MAVE Dissertation,
Lancaster University 1995

A Genealogy of Guilt
and Environmentalism

Pete Rogers

FORWARD
Action is the most deceptive of ideas. 'With the most action the greatest is achieved'. - How could eight words contain so much confusion? It is only during silent inaction that anything is achieved. An achievement beyond measure is the experience of a certain quality of silence. Stillness is achievement, action the waste product of stillness.
But how can I be still if my house is possessed? If the 'devil within' constantly bays for unearthly, supernatural and unnatural attention. Not just a conscience but an absolute conscience, an absolute guilt - A Lutheran demon that suffocates at the most vulnerable moment. In desperation I constantly run from my house to escape the demon. I dive into the swarming activity that entices incessantly, and allows me to travel far away from him.
But with this escape there is a price to pay, there is a cost. Out of doors there is no rest, no stillness, for that can only be inside. Thus I crave to get back into my house, but through my lengthy absence the demon has taken over the whole of it and I can hardly get near it. Eventually I give up trying and so by necessity try to forget that I desire to get to it and into it. Slowly day by day and day to day I forget that it even ever existed. I constantly remain in the buzzing activity out of doors that now becomes my house and consequently, out of deference to it, I call it achievement; and to honour it I call it progress.
But wait... Is there no way to banish this demon? Can I not perform some sort of self-exorcism? An exorcism requires a ceremony - a ritual of words. But for the exorcism to be successful the ritual must have the right tone, the right atmosphere. It must contain a certain seriousness, honesty and integrity. And the words of that ceremony should not so much be personal but private - their outward form is public and clear, but by contrast they point privately inward. They point past the demon toward the centre of my house; that safe, secure, and secret sanctuary. Thus be warned: For the ritual to have power the words must be heard as they were written, twice!
- "Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin."

PREFACE
1
What is the value of environmentalism? There appears to be no reason to ask this question for the answer is as clear as the reason to go on living. - Environmentalism is an attempt to stop the destruction of nature as we know it and thereby also an attempt to stop the self-destruction of humanity and its cultures.- How noble! Has anyone asked those 'victims' if they want to be saved? The answer is as clear as before and the comment as ironic - How wise! For who is really the beneficiary in this relationship and who the martyr? Who the saved and who the crucified? - As if these terms were clear!
2
"My experiences give me a right to a general mistrust of the so-called 'selfless' drives, of the whole 'love of one's neighbour' which is always ready with deeds and advice. It counts with me as weakness, as a special case of the incapacity to withstand stimuli - it is only among decadents that pity is called a virtue. My reproach against those who practise pity is that shame, reverence, a delicate feeling for distance easily eludes them, that pity instantly smells of mob and is so like bad manners as to be mistaken for them - that the hands of pity can under certain circumstances intrude downright destructively into a great destiny, into a solitariness where wounds are nursed, into a privilege for great guilt. I count the overcoming of pity among the noble virtues: I have, as 'Zarathustra's Temptation', invented a case in which a great cry of distress reaches him, in which pity like an ultimate sin seeks to attack him, to seduce him from allegiance to himself. To remain master here, here to keep the elevation of one's task clean of the many lower and more shortsighted drives which are active in so-called selfless actions, that is the test, the final test perhaps, which a Zarathustra has to pass - the actual proof of his strength..." Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Why I Am So Wise", 4.
3
"I quite properly gave God credit for it and made him the father of evil" Friedrich Nietzsche, Towards a Genealogy of Morals, Preface, 3.
4
The motivation of environmental concern is under scrutiny and through this one may discern its character more clearly. For the most charitable of actions may conceal within them the secret that generates their need and through its exposure demonstrate their folly. 5
"We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers, we ourselves, to ourselves, and there is a good reason for this. We have never looked for ourselves, - so how are we ever supposed to find ourselves...We remain strange to ourselves out of necessity, we do not understand ourselves, we must confusedly mistake who we are, the motto 'everyone is furthest from himself' applies to us for ever, - we are not 'knowers' when it comes to ourselves..." Friedrich Nietzsche, Towards a Genealogy of Morals, Preface, 1. 6
White writes: "Hence we shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man". But what other reason could it have for its existence? The only reason that nature can be left with for its existence is to serve man. But perhaps it has its own reason for existence that is intrinsic to it, one might say; but why then, should I look for it? The problem with any reason seeking strategy however, is to begin to search in this pyritic direction in the first place - although what a rich vein twenty eight years have proved it to be! - Why must everything begin with a why? 7
Since Lynn White Jr. the dichotomy between man and nature in relation to Christianity has been a great issue for modern environmentalism. His long overdue but only half-right analysis attributes this dichotomy, and exploitation of it, to the "Christian dogma of man's transcendence of, and rightful mastery over, nature". Christianity is indeed to blame but not simply through dogma. The dichotomy is a much more powerful division that each individual experiences for him or herself; it comes from within and not as if imposed from without as White's dogma seems to be. Each individual brings with them what might be called a desire, and that desire is to impose this dichotomy. But how could such an unnatural desire exist? To understand this we must look to its origins and its association with two other unnatural desires - morality and guilt.
8
"If one is rich enough, it is even fortunate to be in the wrong. A god come to earth ought to do nothing whatever but wrong: to take upon oneself, not the punishment, but the guilt - only that would be godlike." Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Why I Am So Wise", 5.

Genealogy
1
The origin of morality Nietzsche writes, is in "the paradoxical task which nature has set herself with regard to humankind" (GM., II, 1) and that is "To breed an animal which is able to make promises" (ibid.). A pre-condition of promising is the ability to remember what one has promised and thus be capable of fulfilling that promise. Memory is a counter-device of the natural forgetfulness that gives the human animal its strength. Forgetfulness allows "a little peace, a little tabular rasa of consciousness...like a doorkeeper or guardian of mental order, rest and etiquette: from which we can immediately see how there could be no happiness, cheerfulness, hope, pride, immediacy, without forgetfulness" (ibid.). The individual who is able to cultivate the ability to remember and thus also become predictable, Nietzsche calls the 'sovereign individual'. This man is "master of the free will" (ibid. 2) and "has necessarily been given mastery over circumstances, over nature and over all creatures with a less durable and reliable will" (ibid.). This freedom and control confer a privilege of responsibility, the awareness of which, sinks deep into the depths of the sovereign individual to become an instinct that he calls conscience, and thus facilitates the possibility of guilt. In other words, promising makes possible the relationship of creditor and debtor which makes possible personal obligation, and thus the feeling of guilt when that obligation is not met. Here we see the origins of the man-nature dichotomy in pre-historic custom morality. It is the relationship of buyer and seller, creditor and debtor, that leads to a feeling of pride and superiority over the rest of nature. "Fixing prices, setting values, working out equivalents, exchanging - this preoccupied man's first thoughts to such a degree that in a certain sense it constitutes thought: the most primitive kind of cunning was bred here, as was also, presumably, the first appearance of human pride, man's sense of superiority over other animals. Perhaps our word 'man' (manas) expresses something of this first sensation of self-confidence: man designated himself as the being who measures values, who values and measures, as the 'calculating animal as such'" (ibid. 8). People that can make bargains are picked out from the rest of 'nature', but also implicitly the objects of those bargains, (food, raw materials etc.). That is, objects are picked out that can enter the morality of bargain making.
