A Late Response to Brendan Simms.

Last week, I read a piece on anti-Semitism in The Evening Standard in which the writer - Brendan Simms - argued that it is connected with 'anti-capitalism' and 'anti-globalization' on the nationalist Right. He even went as far as to suggest that it was anti-capitalism which led Adolf Hitler to anti-Semitism. In his mind Simms actually conflates Hitler's rage against the Versailles Treaty with anti-capitalist sympathies. Hitler was enraged by the defeat and humiliation of Germany as a burgeoning imperial power. Furthermore, it was this treaty which was used by the British and French empires to engender an inevitable crisis within Germany that helped create the conditions for the rise of the Nazi Party. Instead Simms claims Hitler "accused" internationally-oriented Anglo-American capitalism for the destruction of Germany, as if the consequence was not an actuality at all. Ironically, it was the financial hub of American capitalism that imploded in 1929, taking the world economy with it, that led directly to Hitler's victory in 1933.

Sadly Mr Simms seems short on historical perspective. It has become somewhat fashionable to claim that the Left is a harbinger of anti-Semitism and belongs in the same ballpark as Fascism (if not worse, for some). He wants to situate the Left as a natural ally of Hamas, Iran, and even Hungarian neo-fascists, for its commitments to 'anti-globalization' and anti-capitalism. He claims these forces are coalescing against Israel and liberal democratic capitalism. I wonder if Mr Simms was present at the dinner where George W Bush consorted openly, for money, with self-declared 'Messianic Jews' converted to Christianity in order to bring on the Rapture. The anti-Jewish ramblings of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and John Hagee, might not be so easy to swallow. Even still the article is packed with innuendo like "This makes [anti-Semitism] dangerous not just to Jews but to those seen as their allies, most of the Western capitalist democracies, or plutocracies, as anti-Semites (but not only they) often call them." That point requires more pause for thought.

It wasn't that surprising to find that Mr Simms is a prominent figure in the Henry Jackson Society, that heroic brigade of laptop bombardiers for whom there is never enough blood to spill around the world. It is awfully convenient for the Henry Jackson Society to discover that their enemies are all virulent anti-Semites. It presupposes that the actions they back to the hilt have an immaculate moral character. There's a switch-side to that coin. To what degree can the aggressive foreign policy of the US and Israel be defended morally, that includes the criminal use of white phosphorous against human beings in Fallujah in 2005 and in Gaza in 2009. The easy way is to simply slander the critics and opposition while the killing frenzy reaches a peak. This is a part of what Douglas Murray seems to think of as a struggle for civilisation over relativism. Actually the opponents of mad-dog neoconservatism are closer to where progressive republican Immanuel Kant stood in the late 18th Century. Far from relativism. More like the core of the Enlightenment.

Someone should tell Mr Simms that the only thing that brings anti-Semites together is Judeophobia, apart from that they can be pretty varied, as anyone who has put a few minutes into researching the Far-Right. Anders Behring Breivik, the Butcher of Utoya, managed to be pro-Israel and anti-Semitic in his writings. Holocaust denier Nick Griffin can't make his mind up on the subject, pledging support for Operation Cast Lead one minute, and then accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing the next. Perhaps Simms has the on-and-off talks between the Israelis and Palestinians in mind when he penned the article. As Alexander Cockburn wrote in 2004 "Over the past 20 years I've learned there's a quick way of figuring out just how badly Israel is behaving. You see a brisk uptick in the number of articles here accusing the left of anti-Semitism." Yesterday we found Prime Minister Netanyahu accusing John Kerry of being an 'anti-Semite'. The Palestinians suspect the talks are a smokescreen and have good reason to reckon so.

This comes as Danske Bank, the biggest Danish bank, divests from an Israeli company on the grounds that it is tied to settlement building. Then there were those EU sanctions last year. Clearly the Israeli government can see the creeping impact of its isolation in the international community. So it is a testament to Netanyahu's paranoia that he would attack his closest and most important allies in the world. But his fears may well come to fruition if the US backs down at the UN. And that would almost certainly mean the Palestinians would get a state of some kind. Meanwhile the Hank Jackson know-nothings - which includes the combined mental might of Michael Gove, David Willetts, Denis MacShane, and not just Douglas Murray - can get back to their domestic agenda of ripping tax-payer money out of public services to feather the nests of the ultra-rich. It's clear what people like Murray and Simms want, and it isn't civilisation.

Condemned to Freedom.

No Excuses.

