The affirmatives impact are absent of meaning-nothing is evil-the world is just a hierarchy of the strong overtaking the weak making all impacts inevitable-we demand a affirmation of the cosmic danceSineculpa 93 (Felix, pseudonym appearing in Against Ethics: Contributions to a Poetics of Obligation with Constant Reference to Deconstruction by John d. Caputo, Chapter viii Several Lyrica-Philosophical Discourses on Various Jew-Greek Parables and Paradigms with Constant Reference to Obligation, Discourse no. 2: The Lament of the Lamb pp. 186-90) Auschwitz is not Evil, not Absolute Evil. Auschwitz is not some great Archimedean point, not some moral absolute we can fall back upon, not an absolute at all. Auschwitz does not impose a new Categorical Imperative, one which cuts through the sensible world with commanding, supersensible force. Auschwitz is not a transcendental signified, not some kind of being-in-itself of Evil. It is not an uninterpreted fact of the matter, not a pure "moral fact." There are no moral facts, only interpretations. Auschwitz is not a fact but a perspective. The condemnation of Auschwitz is made from the perspectire of the lamb. "The the lambs dislike great birds of prey does not seem strange: only it gives no ground for reproaching these birds of prey for bearing off little lambs." Disasters are not Evil. Nothing is Evil. Is fire Evil because it burns the wood and turns it to ash? Is the sea Evil because it smashes against the coast and levels the dwellings that are foolhardy enough to nestle themselves against the swellings of its massive breast? Is the wind Evil? Is the wolf Evil, which descends upon the lamb and tears it to shreds, which grows stronger on the weakness of lamb flesh, which feeds on the flesh of the lamb? Forces happen. The forces are what they are and they do what they do. We cannot separate what they are from what they do, because what they are and what they do are one and the same. It is a "seduction of language" to think that the effect can be seperated from the cause, the predicate >from the subject, the deed from the doer. Es blitzt. Es blitzen die Sternen. "It is lightning." "The stars flash." But we seek in vain for an es, for some subject to blame that could have withheld the deed or done otherwise. It is an exercise in futility, a vanity of the moralists, to tell the wolf not to prey or the eagle not to soar and sweep down on some defenseless creature. We might as well tell lightning not to flash, or tell the stars not to shine, or tell strength not to be strong, as tell the forces not to discharge. Life is "essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of the strange and weaker, suppression, severity, imposition of one's own forms, incorporation and, at the least and mildest, exploitation." One exploits because one lives. "'[N]o more exploitation'--that sounds to my ears like promising a life in which there are no organic functions." To speak of "disasters" is to take the perspective of the part, the point of view of just one element in the total concatenation. It is a strictly regional judgement which achieves the semblance of absoluteness by attaching itself absolutely and unshakably to a part. It is said that a disaster like Auschwitz is Evil because it is "against nature." On the contrary, disasters are regular occurences, among the most familiar pieces of nature, part of its most ubiquitous, most "natural" rhythms. Seen from a wider, larger perspective, from the perspective of the whole, disasters are familiar elements in nature's mosaic, part of the severe landscape of natural forces, part of the gigantic fortuitous game of the forces play, "a game in which no hand, not even 'a finger of God' took any part." I will tell you how I think the forces happen. I will describe my interpretation of the panorama of their movements, the steps of their cosmic dance: Stronger forces dominate and overcome weaker forces. The best and most noble forces subdue the worst, the ones fit only to follow, not to lead. Cunning, clever, agile forces subdue dull and clumsy forces. Brutal and cruel forces subdue gentlee, more refined forces. Despicable forces overcome more likable, lovelier ones. Ugly forces overpower beautiful ones. Gross, hostile, and aggresive forces subdue peace-loving and intellectual forces. Forces everywhere feed off other forces and thereby grow stronger while the fed-upon grow weaker. What we call "life" or "nature" is nothing but a field of forces feeding on other forces or being fed upon, subduing and being subdued, exploiting and being exploited, rising and falling, combining and recombining, building up and tearing down, in ceaseless cycles, tracing unending spirals of going over and going under. That, I would say, is the "law" of how things happen, the very law that rules over the discharge of the forces, of the happening of the events. I would say it is a law except that the forces do not "obey laws," which is a piety introduced by moralists and another seduction of grammar. For the forces are nothing but the discharge of their own force from within. Nothing rules them from without. Life, nature, the total constellation of natural forces: what is that except the forces discharging their power, growing, expanding, drawing into themselves, gaining the ascendancy? That is how life happens, "not out of any morality or morality, but because it lives, and because life is will to power." To speak of "nature" is to take the perspective of the whole, of the totality of what happens, of whole concatenated chain of events, the best and the worst, the most noble and the most ignoble, the most beautiful and the ugliest, the grossest and the most refined, the numerous all-too-many and the rarest flowers--all of these together in one great constellation. Nature