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Snobbism: One Aspect of the Will to Power

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2024

Corrado Fatta
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The sense of power has a double face : on the one hand, it is the will to power as a force impelling to action; on the other hand, it is a basic state of mind which essentially conditions our intellectual approach to reality. It is in this second perspective that we see why the interpretation of a series of relationships between man and reality in terms of power, inconceivable among the Zunis or the Arapesh, is natural to the Western mind, or, at any rate, is more or less in agreement with its general attitude. As Mannheim observed, “We enter at birth a world which has already been interpreted, a world which has already been made comprehensible, and each of whose parts has a meaning.” In this study we propose to examine to what degree and through what modes of expression this age-old spiritual conditioning has influenced our view of the world and of the realities of existence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 8 , Issue 30 , June 1960 , pp. 24 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © 1960 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1. K. Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (London, 1952), p. 197.

2. Thomas Hobbes, Lcviathan (Oxford, 1952), chap. xi.

3. R. Polin, "Sens et fondement de pouvoir chez J. Locke," Le Porivoir (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957), I, 56.

4. G. van der Leeuw, La Religion dans son essence et ses manifestations (Paris, 1948), pp. 9-10.

5. R. Otto, Das Heilige (Breslau, 1920), pp. 12, 19, 25.

6. We are avoiding any term which might imply the idea (called arbitrary by M. Eliade) of an evolution of the religious phenomenon (cf. Traité d'histoire des religions [Paris, 1943], p. 12).

7. M. Leenhardt, "Quelques éléments communs aux forms inférieures de la religion," Histoire des Religions (Paris: Blound & Gay, 1953), p. 98, 108-9.

8. M. Leenhardt, Do Kamo (Paris: Gallimard, 1947), p. 129.

9. Van der Leeuw, op. cit., p. 10-11.

10. E. de Martino, Il Mondo magico (Turin, 1948); cf. especially pp. 91 ff.

11. Van der Leeuw, op. cit., p. 334.

12. G. van der Leeuw, Der Mensch und die Religion (Basel: Verlag Haus zom falken, 1941).

13. B. Malinowski, Magic, Science, and Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1948), p. 114.

14. M. Mauss, "Esquisse d'une théorie générale de la magie," in Sociologie et Anthro pologie (Paris, 1950), p. 134.

15. Malinowski, op. cit., p. 54.

16. G. van der Leeuw, L'Homme primitif et la religion (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1940), p. 40.

17. Cf. Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (London, 1952), pp. 102 ff.

18. Cf. Mircea Eliade, Le Chamanisme (Paris, 1951).

19. Mircea Eliade, Mythes, rêves et mystère (Paris, 1951), p. 169.

20. Cf. A. Forke, Die Gedankenwelt des chinesischen Kulturkreises (Munich-Berlin: Oldenbourg, 1927), pp. 179 ff.

21. Cf. Majjhimanikayo, I, I, 2; XV, 9, Vol. I, p. 8, 1080. Dighanikayo, I, II, Vol. II, pp. 149-50.

22. Eliade, Mythes …, pp. 116, 122, and Les Techniques du Yoga (Paris, 1947).

23. F. Wieser, Das Gesetz der Macht (Vienna: Springer, 1926), p. 8o.

24. Georgics ii. 489.

25. George Orwell, Animal Farm (London: Penguin), p. 25.

26. Richard P. McKeon, "Le Pouvoir et le langage du pouvoir," in Le Pouvoir (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1956, I, 27.

27. Nietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht (Kröner ed.), p. 418.

28. Oswald Spengler, Der Mensch und die Technik (Munich, 1933), pp. 71-72.

29. Hobbes, op. cit., chap. xi, p. 76. Marcus Aurelius had long before warned of the opposite dangers of becoming a slave of charity or an ingrate (Pensées, I, 8).

30. Van der Leeuw, L'Homme …, p. 72.

31. Prov. 25:21; Rom. 12:20.

32. "Essai sur le don," Sociologie et anthropologie (Paris, 1959), p. 153.

33. Ibid., p. 212, n. 2.

34. Ruth Benedict, op. cit., p. 177; Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (New York: Mentor Books, 1955), p. 133.

35. Van der Leeuw, La Religion …, p. 109.

36. The slang term "dab," meaning the chief, the master, is derived from the promis sory Latin dabo: "I shall give" (cf. A. Dauzat, Les Argots [Paris, 1927], p. 73, and Balzac, Splendeur et Misère des courtisanes [Pléiade ed.], V, 1055).