As we will see the Sartrean conception of freedom is quite distinct, even from the rest of the existentialist line of thinkers, from its psychological starting-point to its moral outgrowth. The starting-point Sartre takes with consciousness marks him out from his precursors, Nietzsche saw consciousness as quite overrated.¹ There is an interesting convergence between the particular route Sartre would eventually take on moral questions and the critique of traditional morality Nietzsche had put forth in the late 19^th Century. Not to mention the highly different ideas of selfhood which emerge from Sartre's framework and from Nietzsche's thought-processes. To both the authentic self is something that has to be created through a rejection of the inauthentic, which may be constituted as a set of social norms or moral values.² We will explore Sartre's view of human freedom with critical reference to Nietzsche where the conception seems to fall short of its aims.

The notion of consciousness as freedom is the vital element of Sartre’s existential phenomenology.³ It fits in with his general project that places freedom as the central dimension of human existence. This is where the existential themes of responsibility, commitment and notions such as bad faith and authenticity fit into the picture as well. The modes whereby we may relate our being to Being can be authentic and inauthentic. For Heidegger there was more truth in authenticity as it was a self-directed rather than a moral ideal. This is where freedom enters with the existentialist focus on the actions we undertake and, by extension, the way we choose to undertake them. Sartre went as far as to claim that the actions which we undertake can have consequences that we did not foresee and which we are responsible for insofar as we are solely responsible for own actions. The motivations we may hold are irrelevant insofar as they may provide ‘excuses’ which allow us to avoid our own responsibility. This is the reason that we fear and often shirk from the acceptance of our condition as radically free.⁴

When we look at Sartre’s conception of freedom we have to keep in mind that his body of work was a reaction to Heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology. As part of Sartre’s reaction to Heidegger he reverts to some extent back to Husserl – in that the focus of phenomenology should be consciousness – and brings with him modified vestments of Cartesianism which Heidegger wanted to ‘throw out’. This conception of freedom is predicated on consciousness as nothingness because freedom is consciousness it is detached from the causal forces of the external world. At the same time, there is literally nothing which traps the self ‘inside’ consciousness because there is nothing there.⁵ Nietzsche had noted that this particular kind of selfhood is detached from the world of causes and that it meshes well with the purposes of morality for this reason. Sartre may not have disagreed, his notion of consciousness precluded it being determined.

The Ethics of Ambiguity.

It may even be that this version of selfhood was put forward to generate a particular kind of moral conduct. It certainly led Sartre in a particular direction. In an attempt to craft an evaluative moral code Sartre reached out to Kantianism with which he was very familiar. The aim was to get away from the instability inherent in the radical subjectivism that seemed to be built into existentialism. Even as Heidegger preferred authentic modes of being over inauthentic modes. It's all too clear that authentic behaviour can have consequences of the moral and immoral kind. The amorality of authenticity in Heidegger’s work meant that there was nothing about it which ruled out Heidegger dabbling in the politics of the Third Reich at a moral level. This was something that had to be rectified for the philosophers who emerged on the other side of WW2. Especially for the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, who had been embedded in the French resistance.

Sartrean thought seems far removed from Kant at the outset. It may testify to the need for a kind of moral realism, even as Sartre rejected Christianity and traditional modes of morality he found that he had to go back to Kant in the end. It was the categorical imperative which interested Sartre, it stipulated that there are objective demands on us. It is an impersonal moral duty which takes two forms and we have access to it through reason. Firstly, that we should "act only on a maxim or rule that you can will to be a universal law". And secondly that, we should "treat others as an end in themselves, as opposed to a means to an end".⁶ The imperative is relentless in its universalism, cutting through all wants, desires and circumstances. This may seem completely at odds with Sartre's framework. But the emphasis in his conception of freedom on responsibility is compatible with Kant's insistence on universality.

To put it simply, when we act as individuals we act as we would expect others to act and this is the key to morality for Sartre.⁷ This is consistent with the Sartrean notion of freedom insofar as it can be seen as an extension of the claim that we are responsible for the extent that we act in accordance with our evaluative capacities. It could be seen as built on Sartre's idea of radical choice, which comes out of Nietzschean influences on his thinking. It was Nietzsche who put forward the suggestion that we create values. There aren't actually any out there for us to latch onto as the myths which supported our values are destroyed in nihilism. The only way out is to put man where God once was.⁸ For Sartre we have to choose rather than create our values and this begins with a radical choice, the act which opens up a new space of moral conduct. But it seems that the universality Sartre wants to go for would have the effect of instituting conformity at a self-directed level.⁹ This would seem to be too tight a constraint on Sartre's radical notion of freedom. Then again it has always been the case that this tradition has given preference to certain behaviour and attitudes, we can see this in Nietzsche's own favouritism for master-morality.