2
Bad conscience is in the next stage of morality and comes about when man "finally found himself imprisoned within the confines of society and peace" (ibid. 16). It is a consciousness of guilt towards the community, society or state. When man is confined within 'society and peace' he must suppress his instincts because he must follow the rules and laws of that society which consist in more than a simple one to one creditor debtor relationship. "the poor things were reduced to relying on thinking, inference, calculation, and the connecting of cause with effect, that is to relying on their 'consciousness', that most impoverished and error prone organ!" (ibid.) An analogy is drawn with the change that sea animals must have experienced when "they were forced to either become land animals or perish - at one go, all instincts were devalued and 'suspended'" (ibid.). The one sided reliance on 'consciousness' to act did not however mean that "the old instincts had not suddenly ceased to make their demands!" (ibid.) At this crucial point bad conscience crystallises: "All instincts which are not discharged outwardly turn inwards - this is what I call the internalization of man: with it there now evolves in man what will later be called his 'soul'. The whole inner world, originally stretched thinly as though between two layers of skin, was expanded and extended itself and gained depth, breadth and height in proportion to the degree that the external discharge of man's instincts was obstructed" (ibid.). However, the phenomenon of bad conscience is not an entirely negative one. "We must be wary of thinking disparagingly about this whole phenomenon because it is inherently ugly and painful" (ibid. 18). Bad conscience has finally, "as true womb of ideal and imaginative events, brought a wealth of novel, disconcerting beauty and affirmation to light, and perhaps for the first time, beauty itself..." (ibid. 18) "Bad conscience is a sickness, there is no point in denying it, but a sickness rather like pregnancy" (ibid. 19).
3
Bad conscience is associated with a stronger feeling of guilt that reinforces the man-nature dichotomy which arose out of custom morality. Although, rather than the dichotomy being defined by what can or can not enter a bargain it is defined by what has the potential to make one feel guilty or not. However this new dichotomy is not drawn over a significantly different boundary but instead forms a second layer along a very similar boundary as the one that already exists. Now the dichotomy exists between objects and creatures (including humans) that we tend to experience as internalizing - that is, they tend to encourage the internalization of man - and those objects or creatures that we do not. A stronger feeling of guilt is felt by the individual if, at any particular time, they do not conform to what they think society expects of them. Here they are effectively feeling guilty for what they are, which is only possible after a split self has been created by the internalization of man. After this internalization there exists an 'inner world' or 'soul' and an outer self that relies on 'consciousness' to guide its actions in society. As the individual acts in society there will therefore always be a part of him or her, the inner self, that can not live up to the standards of society. Regardless of what the individual does and how well the outer self performs the inner self will always feel inadequate in some way. This is inevitably because the inner self, consisting of instincts turned inwards, is of a different constitution to the reasoning needed in order to act within the confines of society and peace. Indeed this is why it has been pushed inward or internalised. A feeling of guilt is induced because the individual feels as a debtor who enjoys all the benefits of society (the creditor) but can not keep his or her side of the bargain by living up to what society expects of them. Thus this stronger guilt that is associated with bad conscience is a guilt about not conforming to what one thinks society expects of one and it reinforces the man-nature dichotomy because it applies a second layer approximately to the separation drawn by custom morality. In other words objects and creatures that engender the experience of conformation guilt tend to be seen as manmade and those that don't tend to be seen as natural. Therefore this second layer adds more force to the man-nature dichotomy initiated by custom morality because it is generated by the internalization of instincts and the feeling of guilt rather than simply the practicalities of primitive economics.
4
The idea of bad conscience facilitated the idea of god and the Christian God particularly. Nietzsche suggests that the roots of the idea of god begin in pre-history. "the living generation always acknowledged a legal obligation towards the earlier generation, and in particular towards the earliest, which founded the tribe" (ibid.). In this way the living generation always felt indebted to preceding ones. As the power of the tribe increased the debt to their ancestors increased in direct proportion, until "the ancestors of the most powerful tribes must have grown to an immense stature and must have been pushed into the obscurity of divine mystery and transcendence: - inevitably the ancestor himself is finally transfigured into a god" (ibid.). The advent of the Christian God brought the greatest feeling of debt and guilt on earth because through the crucifixion God actually sacrifices himself for man's guilt, and so pays himself back. This leaves the debtor in an infinitely worse position, because not only has the creditor not allowed the debtor to dispel his guilt by repaying the debt, the creditor has added to the debt by not only not waiving the debt but actually paying himself back. This is not simply a doubling of the debt but an infinite increase because it excludes any possibility of repaying the debt, so man is simply left with an infinity of guilt. Nietzsche calls this "Christianity's stroke of genius" and wryly remarks "the creditor sacrificing himself for his debtor, out of love (would you credit it?-), out of love for the debtor!..." (ibid. 21)
5
However, given this state of affairs one would suppose that if atheism increased then this new guilt that arises from the Christian God, would decline. However this does not allow for the moralization of the concepts of guilt and duty. This is "the way they are pushed back into conscience; more precisely, the way bad conscience is woven together with the concept of God" (ibid. 21). This weaving together is different from a simple connection because the concepts of guilt and duty become relegated to bad conscience away from God and in so doing produce moral guilt. In other words they are pushed closer toward bad conscience than to God so that when God is lost they do not disappear with God but remain integrated with the bad conscience created by 'society and peace'. Without God however, the question remains of against whom those concepts of infinite guilt and duty are to be directed. First it is against the debtor because "with the impossibility of expiating the guilt, is conceived the impossibility of discharging the penance, the idea that it cannot be paid off ('eternal punishment')" (ibid. 21). The debtor feels that he owes himself something that he can not pay off so he feels guilty towards himself. Second, and ultimately, infinite guilt and duty are directed against the creditor through 'Christianity's stroke of genius'. "Here we should think of the causa prima of man, the beginning of the human race" (ibid. 21) when we think of the creditor. Nietzsche offers three options for this causa prima: man's ancestor, nature or existence in general. As all of these are viewed as the creditor man feels an infinite debt to them and thus an infinite guilt and duty to them, but without God there appears to be no reason for this so the three are now seen in an infinitely negative light; man's ancestor is "burdened with a curse ('Adam', 'original sin', 'the will in bondage')" (ibid.), nature is imputed with the "principle of evil...(diabolization of nature)" (ibid.) and existence inspires a desire for something other than existence, a desire for nothingness, for the 'antithesis' because it "is left standing as inherently worthless" (ibid.).
6
Moral guilt however, is only possible after the development of the man-nature dichotomy, then in turn it adds infinitely to the dichotomy. As I have mentioned 'Christianity's stroke of genius' means that the feeling of moral guilt is a feeling of unfulfillable obligation or infinite guilt, which means that one can say that it is experienced as an absolute. The consciousness of moral guilt therefore, occurs when one transgresses a moral law which is a universal law. Nature however, does not conform to human standards of morality let alone Christian morality. Murder, cannibalism and theft can be seen as regular occurrences in nature, but to interpret the behaviour of parts of nature in this way would, of course, be an anthropomorphising mistake. Rather, these concepts simply do not make any sense when applied to nature. Therefore one must say that nature is exempt somehow from the moral laws that apply to humanity if one wants to maintain the absolute status of Christian morality and moral guilt. So, the development of the man-nature dichotomy thus far provides a smooth passage to the radical infinite dichotomy needed for moral guilt to operate.
7
'Christianity's stroke of genius' reduces Catholicism's confession and Protestantism's faith simply to escapes from the consciousness of moral guilt and not ways of eradicating it. The Christian becomes dependent, addicted, to the drug of Christianity. Each fix provides an escape that alleviates the pain, but only temporarily, and Christianity knows that the customer will return. - However, since the enlightenment Christianity has had competition! The reason and science of Humanism exposes the childish stories of Catholicism and thus the divine mediation of confession. Martin Luther's (1483-1546) faith is, by necessity, unreasoning. To have a reason to believe is certainty and not faith - an absurdity for the Humanist. Christianity is thus wrestled from the streets, but the moralization of guilt and duty assure that the craving still exists. The consciousness of moral guilt is still present as an excess; and so the addicts look to Humanism for the new drug, the new escape.
8
In all then, Catholics, Protestants and atheists alike, the moral guilt that is felt is originally generated by a desire to pay Christ back for dying for us. - How generous God is with his gifts! An unfulfillable obligation that buries itself so deep within the individual that he or she knows not what devil drives him or her into constant motion and activity. It is a voice inside that springs into life as soon as one rests, and then digs its spurs deep into one's side to stimulate a response. To escape from this pain one might develop or create spurs of one's own; but no, this is a woman's answer, Humanism provides a truly masculine solution stripped of spurs - castrated. Here the man acts in accordance with traditions because they are True and thus he can, with the certainty of a child, be absolutely right. Truth requires a literalness rather than literaryness, a rigidity rather than style and a directness rather than indirectness. In this way he becomes an equal trading partner with Christ. Christ left him with the guilt of being absolutely wrong, the unfulfillable obligation, but a True tradition allows man to act in an absolutely right way. The obligation can be fulfilled, the moral guilt escaped, but blinkers are fitted. If a tradition is understood as absolute then it must always be followed whatever the consequences. This alleviates moral guilt but at what cost? - Man's humanity? Genocide, extinction, murder, torture - carelessness. Any act, any atrocity is no objection here; Christ has given us 'good' and 'evil' and in so doing taken us beyond good and bad.
