← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · NeoNietzsche
Thread ID: 12187 | Posts: 11 | Started: 2004-02-06
2004-02-06 14:40 | User Profile
1)Which book did Nietzsche regard as "the touchstone of [his] philosophy"?
2)What, according to Nietzsche, "must one...desire...with all one's might...even will it...even promote it"?
3)What, according to Nietzsche, is the "primordial fact of all history"?
4)On which point, according to Nietzsche, "is the common European consciousness [no] more reluctant to learn than it is..." [regarding the will to power incarnate]?
5)Of what element, according to Nietzsche, has "every elevation of the type 'man' hitherto been the work"?
6)How, according to Nietzsche, has "every higher culture on earth...hitherto begun"?
7)What, according to Nietzsche, is "the symbol of this struggle [of the opposing values], inscribed in letters legible across all human history"?
8)In what singular way, according to Nietzsche, "can man attain greatness"?
2004-02-06 15:09 | User Profile
For the answers, watch Stanley Kubrick's ultimate and timeless masterpiece film: [B]"2001: A Space Odyssey"[/B]
2004-02-07 14:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE=xmetalhead] For the answers, watch Stanley Kubrick's ultimate and timeless masterpiece film: [B]"2001: A Space Odyssey"[/B][/QUOTE]
Wherein the pensive ape takes a bone and taps out code for Genealogy of Morals
2004-02-07 14:38 | User Profile
[QUOTE=NeoNietzsche] 2) What, according to Nietzsche, "must one...desire...with all one's might...even will it...even promote it"?[/QUOTE]
"In what is an even more decisive and deeper sense, Judea once again was victorious over the classical ideal at the time of the French Revolution. The last political nobility which we had in Europe, in seventeenth and eighteenth century France, broke apart under the instinct of popular resentmentââ¬ânever on earth has there ever been heard a greater rejoicing, a noisier enthusiasm! It's true that in the midst of all this the most dreadful and most unexpected events took place: the old ideal itself stepped physically and with unheard of splendour before the eyes and the conscience of humanityââ¬âand once again stronger, simpler, and more urgently than ever rang out, in opposition to the old lie, to the slogan of resentment about the privileged rights of the majority, in opposition to that will for a low condition, abasement, equality, for the decline and extinguishing of mankindââ¬âin opposition to all that there rang out a fearsome and delightful counter-slogan about the privileged rights of the few! As a last signpost to a different road Napoleon appeared, the most singular and late-born man there ever was, and in him the problem of the inherently noble ideal was made flesh. We might well think about what sort of a problem that is: Napoleon, this synthesis of the inhuman and the superhuman . . .
"Did that end it? Was that greatest of all opposition of ideals thus set ad acta for all time? Or was it merely postponed, postponed indefinitely? . . . Some day, after a much longer preparation, will an even more fearful blaze from the old fire not have to take place More than that: isn't this exactly something we should hope for with all our strengthââ¬âeven will it or demand it? . . ."
2004-02-07 18:36 | User Profile
Pardon me if I've asked this question before. Where did Nietzsche say, "A woman whose toungue is at rest, is always best dressed."
2004-02-11 21:06 | User Profile
[QUOTE=NeoNietzsche] 3)What, according to Nietzsche, is the "primordial fact of all history"?[/QUOTE]
"To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one's will on a par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one organisation). As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle more generally, and if possible even as the fundamental principle of society, it would immediately disclose what it really is--namely, a Will to the denial of life, a principle of dissolution and decay. Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation;--but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? Even the organisation within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal--it takes place in every healthy aristocracy--must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organisation, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other: it will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendency--not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it lives, and because life is precisely Will to Power. On no point, however, is the ordinary consciousness of Europeans more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter; people now rave everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming conditions of society in which 'the exploiting character' is to be absent:-- that sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should refrain from all organic functions. 'Exploitation' does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society: it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life.--Granting that as a theory this is a novelty--as a reality it is the fundamental fact of all history: let us be so far honest towards ourselves!"