The Radical Self.

Perhaps then the emphasis on universality is what's wrong here and not the framework itself. Instead morality may be about particularity, it always boils down to a matter of interest.¹⁰ But it's unclear where this takes us, if anywhere else other than a return to the instability of moral subjectivism. It may be more in accordance with the creation of values rather than the simple choosing of them. Nietzsche would prefer to confront us with the idea of the Eternal Return of the Same than a set of duties.¹¹ The Eternal Return functions as a test for one's attitude towards life and our ability to live as ourselves without any evasive behaviour. The test is to imagine that you would have to live your life as it has gone so far and as it will go on over and over again indefinitely. So any moment of life is one which we could dwell on for all eternity. To meet this test is to affirm life and to failure is something quite pathetic. In part this functions to push us. Eternal Recurrence can force us in part to accept life as imperfect it is, so that we can 'become' who we are.

Although the alternative to moral universality seems flawed and impractical, much more in line with being-toward-death than any code of conduct, it seems clear that the venture into Kantian ethics may have been a poor manoeuvre on Sartre's part.¹² Freedom may be the primary dimension of human existence for Sartre, but its symptoms include abandonment and responsibility. Existence itself is factical because we are transcending beings, the way we exercise our freedom can transform the circumstances under which we live. We can remake the world and ourselves in accordance with our ideas, in doing so our facticity is recreated. And yet we are condemned to restlessness where we are never satisfied with our accomplishments. Each instance of facticity cannot be taken on its own to represent who we are, for we still have the capacity to act once again and redefine ourselves. The real problem may lie with the elements of Cartesianism that Sartre brings into his framework.

As it's not clear that the certainty which Descartes attributed to consciousness characterises it at all. For Nietzsche knowledge involves a finite entity with finite abilities engaged with a world of infinite becoming. The extent to which 'I' can refer to something autonomous and total is highly suspect, as Cartesian selfhood relies on an unsustainable dualism which cuts mind from body. Similarly Sartre cuts the world from consciousness. Descartes would have placed consciousness at the centre of his notion of selfhood and we can pick up an element of this in Sartre too. But Nietzsche did not reject the notion of a self. For Nietzsche the self is indistinguishable from the person and the body, which are in turn embedded in a socio-cultural context and inseparable from all sorts of contingent natural forces.¹³ Thus the importance of culture in Nietzschean thought. The self is always contextualised and cannot be broken-off from the world, to pretend it can be completely detached is illusory.¹⁴ The self is not 'I' rather 'I' is just the development of the self.

1 Solomon, RC; Nietzsche on Freedom, Fate & Responsibility 2/3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GaO7wvRLsU

2 Wartenberg, Thomas: Existentialism (Oneworld Publications, 2008) pg.125-145

3 Solomon, RC; Sartre’s Phenomenology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vGzpEqKK-Y

4 Wartenberg, Thomas: Existentialism (Oneworld Publications, 2008) pg.37-46

5 Solomon, RC; Sartre’s Phenomenology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vGzpEqKK-Y

6 Kant offered four examples of the categorical imperative in play: we should not commit suicide, we should not break our promises, we should be lazy but develop our talents and we should not ignore the happiness of others but help them.

7 Wartenberg, T; Existentialism (Oneworld Publications, 2008) pg.140-143

8 Richardson, J; Heidegger (2012, Routledge) pg.324-325

9 It could be argued that Sartre never really found an easy way to adapt existentialism for the moral and the political. Simone de Beauvoir may have come closer to a practical ethics, the ambiguous condition of the human being as a part of a world that their consciousness is not. It is this ambiguity which makes ethics difficult for existentialists, de Beauvoir's answer was to insist that 'every man needs the freedom of other men and, in a sense, always wants it, even though he may be a tyrant'. Human freedom presupposes the possibility of inter-subjectivity, taking the individual to the social realm.

