gallows/Kant OR gallows/Nietzsche

[Australian Studies Centre]

Nietzsche, in discussing the 'theatrics' of public punishment has this to
say: 

"To the degree that to make suffer is pleasure in its highest form, and to
the degree that the injured party received an extraordinary counter
pleasure in exchange for the injury and distress caused by the injury: to
make someone suffer, - a true feast" (Genealogy of Morals, II, 5)

Nietzche's is a rather nice critique of Kant's argument that law is
universal, moral, and objective. The gallows, here and through Pynchon, can
be read in context of a sexual economy (doesn't the audience take bets on
whether the victim gets an erection?), and as linked to slavery as a way of
extracting some kind of value from the body of the victim - whether it be
labour or pleasure.  

Would I be right in asserting that Pynchon's views are closer to Nietzsche
than Kant?

Mike H

----------

Parke Muth's Kant quote
> 
> "Suppose that someone says his lust is irresistible when the
> desired object and opportunity are present.  Ask him whether
> he would not control his passion if, in front of the house
> where he has this oportunity, a gallows were erected on which
> he would be hanged immediately after gratifying his lust.  We
> do not have to guess very long what his answer would be.  But
> ask him whether he thinks it would be possible for him
> to overcome his love for life, however great it may be, if his
> sovereign threatened him with the same sudden death unless he
> made false deposition against an honorable man whom the ruler
> wished to destroy under a plausible pretext.  Whether he would
> or not he perhaps will not venture to say; but that it should
> be possible for him he would certainly admit without
> hestitation.  He judges, therefore, that he can do something
> because he knows he ought, and he recognizes that he is free--a
> fact which, without the moral law, would have remained unknown
> to him." Kant Critique of Practical Reason
> 
> Is Pynchon responding to this?
> 
> Parke Muth