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9:29

(In »The syntheist agent and her desires and drives«)

Ethics is an intention founded in an identity in relation to the anticipated result of a cause and an effect. It is the anticipated effect of the action that gives it its ethical weight. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas thinks of ethics as an internal, intersubjective process without any requirements whatsoever on external, objective truths. Various conceivable intentions are weighed against various conceivable chains of cause and effect in a kind of civilised dialogue. Regardless of whether we apply ethics to a dividual or a collective, ethics is founded on an attitude. Nietzsche argues that this attitude is either active or reactive. The active attitude seeks an impression, an impact on existence, a confirmation of the agent’s interaction with its surroundings, in order to attain existential affirmation, a realisation of its own substance. Nietzsche calls this attitude the will to power. Against the will to power stands the reactive attitude, the will to submission, obliteration, a production of identity through identification with the victim rather than with the hero. This reactive attitude creates a bitterness towards existence, it produces and is driven by ressentiment, a perverted pleasure – rather than authentic pleasure – based on an escalating narcissistic self-loathing.