Anti-Climacus

WELL: Just finished up watching Triumph of the Will last night, the, erm, charming documentary of the Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg in 1934. A thought:

it's a really interesting exercise to forget who's doing the speaking, and focus rather on the words, and see what's objectionable. The answer (for me, at least): much less than you'd think--most of the speeches are your usual rah-rah political nonsense. There were, however, two areas in which I couldn't understand anyone being persuaded, though it occurs to me that as a Christian and a deontologist, I might be particularly immune to these sorts of appeals: the first was to the overarching superiority of the state, and the second was to moral absolutism.

As to the first, most of the argument comes out of The Theological Declaration of Barmen: a Christian owes their first loyalty to God, and only after (and far behind) that can loyalty be offered elsewhere. Interestingly, I'm not sure how much this particular argument is available to the non-Christian deontologist or the utilitarian. The non-Christian deontologist can argue, perhaps, that their primary duty is to the moral order of the universe, or the categorical imperative, but it's both unclear to me how that's a duty in the same way duty to God or the state is, nor is it clear to me that a non-Christian (to be fair, non-religious) deontology can hold up in the same way under stress, though I confess to not having thought that through very much, so I may well be wrong.

As to the second, the last of the Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis speaks to it, I believe. I did not quite get this at first:

"Thou shalt realise that the basis of thy life is not 'must' but 'may', not 'law' but 'mercy'; this is thy consolation, thy creed , and thy power as a Christian Netherlander."

I believe there's an order in the universe which is a meaningful way of assigning moral praise and blame and a guide for my own actions. But I am not held to it for the assignment nor for the guide, I choose it (the 'not must but may' part). And insomuch as I perpetually fall short of the standards of that morality, and yet God forgives me, so to do I not judge the people who themselves fall short (I trust the relevant Biblical stories here are numerous enough that I need not cite one). The universe is structured in moral order, but that order does not define it: that's what's so objectionable in the movie, and that's the sort of thing that should instantly put people on guard.

I sense there are some larger implications for that last point, though I haven't quite worked through them yet.