9
Absolutism is not the only environmentally destructive escape from the consciousness of moral guilt. The idea of progress contains the same degree of deception as action when they are associated. Progress becomes synonymous with achievement, :- I must immediately spit lest this putrid equivalence becomes stuck in my throat :- when progressive action attempts to colonise achievement it defiles the human and degrades me through a deafening burning that leaves me as a shell - a frozen startled statue. To what, exactly, can I as an existing individual progress? The answers echo with hollowness that betray their flight and escape: hope, distraction and dreams. The three smell of defeat. Moral guilt is the conquering army that sentences the defeated to one of these tasks that drive the dynamo to keep the progress burning bright. To have progressed is to stop progressing. If the bulb goes out one is reminded of the ever present occupying army - like a haunted house the ghost is only threatening in the dark. - Thus one of the tasks must be constantly generating. Only through hope can an unfulfillable obligation seem fulfillable. Only through distraction can an unfulfillable obligation be forgotten. Only through dreams can one imagine another world that has no unfulfillable obligations. But how can one tell if these tasks are generating progress? The only way is to record the recordable, the quantifiable, and compare with the quantifiable of today. Through this process the term 'quality of life' becomes strained and bleached. Once full of colour the records reach out to directly grasp only the literal, the superficial, the public and unsecret. The invisible and silent, which can only be indirectly grasped, are by necessity left out by this assayer. And so the three tasks must only also go after the obvious, the material; otherwise how is one to know if one's life has any 'quality'? - Through enslavement we have become incapable of judging our own life's quality. - "Excuse me Mr Assayer, have I a good life? Please be gentle with your judgement because I have no opinion of my own."
10
There is another escape strategy that 'environmentalists' might use and this is an escape to nature. Experiencing what the individual considers to be nature provides a temporary release from the moral guilt that arises from the experience of culture. As I mentioned before, nature does not conform to human standards of morality let alone Christian morality. Also to pity nature or to expect pity from nature not only makes little sense but misses a significant part of the experience of nature. This experience is in complete opposition to the experience of culture or society because the individual does not expect nature to behave towards them in any particular way and the individual is not expected by nature to behave towards it in any particular way. There is no pressure to conform and so there is no bad conscience and no moral guilt. The relationship is of complete indifference; and it is precisely because of this indifference that the experience is guilt-free. Thus the experience of nature can be used as an escape from the guilt inherent in Western culture.
11
The origin of the 'environmentalist's' experience of 'nature' offers an explanation for the apparently conflicting descriptions of the experience of nature as 'other' and being 'at one' with it. This explanation shows that these are not competing descriptions but two possible interpretations of the same phenomenon. - To feel at one with nature requires the abandonment of cultural heritage. Here guilt can only be escaped by abandoning the culture altogether because I feel that guilt is not with me but arises in the relationship between me and culture. I must get outside culture to escape the guilt that I feel. I must feel as if I am facing outwards to culture from within nature and so feel at one with nature. I escape the guilt because it came with my culture not me - the celebration of nature is the temporary release from guilt that requires abandoning cultural heritage. - On the other hand to experience nature as other I must realise that within the man-made environments of Western culture I am constantly reminded of the society that constructed it and the confining morality that comes along with that society. As a Westerner I also realise that I am embedded in that culture and morality. It is part of me and I am part of it. Also I might experience nature as an escape or release from the guilt that accompanies my experience of society. But because I feel deeply embedded in my culture I feel like I am facing outwards to nature from within my culture when I am experiencing nature. Nature is thus described as other by me. I escape my guilt precisely because the guilt is with me-and-culture and I need something other than me-and-culture to escape it - the celebration of nature is the temporary release from guilt without the abandonment of cultural heritage.
12
There is however one further escape strategy that is potentially the most powerful. This is because it presents more than an opportunity in prehumanist/premoralization terms, to pay Christ back, it presents an opportunity to do him a favour; so effectively the individual changes from being the debtor to being the creditor, to becoming God. This strategy is a commitment to environmentalism. That is, a commitment to 'save the world', or nature, or humanity by saving nature from destruction. Here it appears that God has made a slip! He has allowed the possibility that his creation may be destroyed. So he has allowed the possibility that some blessed individuals may be able to prevent this destruction for him. In moralized or humanised terms the guilt, as we saw from section 21 of Towards a Genealogy of Morals II, was directed, due to the lack of God, toward either the debtor, the self, or causa prima for which Nietzsche indicated three options: man's ancestor, nature or existence in general. The potential environmentalist seizes on the opportunity that environmentalism presents to pay nature back. Because nature in the twentieth century has lost its threatening face and rather appears under threat, the environmentalist does not need to diabolize the creditor, nature, as Nietzsche suggests (because it seems like the origin of the pain of moral guilt) but can instead turn the tables and become the creditor to nature. By putting myself into the environmentalist mode of being concerned for nature and the planet, I can temporarily put myself into the position of the creditor rather than debtor. I can obtain this mode by simply feeling concerned about a particular environmental issue; although this mode can be consolidated (to check if I really meant it) through action, such as recycling or contributing to an environmental charity or pressure group. Thus environmentalism presents an ever ready opportunity to escape temporarily into the position of the creditor. However, as an escape it only treats the symptom and not the cause, so it is possible for the environmentalist to fall into environmentally destructive escapes. But worse it actively fuels the cause. The escape to environmentalism relies on me 'doing a favour' so that I can temporarily become the creditor, thus I have done something good, something that I thought I ought to have done and by implication, that I would have thought good if someone else had done it and therefore something that they ought to have done. In this process new obligations have been created which, because moral guilt was never challenged, become moralized or woven together with the concept of God. These new obligations do not replace the old ones but add to them and thus create more moral guilt in the individual and others when they are not met. Thus the escape to environmentalism only contributes to moral guilt.