2004-02-11 21:25 | User Profile
[QUOTE=NeoNietzsche]Wherein the pensive ape takes a bone and taps out code for Genealogy of Morals[/QUOTE]
[IMG]http://www.palantir.net/cgi-bin/image.cgi?pics/dawn08.jpg[/IMG]
2004-02-11 21:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE=NeoNietzsche]Wherein the pensive ape takes a bone and taps out code for Genealogy of Morals[/QUOTE]
[IMG]http://www.indelibleinc.com/kubrick/films/2001/images/2001-ape.jpg[/IMG]
2004-02-15 00:15 | User Profile
[QUOTE=NeoNietzsche]
5) Of what element, according to Nietzsche, has "every elevation of the type 'man' hitherto been the work"?[/QUOTE]
Every elevation of the type "man," has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society and so it will always be--a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human beings, and requiring slavery in some form or other. Without the pathos of distance, such as grows out of the incarnated difference of classes, out of the constant out-looking and down-looking of the ruling caste on subordinates and instruments, and out of their equally constant practice of obeying and commanding, of keeping down and keeping at a distance--that other more mysterious pathos could never have arisen, the longing for an ever new widening of distance within the soul itself, the formation of ever higher, rarer, further, more extended, more comprehensive states, in short, just the elevation of the type "man," the continued "self-surmounting of man," to use a moral formula in a supermoral sense. To be sure, one must not resign oneself to any humanitarian illusions about the history of the origin of an aristocratic society (that is to say, of the preliminary condition for the elevation of the type "man"): the truth is hard. Let us acknowledge unprejudicedly how every higher civilisation hitherto has originated! Men with a still natural nature, barbarians in every terrible sense of the word, men of prey, still in possession of unbroken strength of will and desire for power, threw themselves upon weaker, more moral, more peaceful races (perhaps trading or cattle-rearing communities), or upon old mellow civilisations in which the final vital force was flickering out in brilliant fireworks of wit and depravity. At the commencement, the noble caste was always the barbarian caste: their superiority did not consist first of all in their physical, but in their psychical power--they were more complete men (which at every point also implies the same as "more complete beasts").
2004-02-21 23:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE=NeoNietzsche] 7)What, according to Nietzsche, is "the symbol of this struggle [of the opposing values], inscribed in letters legible across all human history"?[/QUOTE]
The symbol of this battle, written in a script which has remained legible through all human history up to the present, is called "Rome Against Judea, Judea Against Rome." To this point there has been no greater event than this war, this posing of a question, the contradiction between these deadly enemies. Rome felt that the Jews were something contrary to nature itself, something like its monstrous polar opposite. In Rome the Jew was considered "guilty of hatred again the entire human race." And that view was correct, to the extent we are right to link the health and the future of the human race to the unconditional rule of aristocratic values, the Roman values.
By contrast, how did the Jews feel about Rome? We can guess that from a thousand signs, but it is sufficient to treat oneself again to the Apocalypse of John, that wildest of all written outbursts which vengeance has on its conscience. (Incidentally, we must not underestimate the deep consistency of the Christian instinct, when it ascribed this very book of hate to the name of the disciple of love, the same man to whom it attributed that wildly enthusiastic amorous gospelââ¬âthere is some truth to this, no matter how much literary counterfeiting may have been necessary for that book to make its point)
The Romans were the strong and noble men, stronger and nobler than any people who'd lived on earth up until thenââ¬âor even than any people who'd ever been dreamed up. Everything they left as remains, every inscription, is delightful, provided that we can guess what was doing the writing there. By contrast, the Jews were par excellence that priestly people of resentment who possessed an unparalleled genius for popular morality. Just compare people with related talentsââ¬âsay, the Chinese or the Germansââ¬âwith the Jews in order to understand who's in first place and who's fifth.
Which of them has proved victorious for the time being, Rome or Judea? Surely there's not the slightest doubt. Just think of who it is people bow down to today in Rome as the personification of all the highest valuesââ¬âand not only in Rome, but in almost half the earth, everywhere where people have become merely tame or want to become tameââ¬âin front of three Jews, as we know, and one Jewess (before Jesus of Nazareth, the fisherman Peter, the carpet worker Paul, and the mother of the first-mentioned Jesus, named Mary).
Now, this is very remarkable: without doubt Rome has been conquered. It's true that in the Renaissance there was a brilliant, incredible re-awakening of the classical ideal, the noble way of evaluating everything. Rome itself behaved like someone who'd woken up from a coma induced by the pressure of the new Jewish Rome built over it, which looked like an ecumenical synagogue and was called "the church." But immediately Judea triumphed again, thanks to that basically vulgar (German and English) movement of resentment, which we call the Reformation, together with what had to follow as a consequence, the re-establishment of the church, as well as the re-establishment of the old grave-like tranquillity of classical Rome.