Wartenberg, T; Existentialism (Oneworld Publications, 2008) pg.143-145

10 Sedgwick, PR: Nietzsche, The Key Concepts (Routledge, 2009) pg.69-72

11 Solomon, RC; Nietzsche on Freedom, Fate & Responsibility 3/3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7skKQHGTdFE&feature=related

12 Wartenberg, T; Existentialism (Oneworld Publications, 2008) pg.40-46

13 The limits of knowledge are what give it meaning and concreteness to knowledge. It is absurd to claim that ‘I think’ has any immediate identification with thought. The neglect of human capacities for creativity by this conception is intolerable, such capacities are not extensions of a ‘pure intellect’ above the body. Rather the self and the intellect can be best grasped in the drives of the body. The individual as a nexus of drives, instincts and passions is central to Nietzsche’s vision, with the self as the realm where such drives can be refined.

Sedgwick, PR: Nietzsche, The Key Concepts (Routledge, 2009) pg.137-142

14 The talk about free-will confuses causes and effects, we shouldn't talk about our behaviour as though there is first an act of will (cause) and then comes an action (effect). As every effect must have a cause we might say that the preceding cause is a mental one to action, but for Nietzsche there is just action. We just do things most of the time, it is only every so often that we have to push ourselves and will something. Most of our lives are not so reflective and deliberative, we just do things because of the kind of creatures we are. It is a matter of necessity. This is consistent with Nietzsche's attitude towards consciousness, which Sartre seems to elevate by contrast. Nietzsche puts aside the focus on justifying actions in favour of explaining actions in terms of motivation and who we are. Character is constituted by a set of automatic actions which we cultivate.

Solomon, RC; Nietzsche on Freedom, Fate & Responsibility 2/3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GaO7wvRLsU

Memento Mori.

A Tabula Rasa.

Christopher Nolan's film Memento (2001) explores the dull archetypal story of revenge combined with aspects of traditional detective stories, which have been recycled and churned out repeatedly by Hollywood over the years, through the cliche of a amnesiac narrator. Perhaps, what is so original, compelling and truly brilliant aspect of Memento is the structure that the story takes and the way in which Nolan combined old ideas in the piece. The protagonist, Leonard Shelby, suffered a head injury whilst trying to save his wife from intruders who had broken into their house. Since then Lenny has suffered from anterograde amnesia, amnesia in which he retains his old memories and knowledge but is incapable of maintaining new memories. The film is structured, to fit the unsettling subjectivity of the protagonist's view of reality, in reverse chronological order. As Nolan explains, Memento does not have a non-linear structure, at least not in the conventional sense, because each scene is directly dependent on the one before just as in a linear structure.


Though the film is enthralling on many levels, it introduces an age-old area of philosophy to popular culture and its audience. In the opening scene, we are confronted with a polaroid photograph of a man who has been shot dead. In reverse of the process taken in photographing the corpse, the polaroid slowly fades as it gradually returns to it's initial blank state before retreating back into the camera. The polaroid itself is passive to the camera and it's owner to determine the image of which it will ultimately convey. This is almost a metaphor for the blank slate, or tabula rasa, description of the mind, favoured by empiricists like John Locke. Empiricism is a philosophical school of thought focusing on the nature of knowledge, empiricists argued that all our ideas and knowledge are derived from experience via senses. For instance, our ideas of ‘white’ and ‘cold’ come from the first time we encountered snow. Our experiences shape our knowledge of reality and all the ideas we’ll ever have are taken from our experiences. There are parallels to this in Memento. The polaroids, notes and tattoos are the only ways in which Leonard Shelby can collect knowledge - which is derived from his daily experiences in his search for John G.

The way that a camera can serve as a model for the empirical view of the mind. Images are received and after a flash imprinted onto a polaroid, the tabula rasa, as the human mind is blank upon birth and develops an understanding of the world from sense impressions, according to the empiricists. The opening shot of the polaroid is a metaphor for the inner-workings of Leonard's damaged psyche - a truly empirical mind perhaps is one in which memories cannot be made. The distorting effect amnesia has had on Shelby's consciousness is why a priori knowledge is absent in his life after the incident. We do not live like Shelby because we can make new memories, we don't need all those notes and tattoos to get by. The reason: because Lenny is lacking something we are not. We can hold onto knowledge, probably because the mind isn't a blank slate normally. Rationalists would argue that we have a priori knowledge, which is independent of experience and sense impressions (if anything) "unlock" such knowledge. There has to be something in the camera to hold images, it can't just be a void.

Reason and Experience.