13
The escape to environmentalism can produce a different effect however, and with it we shall reach the end of this genealogy of environmentalism in a way that suggests a new approach. - As an escape environmentalism has a unique characteristic which is rather like grabbing the tail of a sleeping snake. The snake will begin to strike out at everyone except me, who because I am holding the tail and manoeuvre with great dexterity, it cannot reach, even though it was me who enraged it in the first place, and continue to enrage it by continuing to hold on. However I cannot now let go because then it is possible for it to bite me, so I must hold even tighter. - Environmentalism that recognises that more than technological or scientific advances are needed suggests that some and often all the assumptions made by people in our society must be challenged. It suggests this because it sees that certain modes of behaviour are to blame and these modes can only be altered by challenging the assumptions that ground them. However, the environmentalist begins to see that it is the whole Western way of life that is to blame rather than any particular assumptions. There do not appear to be any adequate reasons for any of its traditions although the environmentalist does not realise yet that this is because there never can be any adequate reasons for any way of life. In other words the environmentalist is infected by the reason-giving discourse of Humanism and uses its destructive power to undercut the whole of Western life. It is now possible to attack anything and everything, any tradition or values. Also, if the environmentalist takes a break from his environmentalism by partaking in some cultural tradition he is suddenly in danger of being accused by environmentalism, so he or she must not let him or herself slip. - The snake continues to strike out at and bite other people and so they begin to think that maybe they should grab a snake of their own. - Environmentalism makes other people think that they are not doing what they ought, and in this way moral guilt is spread and not reduced - the snakes venom is moral guilt. But the snake is very powerful and tiring to hold onto so I must rest and sleep at some stage. During my sleep however, the snake turns and crawls into my mouth and then my throat, and there bites itself fast. - By attacking all traditions in his or her culture the environmentalist exposes, through reason, the inherent groundlessness of that culture. Humanism constantly seeks reasons but ultimately no reason can be given for any particular tradition or way of life, but he or she still clings onto environmentalism as the branch of a tree and proceeds to cut away the rest of it until they inevitably fall to the ground. Images of environmental atrocities expose the environmentalist to the meaninglessness of life, because to them, nature contains a mosaic of meaning that just exists 'out there', independent of the cynicism and nihilism imbedded in Western culture. Rainforests, whales, dolphins, lions, springboks, flamingos, frogs, trees, flowers, and ants all spring with sincere and colourful meaning to provide a beautiful limb to cling onto. The destruction of 'nature' and 'the environment' is then the destruction of the last meaning. I cry not for the destruction of the buffalo and American Indian but for the destruction of the last meaning in the world that is independent of me and thus simultaneously my ejection into the angst of nihilism, of no meaning, of nothing. This is how it is possible for me to be concerned with the death of a whale that I will never see, the pollution of a coastline I will never walk on, the extinction of a species I have never encountered or simply the extinction of a species as an entity and the destruction of nature as an entity. The power of my concern and distress originates from my flight from the angst of meaninglessness although I arrived at this concern by my flight from moral guilt that motivates my desire to pay nature back. In this way my existential angst and desire to pay nature back becomes mixed together so that I am left with a powerful potion that reconfirms my environmentalism. I thus hold on tighter to the snake's tail with a grip who's strength contains the terror of a brief glance down at the mocking suspension of my feet above the abyss. But my grip now becomes ambiguous and circular, for I continue to grip the snake's tail with all my strength but the snake also has me by the throat. What a sight I must be! To an onlooker I must appear to be trying to pull the snake out but on closer inspection I am perversely clinging to its tail!
14
"But there a man was lying! And there! The dog, leaping, bristling, whining; then it saw me coming - then it howled again, then it cried out - had I ever heard a dog cry so for help?
And truly, I had never seen the like of what I then saw. I saw a young shepherd writhing, choking, convulsed, his face distorted; and a heavy, black snake was hanging out of his mouth.
Had I ever seen so much disgust and pallid horror on a face? Had he, perhaps, been asleep? Then the snake crawled into his throat - and there it had bitten itself fast.
My hands tugged and tugged at the snake - in vain! They could not tug the snake out of the shepherd's throat. Then a voice cried from me: 'Bite! Bite!
'Its head off! Bite! - Thus a voice cried from me, my horror, my hate, my disgust, my pity, all my good and evil cried out of me with a single cry.
You bold men around me! You venturers, adventurers, and those of you who have embarked with cunning sails upon undiscovered seas! You who take pleasure in riddles!
Solve for me the riddle that I saw, interpret to me the vision of the most solitary man!
For it was a vision and a premonition: what did I see in allegory? And who is it that must come one day?
Who is the shepherd into whose mouth the snake thus crawled? Who is the man into whose throat all that is heaviest, blackest will thus crawl?
The shepherd, however, bit as my cry had advised him; he bit with a good bit! He spat far away the snake's head - and sprang up.
No longer a shepherd, no longer a man - a transformed being, surrounded with light, laughing! Never yet on earth had any man laughed as he laughed!
O my brothers, I heard a laughter that was no human laughter - and now a thirst consumes me, a longing that is never stilled.
My longing for this laughter consumes me: oh how do I endure still to live! And how could I endure to die now!
Thus spoke Zarathustra."
"Of the Vision and the Riddle", 2, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche.
15
By losing that ambiguous hold on environmentalism I can lose the last religion and paradoxically through embracing nihilism willingly, meaning and value emerge but on another plane. Here the individual does not do acts of 'chivalry' for the fantasised "the environment" as Don Quixote does for the sake of his fantasised lady Dulcinea del Toboso but acknowledges nihilism and then through care for what he or she does creates meaning precisely because it was he or she who created it. Care allows us to be involved in the immediacy of what we do, not because we are obliged to, but because we want to. By immersing ourselves in what we do we not only generate meaning for ourselves but also for others who can see themselves in that creation. Care involves a loving attention to detail to style to layout and to mood, which entail a certain seriousness, honesty and integrity. From here care can branch out into all that one does. But one can not care for the rainforests! - One can only talk of them as objects. But one can care for one's immediate environment. One's body, clothes, bedroom, house, garden, relatives, friends, food, work, local beauty spots. In short anything that one is personally involved with. How can one tidy the world's affairs if one can not tidy one's own affairs? It is only in this way that one can get back into one's own house and be still and silent in it. Only then can things be achieved. Only then is the demon exorcised. 
APPENDIX
"Ordinary communication, objective thinking, has no secrets; only doubly reflected subjective thinking has secrets; that is, all its essential content is essentially a secret, because it cannot be communicated directly. This is the significance of the secrecy. That this knowledge cannot be stated directly, because the essential in this knowledge is the appropriation itself, means that it remains a secret for everyone who is not through himself doubly reflected in the same way, but that this is the essential form of truth means that this cannot be said in any other way.* Therefore, when someone is set on communicating this directly, he is obtuse; and when someone else is set on demanding this of him, he also is obtuse. Faced with such an illusive, artistic communication, ordinary human obtuseness will cry: It is egotism. So, when obtuseness prevails and communication becomes direct, obtuseness will have won so much that the communicator will have become just as obtuse.
* If in our age there lived a person who, subjectively developed, was aware of the art of communication, he would experience the most glorious buffoonery and farce. He would be turned out of doors as one who is incapable of being objective, until at long last a good-natured objective chap, a systematic devil of a fellow, would most likely have mercy upon him and help him halfway into the paragraphs. What was once regarded as impossibility - namely, to paint a picture of Mars in the armour that makes him invisible - would now succeed extremely well; in fact, what is even more curious, it would now succeed half way." Johannes Climacus, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p79.
In this appendix I shall attempt to defend my use of a certain 'style' as opposed to disinterested analysis in the preceding work. I shall not however, be claiming that one is always superior to the other but that both are valid and limited in their own particular ways and it is only by understanding their validity and limitations that one can employ them appropriately. I will claim that it is only by the use of style or what I will broadly term 'indirect communication' (after Kierkegaard) that it is possible to be persuasive about values. I will assume that most environmental philosophers wish to be persuasive about values and therefore suggest that they must use indirect communication to achieve this goal.
The thesis of this appendix then, will revolve around the idea that there is 'something' that can only be communicated indirectly and consequently something that disinterested analysis, direct communication, can never communicate. This something is the crucial element that facilitates a change in the values of the reader, and can be broadly described, although very loosely, as reader participation. It is what the reader brings with him or her that is the crucial 'something' that indirect communication attempts to communicate with; and it is in this way that indirect communication can reach the profundity that disinterested analysis can not.
I shall begin then, by describing Kierkegaard's motivation for devising indirect communication and then I will go on to describe his theory of indirect communication. Following this I will attempt to broaden his theory into a complete theory of language by connecting it with Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theory of language that he associates with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure. This I claim can then form a basis for understanding the 'continental' mode of communication and philosophy that is used by most existentialists. Finally I will attempt to show how Nietzsche's styles are a form of indirect communication and thus how my genealogy is also.
Kierkegaard's motivation for devising his indirect communication was connected with his attempt to counter the 'levelling' or, as it is now more often referred to, nihilism that he thought a certain way of thinking inevitably lead to. This certain way of thinking was epitomised for him in the systematising philosophy of Hegel. Kierkegaard was concerned that systematising and disinterested objective writing became so removed from an individual's life that any truth it came up with could not be appropriated in any other than an intellectual way. This idea crystallised into his apparently oxymoronic concept of 'subjective truth'. As Johannes Climacus (the pseudonymous author) puts it in Postscript:
"The inquiring, speculating, and knowing subject thus raises a question of truth. But he does not raise the question of a subjective truth, the truth of appropriation and assimilation. The inquiring subject is indeed interested; but he is not infinitely and personally and passionately interested on behalf of his own eternal happiness for his relationship to truth. Far be it from the objective subject to display such presumption, such vanity of spirit." Swenson and Lowrie translation, p23.
