {512} promises to it and which it never itself desires, is no valid substitute for the unbridled freedom of the moment that alone entices it. A way of thinking that is contrary to reason does not easily dispense with a seemingly rational pretext. This is true here as well. And thus, in the case of the present extensive system of world trade, one has praised to us the advantages of the acquaintance of the nations with one another that comes about through travel and...