2004-03-02 13:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE=NeoNietzsche] 8)In what singular way, according to Nietzsche, "can man attain greatness"?[/QUOTE]
Fundamentally, my term immoralist involves two negations. For one, I negate a type of man that has so far been considered supreme: the good, the benevolent, the beneficent. And then I negate a type of morality that has become prevalent and predominant as morality itselfââ¬âthe morality of decadence or, more concretely, Christian morality. It would be permissible to consider the second contradiction the more decisive one, since I take the overestimation of goodness and benevolence on a large scale for a consequence of decadence, for a symptom of weakness, irreconcilable with an ascending, Yes-saying life: negating and destroying are conditions of saying Yes.
Let me tarry over the psychology of the good human being. To estimate what a type of man is worth, one must calculate the price paid for his preservationââ¬âone must know the conditions of his existence. The condition of the existence of the good is the lie: put differently, not wanting to see at any price how reality is constituted fundamentallyââ¬ânamely, not in such a way as to elicit benevolent instincts at all times, and even less in such a way as to tolerate at all times the interference of those who are myopically good-natured. To consider distress of all kinds as an objection, as something that must be abolished, is the niaiserie par excellence and, on a large scale, a veritable disaster in its consequences, a nemesis of stupidityââ¬âalmost as stupid as would be the desire to abolish bad weatherââ¬âsay, from pity for poor people.
In the great economy of the whole, the terrible aspects of reality (in affects, in desires, in the will to power) are to an incalculable degree more necessary than that form of petty happiness which people call "goodness"; one actually has to be quite lenient to accord the latter any place at all, considering that it presupposes an instinctive mendaciousness. I shall have a major occasion to demonstrate how the historical consequences of optimism, this abortion of the homines optimi, have been uncanny beyond measure. Zarathustra, who was the first to grasp that the optimist is just as decadent as the pessimist, and perhaps more harmful, says: "Good men never speak the truth." [Thus Spoke Zarathustra, III, 56, 7.]
"False coasts and assurances the good have taught you; in the lies of the good you were hatched and huddled. Everything has been made fraudulent and has been twisted through and through by the good." [Thus Spoke Zarathustra, III, 56, 28.]
Fortunately, the world has not been designed with a view to such instincts that only good-natured herd animals could find their narrow happiness in it: to demand that all should become "good human beings," herd animals, blue-eyed, benevolent, "beautiful souls"ââ¬âor as Mr. Herbert Spencer would have it, altruisticââ¬âwould deprive existence of its great character and would castrate men and reduce them to the level of desiccated Chinese stagnation.ââ¬â And this has been attempted!ââ¬â Precisely this has been called morality.
In this sense, Zarathustra calls the good, now "the last men," [Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, 5.] now "the beginning of the end"; above all, he considers them the most harmful type of man because they prevail at the expense of truth and at the expense of the future.
"The good are unable to create; they are always the beginning of the end; they crucify him who writes new values on new tablets; they sacrifice the future to themselvesââ¬âthey sacrifice all man's future."
"The good have always been the beginning of the end."
"And whatever harm those do who slander the world, the harm done by the good is the most harmful harm." [Thus Spoke Zarathustra, III, 56, 26.]
5.
Zarathustra, the first psychologist of the good, isââ¬âconsequentlyââ¬âa friend of the evil. when a decadent type of man ascended to the rank of the highest type, this could only happen at the expense if its countertype, the type of man that is strong and sure of life. When the herd animal is irradiated by the glory of the purest virtue, the exceptional man must have been devaluated into evil. When the mendaciousness at any price monopolizes the word "truth" for its perspective, the really truthful man is bound to be branded with the worst names. Zarathustra leaves no doubt at this point: he says that it was his insight precisely into the good, the "best," that made him shudder at man in general; that it was from this aversion that he grew wings "to soar off into distant futures"; he does not conceal the fact that his type of man, a relatively superhuman type, is superhuman precisely in its relation to the goodââ¬âthat the good and the just would call his overman devil.
"You highest men whom my eyes have seen, this is my doubt about you and my secret laughter: I guess that you would call my overmanââ¬âdevil."
"What is great is so alien to your souls that the overman would be terrifying to you in his goodness." [Thus Spake Zarathustra, II, 43.]
It is here and nowhere else that one must make a start to comprehend what Zarathustra wants: this type of man that he conceives, conceives reality as it is, being strong enough to do so; this type is not estranged or removed from reality but is reality itself and exemplifies all that is terrible and questionable in itââ¬âonly in that way can man attain greatness.