Subjective truth is crucial in understanding indirect communication. This kind of truth is not in the correspondence of a description to the world or the coherence of that description and neither does it simply exist in language. Rather it is an experiential truth. It is the reader's subjective truth that is being appealed to through indirect communication rather than a notion of objective truth outside the individual. It is my contention, then, that values originate or are intimately woven together with an individual's subjective truth so that it is only possible to affect those values by affecting their subjective truth. My reasons for this are tied up with a second Kierkegaardian notion, the 'leap of faith'. Kierkegaard suggests that because no reason can or should be given for an individual to become, what he calls, a Christian then they must make a leap of faith. It follows that any move out of nihilism, Christian or not, must be a leap of faith, because any move out of nihilism is a move to a certain set of values. Kierkegaard appeals to the individual's subjective truth to encourage a leap of faith to Christian values, likewise one must appeal to an individual's subjective truth to encourage a leap of faith to any other set of values. This is precisely not what is appealed to by present environmental philosophy. Kierkegaard's characterisation of the learned theologian and philologist discovering religious 'truths' in ancient texts, is more than applicable to most modern environmental philosophers discovering/creating environmental 'truths':
"When a philologist prepares an edition of one of Cicero's writings, for example, and performs his task with great acumen, the scholarly apparatus held in beautiful subservience to the control of the spirit; when his ingenuity and his familiarity with the period, gained through formidable industry, combine with his instinct for discovery to overcome obstacles, preparing a clear way for the meaning through the obscure maze of the readings, and so forth - then it is quite safe to yield oneself in whole-hearted admiration. For when he has finished, nothing follows except the wholly admirable result that an ancient writing has now through his skill and competence received its most accurate possible form. But by no means that I should now base my eternal happiness on this work; for in relation to my eternal happiness, his astonishing acumen, seems, I must admit, inadequate. Aye, I confess that my admiration for him would be not glad but despondent, if I thought he had any such thing in mind. But this is precisely how the learned theologian goes to work; when he has completed his task (and until then he keeps us in suspense, but holds this prospect before us) he draws the conclusion: ergo, now you can base your eternal happiness on these writings."(ibid. p27).
But what exactly is communicated by indirect communication? The answer to this is what Kierkegaard calls 'inwardness' which is similar to what Martin Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty later call being-in-the-world. My inwardness is my existential relation with the world and it is this that I attempt to communicate between the words - so to speak. Inwardness can not be directly communicated because a language exists in common, publicly and so my inwardness is immediately compromised as it becomes outwardness in language.
Roger Poole picks out one quote from Postscript that he cites as the central statement of what it is that constitutes indirect communication.
"inwardness cannot be directly communicated, for its direct expression is precisely externality, its direction being outward, not inward. The direct expression of inwardness is no proof of its presence; the direct effusion of feeling does not prove its possession, but the tension of the contrasting form is the measure of the intensity of inwardness." Swenson and Lowrie, Poole p151
The tension of contrasting form is the degree to which the writer attempts to hide his inwardness by effectively constructing a mask. The writer would not want to expose his inwardness to an unsympathetic audience so a mask constructs a gateway that only allows in people who have had similar experiences and so are likely to be sympathetic. Kierkegaard attempts to express this in Either/Or under the pseudonymous editor of Victor Eremita who discovers some writings by an unknown author.
"What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music. His fate is like that of those unfortunates who were slowly tortured by a gentle fire in Phalaris's bull; their cries could not reach the tyrant's ears to cause him dismay, to him they sounded like sweet music. And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.' And the critics come forward and say: 'That's the way, that's how the rules of aesthetics say it should be done.' Of course, a critic resembles a poet to a hair, except he has no anguish in his heart, no music on his lips. So I tell you, I would rather be a swineherd at Amagerbro and be understood by the swine than a poet and misunderstood by people."
The theory of indirect communication is laid out indirectly by Johannes Climacus in the Postscript, under the heading "The subjective existing thinker is aware of the dialectic of communication." The dialectic is formed by the two parties involved in the communication with the spoken language as the synthesis. What one party says is not a direct representation of what they mean and what the other party hears is not a direct representation of what he or she interprets. Thus each party must have their own interpretation of any communication. The secret of communicating indirectly effectively is to be aware of the 'how' of one's communication. The greatest factor in this is the relationship between the author and the communication. The trick is to allow the receiver the greatest opportunity to develop their own relationship to your communication. As Climacus puts it "the secret of communication specifically hinges on setting the other free..." The receiver of an indirect communication goes through a double reflection. The first reflection is an attempt to understand the text, e.g. what the author might mean, and the second reflection is their inward reaction to it or their existential reaction to it. This second reflection Kierkegaard calls 'reduplicated reflection'. But this can only occur if the author has set the receiver sufficiently free by using 'duplexity'. Here the author must allow or construct space between them and what they have written - between their side of the dialectic and the spoken language - with the tension of contrasting form measuring the intensity of the author's inwardness. This space allows the receiver room to bring their own inwardness to the communication, their own participation or input, so that it is possible for them to perform the second reduplicated reflection to get their existential reaction to the text, so as to appeal to their subjective truth. In this way both parties' inwardnesses don't actually touch each other but rather contact the same object. Perhaps like kissing the same spot on a sculpture as another person.
From this theory however it seems difficult to imagine what direct communication would be and whether it is even possible. Unfortunately Kierkegaard is not terribly enlightening on this point. On page 76 (of the Hong and Hong translation) Climacus seems to imply in a footnote that direct communication is an "illusion" although goes on in the next footnote to remind the reader that he is only against direct communication about the religious, "But wherever objective thinking is within its rights, its direct communication is also in order, precisely because it is not supposed to deal with subjectivity" (ibid.). Thus the status of direct communication is not clear and so also it is not clear how indirect communication relates to language in general.
David Wood also wrestles with this problem. In his excellent analysis of indirect communication he suggests, as I have, that "direct communication is not really a form of communication at all." So that either "all communication is strictly speaking indirect" or that "only indirect communication realises some ideal of communication." He finally settles on the latter to be what Kierkegaard meant by indirect communication but he does not specify whether this then allows the possibility of direct communication and if it does how it works. However, even though he discusses many existentialists in relation to language and style he does not discuss Merleau-Ponty's theory of language which does provide an answer to this question.
In the first essay in Signs "Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence" Merleau-Ponty wishes to examine the similarities and differences between language and mute forms of expressing, for example gestures or painting. Here he writes that "all language is indirect or allusive" (ibid. p43) and about "exact forms of language" that "Without dealing with it completely, we can at least situate it and show that in any case no language ever wholly frees itself from the precariousness of mute forms of expression, reabsorbs its own contingency, and wastes away to make the things themselves appear; that in this sense the privilege language enjoys over painting or the practices of life remains relative" (ibid. p78). But the question remains if he accepts the possibility of direct communication and if so how it then works. To describe Merleau-Ponty's position on this point I will first briefly describe his theory of language.
The basis of his theory can be described by concentrating initially on two elements that he corroborates with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure. The first element is the inseparability of a sign and its meaning. "Saussure defines a linguistic "sign" as a unity embracing a concept (or the signified) and a sound-image (or the signifier). For example, the word "Arbor" is a sound-image when uttered, but also suggests the concept "tree". Thought and sound are inseparable from one another and "sign" comprehends both together. That is, a sign does not point beyond itself to a meaning, but rather the meaning is contained in the sign itself" (Rabil). The second element is the distinction between language as a social deposit essential for communication, and speech, which includes this deposit but also refers to the individual act which may contain accessory elements as well. This leads to a three dimensional conception of communication, in which 'language' as a well defined object of linguistic study forms a homogeneous plane existing at any particular moment in time, i.e., synchronic linguistics, and speech which draws on language but thrusts forward contingently in time so that it is heterogeneous i.e., diachronic linguistics. These areas of study can not be rigidly separated of course, because each contains elements of the other.