Immanuel Kant proposed a synthesis, a compromise in the epistemological argument between philosophers of the rational and empirical traditions. Most animals receive information through sense impressions, a dog can hear us speak but will not understand our language. It takes reason to understand the received information, which is what may separate us from the animals. The reason interacts with the experience and is not passive, if anything, reason dominates experience shaping it into concepts that we can understand. The concepts of ‘white’ and ‘cold’ exist to us, not because they exist objectively. But because we have imposed these concepts onto our subjective experience of reality, snow can appear to us as both ‘white’ and ‘cold’. This is not because the world is inside our minds. This is because our minds only have the capability to perceive the world in such a way. For instance, the unified notions of time and space that we hold are not entirely independent of our minds. We just cannot perceive the world without applying the concepts of time and space, otherwise nothing would be comprehensible.

This is a point enforced by the reverse linear structure of Memento. If we could perceive the world without applying the concept of time, as we understand it, the reversed structure of the film would be insignificant. Though, we can follow the storyline because we put things together as we're watching, the structure has a major impact upon how we interpret the story. When we first come across Natalie we see her as a possible love interest. This is due to the traditional depiction of female main characters as a love interest or play-thing for the leading man. In Memento, this assumption of Natalie is further played on when Leonard awakens after sharing a bed with Natalie. It is only as the story progresses, that it becomes apparent that Natalie is not a love interest at all and appears to be a manipulative character with her own goal of avenging her boyfriend's death. All of this is predicated on the fact that the audience would be caught off guard by the structure of the film. Though it's possible that the film could not even have been made if the concept of time was totally objective and unconnected to the human experience.

During the conclusion of Memento, which is actually the beginning of the story, Leonard acknowledges that there is such a thing as a priori knowledge when he says "Yeah, we don't need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I'm no different." In doing so, he rejects the notion that knowledge is derived only through sense impressions. We do not need to sense ourselves to know ourselves, we simply are ourselves and therefore know ourselves a priori - it is not acquired through experience but known. So this would mean that the metaphor of a camera for Shelby's mind is only partially accurate of his "condition" - a state of near passivity to knowledge, to others etc. Leonard has anterograde amnesia and the way he has been led along by Teddy shows the depth of his passivity. It is in the film that we see the transition Leonard Shelby makes from "bad faith" - acting as if one is a object passive to the forces around them - to authenticity and all the responsibility that comes with it.

The New Man.

Leonard Shelby is a highly original character, standing out against scenery in his cream suit and even standing incongruous to the banal revenge story he is part of. Shelby is remarkably independent, resourceful and determined for an individual suffering from such a "condition" - in contrast with the story of Sammy Jenkis who ends up in a home. But at the same time, because of his "condition", he vulnerable to the power of others. We can only watch as Leonard is manipulated by those around him. Teddy, Natalie and even Burt use his "condition" to further their own ends, whether it be for financial gain or revenge. Though the trust Leonard places in his notes keeps him from being easily manipulated by Teddy. On several occasions Leonard looks at the picture of Teddy and his comment "Never believe his lies" which stops him from following his guidance blindly. Partly this is the way that Leonard continues on his own independent path to find the killer-rapist John G. Of course, John G is already dead and Shelby is already free but trapped in "bad faith", allowing others to determine his actions.


Though it could be that this element of Memento cannot be understood fully without exploring the ideas of existentialism. Existentialism is a radically subjective philosophy that places the individual, autonomy, authenticity and the self, at the centre of importance. Fanon believed that the only way individuals could achieve true freedom, as opposed to the spurious bourgeois freedom of the West, is through violence. The very experience of violence would be cathartic and can awaken individuals from the West's insidious form of control. At the heart of existentialism rests a view of human beings not too dissimilar from empiricism. The way in which empiricists view the mind as a tabula rasa at the beginning of life is similar to the way in which existentialist philosophers viewed the attaining of essence after existence. But for the likes of Sartre, the individual is not a passive and blank slate waiting to experience the world. Sartre would have argued that the individual must not act in "bad faith" in order to attain authenticity and experience true freedom. "Bad faith" being to act as if one is passive and conform to the pressures that surround you.

The story of Memento relates closely to the existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon. This is also appropriate as Sartre was heavily influenced by Kant and pursued merging the duty-based ethics of Kant with existentialism. The act of killing Teddy may be the emancipation in itself, as it is Shelby's action that destroys the powerful force that he has been passive to for so long. After which Leonard emerges as a "new man" who has taken charge of his life and has purged himself of the "bad faith". The paradox of this relationship being the comfort and security of it, but also the turmoil and horror that is innate to the relationship. However, it could be argued that the emancipation Leonard achieved by killing Teddy was set in motion when he first wrote down Teddy's license plate, in the film's conclusion and the story's beginning, and in that sense it was that action, not killing John G, which was truly authentic.