37. E. Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit (London, 1947), III, 403.

38. R. Huyghe, Dialogue avec le visible (Paris: Plon, 1955), p. 125.

39. Cf. Aldous Huxley, "Magic," in Texts and Pretexts (London: Chatto & Windus, 1932), pp. 221 ff.

40. Nietzsche, Nachlass (Kröner edition), II, 746.

41. J. Pirenne, Les grands courants de l'histoire universelle (Neuchâtel: Éditions de la Baconnière; Paris: A. Michel), VII, xiv.

42. Power (London, 1948), pp. 10-11.

43. Wieser, op. cit.

44. Nietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht, p. 657.

45. Ibid., p. 658.

46. Nietzsche, Nachlass, II, 384.

47. On the will to power as a not insignificant basis for the personal effort of the founder of psychoanalysis, cf. Ernest Jones, Sigmund Freud (London, 1956), I, 33-34.

48. F. Alexander, in Clyde K. Kluckhohn and Henry A. Murray (eds.), Personality in Nature, Society, and Culture (rev. ed.; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), pp. 426 ff.

49. S. Zuckerman, The Social Life of Monkeys and Apes (London, 1932). The shifting of hierarchical positions conditions the sexual response of chickens (cf. Egge Schjelderup, "Weitere Beiträge zur Sozial und Individual-Psychologie des Haushuhnes," Zeitschrift für Psychologie [Leipzig, 1922], pp. 81-82).

50. W. Köhler has noted that sexual excitement in the chimpanzee is "less specific and less differentiated from other forms of excitement than in humans … the chimpanzee's sexuality is apparently less sexual than that of civilized man" (The Mentality of Apes [London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1951], pp. 302-3).

51. Van der Leeuw, op. cit., pp. 224-25.

52. M. Leenhardt, Gens de la grande terre (Paris: Gallimard, 1937), p. 143.

53. M. Leenhardt, Do Kamo, p. 87.

54. R. Thurnwald, Des Menschengeistes Erwachen Wachsen und Irren (Berlin: Dunck ner & Humblot, 1951), p. 376.

55. Ibid., p. 289.

56. Van der Leeuw, op. cit., pp. 225 ff.

57. J. Frazer, The Golden Bough (abridged ed.; London, 1949[?]), pp. 138-39.

58. Cf. B. Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Society (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1949) pp. 24 ff.

59. Van der Leeuw, op. cit., p. 178.

60. Mead, op, cit., p. 128.

61. P. Bovet, L'lnstinct combatif (Paris, 1928), p. 50.

62. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Macmillan Co., 1931), p. 35.

63. II Kings 16:21.

64. La Rochefoucauld, "Reflexions et Maximes," Œuvres complètes (Paris: Pléiade ed.), LXVIII, 253.

65. Balzac, Le Père Goriot (Paris: Pléiade ed.), II, 950.

66. Petrarch, Epistula de rebus familiaribus (Fracassetti ed., 1852), IX, iv, 2.19.

67. Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, La Prisonnière (Paris: Pléiade ed.), III, 77.

68. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 79; David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1953), pp. 155-56.

69. M. Scheler, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (Frankfurt, 1948), p. 20 (cf. also C. Wright Mills, White Collar [New York: Oxford University Press, 1951], p. 232).

70. On the theme of "distance" in relation to the king, cf. Van der Leeuw, op. cit., p. 31.

71. M. Granet, La Civilisation chinoise (Paris), p. 384. Among the Canacks the chief represents "the personified glory of the clan" (Leenhardt, Do Kamo, p. 146), which in dicates that even on this level prestige may be collectivized.

72. Op. cit., Du Côté des Guermantes (Pléiade ed.), II, 131; Jean Santeuil (Paris, 1952), II, 270.

73. Franz Werfel, "Der Snobismus als geistige Weltmacht," 1928 Jahrbuch des P. Zsolnay Verlages, p. 289.

74. Thurnwald, op. cit., p. 289.

75. Nietzsche, Nachlass, I, 1272.

76. The Romance languages distinguish "puissance" from "pouvoir," while the Anglo-Saxons have but a single term, "power," "Macht."

77. A. Adler, Menschenkentniss (Zurich, 1956), p. 131.

78. Mills, White Collar, pp. 210, 255.

79. OP. cit., p. 19.