The speaking subject combines the horizontal perspective (the homogenous plane) and the vertical perspective (the heterogeneous change with time) to perform two tasks. Firstly, a means must be found to consider language as an "equilibrium in movement; old forms die and new forms are created, but a coherent whole remains during the change" (Rabil). As the speaking subject speaks he draws on a certain past universality of language and also anticipates the future universality of language. However, this is a universality in act which therefore compromises that universality (it is also compromised anyway because the speech act is referenced to one particular language and not a "universal language"). Thus a universality is never really achieved. There exists synchronic linguistics but this is only an academic abstraction, the universality in act or inherent whole "will never be wholly realised but will be, so to speak, "in the air" between speaking subjects" (Rabil). But what exactly is the speaking subject doing to make the language change and thus be an "equilibrium in movement"? For a language to change, and this is the second task, new meanings and words must evolve rather than the simple substitution of one sign for another sign. This is done through using creative or expressive language as opposed to already existing meanings that Merleau-Ponty calls empirical language or "the worn coin placed silently in my hand" (1960, p44). But creating new words and meanings through expression in this way, is only possible if lacunae exist between words and meanings, - between what is said, - that can continue to change and develop. For this to be possible there can not be a one to one or point to point correspondence between words and what they signify, otherwise only the substitution of one sign for another sign is possible on an already given linguistic structure. Rather for language to evolve signs must acquire their meaning from the rest of language. Merleau-Ponty acknowledges his debt to Saussure on this point in the first line of Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence:
"WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED from Saussure is that, taken singly, signs do not signify anything, and that each one of them does not so much express a meaning as mark a divergence of meaning between itself and other signs. Since the same can be said for all other signs, we may conclude that language is made of differences without terms; or more exactly, that the terms of language are engendered only by the differences which appear among them."
In this way all language is indirect and allusive. But Merleau-Ponty does draw a distinction between creative or expressive language and empirical language. This maps well onto Kierkegaard's indirect and direct distinction. So how does Merleau-Ponty explain how empirical language works and is it an illusion or not?
In the last section of the same essay he writes:
"Yet try as each word may (as Saussure explains) to extract its meaning from all the others, the fact remains that at the moment it occurs the task of expressing is no longer differentiated and referred to other words - it is accomplished, and we understand something...Signs do not simply evoke other signs for us and so on without end, and language is not like a prison we are locked into or a guide we must blindly follow..."(ibid. p81)
Here for the listener or speaking subject to understand they must acquire a meaning from a sign which exists in the combination of the sign and their thought, even though the sign marks a lateral divergence of meaning from the rest of language. To understand, speaking subjects must go beyond the signs toward their meaning. Here empirical language speaks peremptorily (final, fixed) and "gives up trying to express the thing itself" (ibid. p44). It is only creative or expressive language that can attempt to describe the thing itself although it can never do this completely. Thus empirical language allows one pragmatically to pick out objects and concepts because this language is already established. However this does not mean that here language operates in a fundamentally different way. Words still gather their meanings from the rest of language laterally but crucially an illusion is cast, as Kierkegaard hinted, but this is not an illusion about how we use language, it is an illusion about the way in which language works. Even though we use empirical language to pick out concepts and objects, this does not necessarily imply that there is a one to one correspondence of sign and signified it merely appears that way, as indeed it must for us to be able to use language. Thus direct communication is possible by using already established meanings but one must not be fooled into believing that this then can form the model for how language works. In other words, language itself, in abstract, does not reach out beyond the sign to the signified - it is only the speaking subject that can do this. It is the speech act that gives language its power and simultaneously casts the illusion of how language in the abstract works.
Thus both empirical and creative language have a certain amount of silence that surrounds what is said, but in empirical language this silence is much less and is unimportant so tends to be ignored. Whereas creative language attempts to create maximum silence by writing indirectly. Because thought and sign are intertwined it is not a question of translating a thought into language, "Now if we rid our minds of the idea that our language is the translation or cipher of an original text, we shall see that the idea of complete expression is nonsensical, and that all language is indirect or allusive - that it is, if you wish, silence. The relation of meaning to the spoken word can no longer be a point for point correspondence that we always have clearly in mind" (ibid. p43). Rather a thought is only fully formed once it is expressed in language. There is no pre-linguistic thought, but there is silence. Thoughts arise out of the silence; they are the excess of what we are over what we do, of what we want to express over our actions (ibid. p83). Thus by creating silence a written work can facilitate the creation of not only ideas but matrices of ideas in the reader. For Merleau-Ponty philosophy that does this is really a written form of art and as such has a particular role in society.
"What is irreplaceable in the work of art? What makes it far more a voice of spirit, whose analogue is found in all productive philosophic or political thought, than a means to pleasure? The fact that it contains, better than ideas, matrices of ideas." (ibid. p77)
For both Kierkegaard and Merleau-Ponty then, the key to communicating indirectly is to set the receiver free by creating space or silence for them to bring their own inwardness or being-in-the-world to the piece. In this way indirect communication can communicate at a level that only it can reach; and in this there is 'something' that only it can communicate. This something is an individual's existential relation with the world or their being-in-the-world which to engage with, as continental philosophy does, must be done indirectly.
I shall enter my discussion of Nietzsche as I did with Merleau-Ponty, by looking at the illusion that direct communication or empirical language casts about language. Nietzsche claims that language is at base a lie. Wood characteristically softens this to bring it into an analytic discourse by claiming "there is a sense in which it is wrong to say that language is a lie, or deceives us. It would be better to say that we allow ourselves to be deceived by language. We think of language representationally, we understand it too essentialistically, and so on" (p93). This interpretation of Nietzsche's position tallies with Merleau-Ponty's as I have described it. Merleau-Ponty says of exact forms of language and philosophy that "we may wonder whether their ambition to recover the slippery hold on our experience that literature gives us and gain actual possession of what is said does not express the essence of language much better than literature does" (ibid. p78). In other words, language inherently attempts to produce the illusion of empirical language or inherently tries to generate the lie of representational or essentialistic thinking. This then adds support to Nietzsche's famous description of truth as "a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms and anthropomorphisms, illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions"(Truth and Falsity in Their Ultramoral Sense). Nietzsche also writes of this illusion in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and in doing so gives a brief description of what indirect communication attempts:
"'O my animals,' answered Zarathustra, 'go on talking and let me listen! Your talking is such refreshment: where there is talking, the world is like a garden to me. How sweet it is, that words and sounds of music exist: are words and music not rainbows and seeming bridges between things eternally separated?
'Every soul is a world of its own; for every soul every other soul is an afterworld.
'Appearance lies most beautifully among the most alike; for the smallest gap is the most difficult to bridge.
'For me - how could there be an outside-of-me? There is no outside! But we forget that, when we hear music; how sweet it is, that we forget!
'Are things not given names and musical sounds, so that man may refresh himself with things? Speech is a beautiful foolery: with it man dances over all things.
'How sweet is all speech and all the falsehoods of music! With music does our love dance upon many-coloured rainbows.'" "The Convalescent", 2.
Here he begins by describing how language can produce the existential link between individuals through indirect communication; and how sweet that bridge can be. But he is also wary of the illusion that speech can cast because man can dance over all things with it, and so it is a 'beautiful foolery'. But what does Nietzsche think that he can communicate indirectly or with his use of styles? In Ecce Homo under the heading "Why I Write Such Good Books" he writes:
"I shall at the same time also say a general word on my art of style. To communicate a state, an inner tension of pathos through signs, including the tempo of these signs - that is the meaning of every style; and considering that the multiplicity of inner state is in my case extraordinary, there exists in my case the possibility of many styles - altogether the most manifold art of style any man has ever had at his disposal. Every style is good which actually communicates an inner state, which makes no mistake as to the signs, the tempo of the signs, the gestures - all rules of phrasing are art of gesture. My instinct is here infallible. - Good style in itself - a piece of pure folly, mere 'idealism', on a par with the 'beautiful in itself', the 'good in itself', the 'thing in itself' ...Always presupposing there are ears - that there are those capable and worthy of a similar pathos, that those are not lacking to whom one ought to communicate oneself. - My Zarathustra for example is at present still looking for them - alas! he will have to look for a long time yet! One has to be worthy of assaying him...And until then there will be no one who comprehends the art which has here been squandered: no one has ever had more of the new, the unheard-of, the really new-created in artistic means to squander." (4.)