includes everything, the most fortuitous constellations and the calamity, the lucky stars and star-crossed disasters. The disaster is no more or less natural than the flame that licks at the forest, than the lion that tears at the heart of the lamb, than the wind that roars, than the eagle that sweeps off with its prey. The beast of prey is a disaster--for its victims. The disaster is a value judgement made from the perspective of the prey. But it is not "against nature," not an unnatural event, not out of order. On the contrary, it belongs to the hardest, coldest, most uncompromisine and undisguised conception of order and nature, to an order of nature for which all too few have the stomach. To speak of the "disaster" is to take the perspective of the prey, not of the beast of prey, but it is not to speak against nature. Do you love nature? You want to live 'according to nature'? O you noble Stoics, what fraudulent words! Think of a being such as nature is, prodigal beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without aims or intentions, without mercy or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain; think of indifference itself as a power--how could you live according to such indifference? To live--is that not precisely wanting to be other than this nature? The disaster is just another constellation of nature, one not to the liking of the victim. It is an event of certain forces whose stars are marked for oblivion and exstinction. But the perishing of one star is a matter of cold indifference to the galaxies as a whole. What does it matter to the great cosmos if this little globe is overrun by death and disease? Is not the disease of one organism simply the life of something else, of the microorganism or the parasite, one that we do not like? Is not the weed that suffocates the flower simply another plant, one that we do not like? What does it matter if organic life itself is extinguished by a great nuclear holocaust, by an opening in the ozone cover, or by a stray meteor that sets off a cataclysmic chain of events? Is that not but a new configuration, another constellation of forces, and does not the great cosmic game love that movement too? Is not the death or destruction of the one intertwined eternally with the life or construction of the rest? Is not the death of our little star not just one more form the whole assumes, one more step in its endless dance? Will it not come to that anyway? Will not that too have its turn, eventually? Auschwitz is the business of cruel forces that form no part of a man of breeding or taste or delicacy. It is no business of forces that are made for higher, more delicate matters. Auschwitz proceeds from bent and distorted forces, filled with ressentiment and negative impulses. It is the issue of forces twisted out of shaoe and deflected by reactiveness, which do not discharge actively, cleanly, in an upward spiral, building newer and higher and more beautiful configurations of force, more intoxicating constellations of forces that lift our minds above the pain of events. Such cruelty reveals a lower type, cheap, agitating forces, which stir up and play on the horned beast in people. Auschwitz is the issue of lower forces that have not learned to sublate and sublimate the will to cruelty, mastery, and exploitation in a higher, nobler direction. Such cruelty is the exercise of baser, still unsublimated forces. But these forces too are part of the whole, part of what is, part of the fatedness of what happens. Auschwitz is part of how the forces are discharged, the way forces of a mean and ignoble type are discharged. But you cannot separate the deed and the doer, the quantum of force and the deed. The cruelty of Auschwitz is like the cruelty of the wolf or the eagle, of the fire or the wind. Shall we tell the wind not to roar or the eagle not to soar or the fire not to burn? Auschwitz is a happening of forces that are what they do and that do what they are, that burn because they burn. Es blitzt, weil es blitzt. Auschwitz is a part of the whole, a piece of the fate that belongs to the whole. Each thing is part of the whole and the whole is, as a whole, innocent. What happens is innocent. There exists nothing outside the whole in terms of which one could judge the whole. The whole is what it is, does what it does. That is all. The forces discharge themselves as the forces that they are. Und nichts ausserdem! Auschwitz is what it is, a piece of fate, a constellation of base, cruel forces. But there is no one or nothing to blame, no subject that can be separated from its predicates, no doer separable from its deed. The lament of lambs before the beast of prey is not the voice of Being, of God, or of the Moral Order. It is no voice at all but simply the noise of the forces as they go about their business, going over and going under. There is no Evil here, just stronger and weaker forces, noble and ignoble forces, hostile and peace-loving forces. There is no "obligation" here. The happening of obligation is still another seduction of grammar, an invention of the moralists, a perspective-judgement made from the standpoint of the prey or the victim, a judgement of sympathy for the lamb. One must see Auschwitz in terms of the whole, take the long look, the longest perspective. The smoke of Shulamith mixes with the whole. It disperses into the clouds, which fall to earth as rain and rise again as vapor. It is entered into the cycle of the seasons until one day this little top stops spinning and falls back into the sun. Then the universe draws still another breath, continuing its cosmic dance across endless skies, unmindful of what has transpired off in some remote corner. The laments of the lamb, never very audibly to the cosmic ear, disappear without a trace.