This description of what Nietzsche is trying to communicate through his style is almost indistinguishable from Kierkegaard's. Both are trying to communicate an "inner state" through a particular style of writing that both characterise as artistic. Climacus writes in the Postscript, as if commenting on Nietzsche, "the more art, the more inwardness - yes, if he had considerable art, it would even be possible for him to say he was using it with the assurance of being able the next moment to ensure the inwardness of the communication, because he was infinitely concerned to preserve his own inwardness, a concern that saves the concerned person from all positive chattiness" (pp77-8). Also he writes of inwardness "Everything subjective, which on account of its dialectical inwardness evades the direct form of expression, is an essential secret. In its inexhaustible artistry, such a form of communication corresponds to and renders the existing subjects own relation to the idea".(p80) Also "Whenever the subjective is of importance in knowledge and appropriation is therefore the main point, communication is a work of art".(p79)
Merleau-Ponty also, as I have mentioned, sees indirect or creative or expressive philosophy as analogues to a work of art. To cite a few more lines from a passage I have already quoted:
"The fact that it contains, better than ideas, matrices of ideas - the fact that it provides us with symbols whose meaning we never stop developing. Precisely because it dwells and makes us dwell in a world we do not have the key to, the work of art teaches us to see and ultimately gives us something to think about as no analytical work can; because when we analyse an object, we find only what we have put into it." (ibid.)
Nietzsche, in the same quote from Ecce Homo, also seems implicitly to be describing Kierkegaard's contrasting form while describing his style. He points out that "style in itself" is not what he is after. Rather he must be using it in the same way as Kierkegaard describes contrasting form. That is, the beauty of the style provides a gateway to the inward state. Wood hopes he will be forgiven for citing the "OED entry for that other sort of stile (with an i), the sort one finds in the country which is defined as 'An arrangement of steps or the like, contrived to allow passage over and through a fence to one person at a time, while forming a barrier to sheep or cattle'" (p91). Even though it is a dubious connection it does provide a good metaphor for the contrasting form in indirect communication. Thus Kierkegaard's poet and Nietzsche are united in suggesting that beauty for its own sake 'how the rules of aesthetics say it should be done' misses the point of the use of beauty or style in indirect communication to communicate inwardness or inner states.
Wood however thinks there is a difference between what Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are trying to communicate. He points out that "Nietzsche must be read closely" because he does not make a reference to communicating himself rather only a state of tension, inward states. This must be so for Nietzsche to be consistent with his views on the fragmentation of the self. Wood writes "There is no self, no I that he is trying to get across. There is dispersal, fragmentation at the source. When Kaufmann insists on a unity underlying fragmentation, he is being anti-Nietzschean" (p91). However I do not think it is clear that when Kierkegaard claims that someone can only communicate himself indirectly that this is in necessary conflict with Nietzsche. In a footnote on p73 Climacus discusses double reflection and the subjective individual's desire to communicate himself. He writes "Double-reflection is already implicit in the idea of communication itself: that the subjective individual,...existing in the isolation of inwardness, wants to communicate himself, consequently that he simultaneously wants to keep his thinking in the inwardness of his subjective existence and yet wants to communicate himself. It is not possible...for this contradiction to become manifest in a direct form. - It is not so difficult, however, to understand that a subject existing in this way may want to communicate himself" (p73). Here Kierkegaard must be 'read closely' because he is talking of the desire to communicate the self not that it is actually possible. Usually Kierkegaard talks of communicating inwardness but this is not synonymous with the self, it is more, as I have mentioned, like an individual's being-in-the-world, which need not be unitary in a way that conflicts with Nietzsche's conception of the self. Also given Kierkegaard's understanding of communication as a dialectical process it is hard to imagine how it is possible to communicate the self. Indeed, one must not forget that Kierkegaard's overall project was to facilitate the reader's own relationship with god; and he claims in the Postscript that "the very maximum of what one human being can do for another in relation to that wherein each man has to do solely with himself, is to inspire him with concern and unrest" (Swenson and Lowrie translation, p346). One is not giving oneself to another which Wood's separation of Kierkegaard's and Nietzsche's approaches seems to rely on.
Nietzsche, of course, is in total agreement with Kierkegaard on the point about the individual having to 'get there' on their own. To quote aphorism 10 in "Of the Higher Man", from Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
"If you want to rise high, use your own legs! Do not let yourselves be carried up, do not sit on the backs and heads of strangers! But did you mount horse? Do you now ride pell-mell up to your goal? Very well, my friend! But your lame foot also sits with you on your horse!
When you reach your goal, when you jump froe to earth ought to do nothing whatever but wrong: to take upon oneself, not the punishment, but the guilt - only that would be godlike." Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Why I Am So Wise", 5.

Genealogy
1
The origin of morality Nietzsche writes, is in "the paradoxical task which nature has set herself with regard to humankind" (GM., II, 1) and that is "To breed an animal which is able to make promises" (ibid.). A pre-condition of promising is the ability to remember what one has promised and thus be capable of fulfilling that promise. Memory is a counter-device of the natural forgetfulness that gives the human animal its strength. Forgetfulness allows "a little peace, a little tabular rasa of consciousness...like a doorkeeper or guardian of mental order, rest and etiquette: from which we can immediately see how there could be no happiness, cheerfulness, hope, pride, immediacy, without forgetfulness" (ibid.). The individual who is able to cultivate the ability to remember and thus also become predictable, Nietzsche calls the 'sovereign individual'. This man is "master of the free will" (ibid. 2) and "has necessarily been given mastery over circumstances, over nature and over all creatures with a less durable and reliable will" (ibid.). This freedom and control confer a privilege of responsibility, the awareness of which, sinks deep into the depths of the sovereign individual to become an instinct that he calls conscience, and thus facilitates the possibility of guilt. In other words, promising makes possible the relationship of creditor and debtor which makes possible personal obligation, and thus the feeling of guilt when that obligation is not met. Here we see the origins of the man-nature dichotomy in pre-historic custom morality. It is the relationship of buyer and seller, creditor and debtor, that leads to a feeling of pride and superiority over the rest of nature. "Fixing prices, setting values, working out equivalents, exchanging - this preoccupied man's first thoughts to such a degree that in a certain sense it constitutes thought: the most primitive kind of cunning was bred here, as was also, presumably, the first appearance of human pride, man's sense of superiority over other animals. Perhaps our word 'man' (manas) expresses something of this first sensation of self-confidence: man designated himself as the being who measures values, who values and measures, as the 'calculating animal as such'" (ibid. 8). People that can make bargains are picked out from the rest of 'nature', but also implicitly the objects of those bargains, (food, raw materials etc.). That is, objects are picked out that can enter the morality of bargain making.
2
Bad conscience is in the next stage of morality and comes about when man "finally found himself imprisoned within the confines of society and peace" (ibid. 16). It is a consciousness of guilt towards the community, society or state. When man is confined within 'society and peace' he must suppress his instincts because he must follow the rules and laws of that society which consist in more than a simple one to one creditor debtor relationship. "the poor things were reduced to relying on thinking, inference, calculation, and the connecting of cause with effect, that is to relying on their 'consciousness', that most impoverished and error prone organ!" (ibid.) An analogy is drawn with the change that sea animals must have experienced when "they were forced to either become land animals or perish - at one go, all instincts were devalued and 'suspended'" (ibid.). The one sided reliance on 'consciousness' to act did not however mean that "the old instincts had not suddenly ceased to make their demands!" (ibid.) At this crucial point bad conscience crystallises: "All instincts which are not discharged outwardly turn inwards - this is what I call the internalization of man: with it there now evolves in man what will later be called his 'soul'. The whole inner world, orignd not bringing one's inwardness to the text.
With this description of three indirect characteristics of aphorisms one can clearly see the distinction from direct communication which attempts to communicate so there can only be one possible interpretation of the text. However, just because this is not always achieved does not qualify it as indirect, but simply bad direct communication. This is because to decide on an interpretation could involve asking the author for a clarification - what he meant - or appealing to a logical extension of the text. Neither process involve the appeal to subjective truth and so neither involve the reader in indirect communication.
After the preface I moved to a genealogical style. This is also aphoristic but appeals to a certain coherence and universality of explanation. But this is not a straightforward coherence because it is combined with hyperbole. I mean by this, that the explanation is almost too coherent, too simple, too clear. One is left thinking that there must be more to it. But of course, it might be right. To boil the motivation for the development of environmentalism down to an escape from moral guilt seems like an over-simplification. Or is it? Also Nietzsche's genealogy uses psychological explanations which, rather like Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological descriptions, appeal to one's experiential contact with the world. To examine new psychological explanations for the motivation of certain behaviour requires imagining how I would behave or have behaved in certain situations and trying to feel what my motivations where. Likewise I have tried to put some of my explanations in experiential terms e.g. my description of the motivation for feeling at one with nature or other from it.
Finally, I wrote the forward to set the whole genealogy within a certain atmosphere that allowed me to follow Nietzsche's essay "'Guilt', 'Bad conscience' and related matters" closely without falling into the trap of having to present his hyperbole in a disinterested discourse that would have stripped it of its point. In other words, I would be mistaking his hyperbole for seriousness or attempting to communicate something that can only be communicated indirectly directly; and thus look ridiculous, or as Climacus put it above, I would become 'obtuse'. That is, the forward hopefully manages to recast the tone of the whole genealogy so that it is emphasised that it should not be read as an analysis that appeals to criteria outside the author's or reader's self for its merit ('objectivity' for instance). Rather, by giving the piece the status of a ceremony, or ritual, performed for the authors benefit, and perhaps also for the reader's if they so wish, it is clear that it should not be read as a disinterested analytical work. Instead this move, rather like Kierkegaard's pseudonyms, produces what Climacus calls duplexity. This is maintained throughout the preface and genealogy by a tension of contrasting form that separated me personally, as the author, from the text by my use of aphorisms (as I described above). In this way the reader is set free because the piece does not impose on the readers integrity as a direct text does. However, it does attempt to 'threaten' but it is a threat that the reader can simply disregard if they wish, because it does not appeal to universals. Thus the reader may change their inwardness and subjective truth, and therefore values, because the decision as to the merit or otherwise of the piece is left solely up to them; it is their own decision that then can only lead to their own understanding and their own knowledge.
In conclusion one can not separate the content from the style of an indirect communication without loosing the crucial central element of the piece, and that is the reader participation. The reader no longer brings their inwardness because there is no space or silence for them. And, as I have mentioned, it is only through an individual's inwardness that their subjective truth can be affected and likewise their values. Thus if environmentalism wishes to affect or be persuasive about values they must use indirect communication.
I shall end with Nietzsche's final aphorism from the forward of Ecce Homo.
"- Within my writings my Zarathustra stands by itself. I have with this book given mankind the greatest gift that has ever been given it. With a voice that speaks across millennia, it is not only the most exalted book that exists, the actual book of the air of the heights - the entire fact man lies at a tremendous distance beneath it - it is also the profoundest, born out of the innermost abundance of truth, an inexhaustible well into which no bucket descends without coming up filled with gold and goodness. Here there speaks no 'prophet', none of those gruesome hybrids of sickness and will to power called founders of religions. One has above all to hear correctly the tone that proceeds from this mouth, this halcyon tone, if one is not to do pitiable injustice to the meaning of its wisdom. 'It is the stillest words which bring the storm, thoughts that come on doves' feet guide the world -' 
The figs are falling from the trees, they are fine and sweet: and as they fall their red skins split. I am a north wind to ripe figs. Thus, like figs, do these teachings fall to you, my friends: now drink their juice and eat their sweet flesh! It is autumn all around and clear sky and afternoon - 
Here there speaks no fanatic, here there is no 'preaching', here faith is not demanded: out of an infinite abundance of light and depth of happiness there falls drop after drop, word after word - a tender slowness of pace is the tempo of these discourses. Such things as this reach only the most select; it is an incomparable privilege to be a listener here; no one is free to have ears for Zarathustra...With all this, is Zarathustra not a seducer?...But what does he himself say when for the first time he again goes back into his solitude? Precisely the opposite of that which any sort of 'sage', 'saint', 'world-redeemer' and other decadent would say in such a case...He does not only speak differently, he is different... 
I now go away alone, my disciples! You too now go away and be alone! So I will have it. 
Go away from me and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he has deceived you. The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil. And why, then, should you not pluck at my laurels?
You respect me; but how if one day your respect should tumble? Take care that a falling statue does not strike you dead!
You say you believe in Zarathustra? But of what importance is Zarathustra? You are my believers: but of what importance are all believers?
You had not yet sought yourselves when you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account. Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you..."

Bibliography
1.	Carroll, John. Humanism: the Wreck of Western Culture, Fontana Press, London, 1993. 
2.	Climacus, Johannes. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Princeton University Press, translation Hong and Hong, 1992, original 1846. 
3.	Climacus, Johannes. Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Princeton University Press, translation Swenson and Lowrie, 1941, original 1846. 
4.	Derrida, Jacques. Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles, The University of Chicago Press, translation by Barbara Harlow, 1979, original 1978. 
5.	Eremita, Victor. Either/Or, Penguin Books, translation Alastair Hannay, 1992, original 1843. 
6.	Kaufmann, W. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, Vintage, New York, 1968. 
7.	Kierkegaard, Soren. The Present Age, Collins: The Fontana Library, translation Alexander Dru, 1969, first 1962, original 1846. 
8.	Langer, Monika M. Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: A Guide and Commentary, Macmillan Press, London, 1989. 
9.	Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception, translated by Colin Smith, Routledge, London, 1992, first 1962, original 1945. 
10.	Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Signs, translated by Richard C. McCleary, Northwestern University Press, 1969, first 1964, original 1960. 
11.	Morrison, Jim. The Doors, "An American Prayer", an Electrica recording, 1971. 
12.	Nehamas, Alexander. Nietzsche: Life as Literature, Harvard University Press, 1985. 
13.	Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ecce Homo, Penguin Books, London, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, 1992, first 1979, original 1888. 
14.	Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Penguin Books, London, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, first 1961, original 1885 
15.	Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ, Penguin Books, translated by R. J. Hollingdale, 1990, first 1968, original 1889 and 1895. 
16.	Nietzsche, Friedrich. Towards a Genealogy of Morals, Cambridge University Press, translated by Carol Diethe, 1994, original 1887. 
17.	Poole, Roger. Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication, University of Virginia, 1993. 
18.	Rabil, Albert, Jr. Merleau-Ponty: Existentialist of the Social World, Columbia University Press, New York and London, 1967. 
19.	Silentio, Johannes de. Fear and Trembling, Penguin Books, translated by Alastair Hannay, first 1985, original 1843. 
20.	Wood, David. Philosophy at the Limit: Problems of Modern European Thought, Unwin Hyman, London, 1990. 
21.	Lynn White Jr. The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crises, Science, 1967, Volume 155, No 3767. 
All quotations are from the Hong and Hong translation of Concluding Unscientific Postscript unless otherwise stated.
Although indirect communication can include communication not associated with linguistic communication here I shall only be dealing with indirect communication in association with linguistic communication and specifically written linguistic communication.
There is a strong link here with Ludwig Wittgenstein's private language argument in Philosophical Investigations (1953), such that indirect communication is equivalent to attempting to communicate sensation "S". I have explored this idea in a previous essay entitled The Concept of Boredom, Jan 1995.
I have explored Merleau-Ponty's theory of language in a previous essay entitled A Study of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Theory of Language and Artistic Expression Leading to a View on the Role of the Environmental Philosopher in Society, June 1995.
Wood doesn't say what his criteria for being 'better' are, but I suspect he should point out that it is better in the sense that it does allow him to bring it into an analytic discourse. 

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