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Monday 27 February 2006

The Pessimism of Strength

"Schopenhauer's pessimism, which springs partly, I think from his own line of philosophical thought and partly from subjective feeling and the experiences of his own personal life, has been far surpassed by Nietzsche."
[Table Talk section 327 16th may 19444, evening]


It seems to me [after another detailed reading of The Birth of Tragedy] that Nietzsche did not reject the pessimistic basis of his philosophy - he rather rejected a negative interpretation of that basis.
His pessimism remained.
Is this a tragic philosophy - a thinking of the world to be the worst of all possible worlds [Strife, Suffering etc., -look at Spengler's Decline for a more recent example.]?
If no, why not, and if yes - is this desirable?
And - if Nietzsche's project was to reject Pessimism, is the next stage in this philosophy a complete rejection of pessimism, even as a basis for our thinking?
By this I mean a world-view which has no part of any kind of pessimism at root - an arche, if you like, which rejects every trace of pessimism?

Pessimism:
1.
the tendency to see, anticipate, or emphasize only bad or undesirable outcomes, results, conditions, problems, etc.:
2.the doctrine that the existing world is the worst of all possible worlds, or that all things naturally tend to evil.
3.the belief that the evil and pain in the world are not compensated for by goodness and happiness.
We must distinguish the ascending aspect of pessimism [call it 'pessimism of strength'] from the declining aspect [ a 'pessimism of weakness': as I have argued before, each idea must be seen from the perspectives of master/slave, ascending/descending, etc.]
" Is there a pessimism of strength? An intellectual predilection for the hard, gruesome [schauerliche], evil, problematic aspects of ex­istence that arises from well-being [Wohlsein], overflowing health, from the fullness of existence? [...] A seductive, striving [versücherische] courage that sees clearly [des schärfsten Blicks] and demands the fearsome as the enemy, the worthy enemy on whom it can test its strength? from whom it wants to learn what it means to be afraid?" (Nietzsche, BT.SelfCrit.:1)
I say that this pessimism of strength is a defining characteristic of the truly philosophic.
"The dominant attitude of the recent generations to the problematic of the concept of pessimism is already manifested in the view according to which pessimism denotes the Evil essence of this world and claims that it would have been better if it would not exist. This definition suits the Philosophy of Schopenahauer, but it does not fit and even contradicts other pessimistic philosophies, like that of Nietzsche. The quintessence of Nietsche's project is the affirmation of life and saying yes and accepting the sufferings of this world..." [...]
"Western utopian tradition is rich in structures where optimism is very much emphasized. But there are structures where optimism is completely absent, where hope alone is present and is enclosed in a utopian setting. Such a utopia goes beyond the good-Evil dichotomy into the Evil-vain dialectic. In this tradition the utopia does not look for Eden as her home, since she remembers that the language of Eden contained seeds of contradictions between human will and Godly imperatives: It was a defected realm that carried with it the birth strain of a creation constituting the dialectic of vain and Evil.
In Western culture, man is represented as if he is framed in a world of suffering and never satisfying knowledge; Faustian man is desperate between the hope for total knowledge/happiness - even at the expense of pleasure - and the hope of being transcended back "home". In many utopias "home" is a restoration of Eden or its secular parallel. In others the quest back home is transformed to optimism as to the possibility of reasonable reforms. To still other utopias, back "home" will constitute a retreat from the public sphere to the individual one, where meaning, if not happiness, can be hoped for, striven for. But to our mind, all Western utopias are united in their quest for what is beyond the Edenic infinity, and being optimistic to the possibility of progress in the project of re-building the "Babylon tower" alternative, a "tower" whose infinite peak is reaching "heaven."

pessimism of strength, to use Nietzsche's master-phrase.
This is not, I repeat, the pessimism of melancholia and decline which "ceases upon the midnight with no pain" and is meant by Nietzsche here in the latter part of the following quote;
"In this sense I have the right to understand myself as the first tragic philosopherthat is to say, the extreme antithesis and antipodes of a pessimistic philosopher." [Nietzsche, EH BT3]
It is a profoundly tragic culture which throws up - in contrast - the greatest art works and discoveries - and the latter are a necessary result of this pessimism of strength.
How is all this so? Because this philosophy says that there is no after-life; there is only this life which could end at any moment. He faces the possibility of the end of his own life at every moment. And this life has no inherent or extant 'goal' - it has no 'meaning' beyond itself. This realistic outlook is surely the 'worst of all possible worlds' [raised to a non plus ultra by Nietzsche's eternal recurrence of the same] and therefore basically pessimistic.
This philosophy has no 'Yahweh'.
But it has both technology and techne [art]. Art - and his realism which gives him the freedom to invent, explore and experiment. Which all derive - like his pessimism of strength - from the military school of life.
All of his arts begin as ancillaries to his warfare.
That is why the warrior must have originally been at the pinnacle of the caste system before the machinations of the priests.

"Q. You say that the military State produces the best art?
Then why is not Sparta noted for its art?

A. The Spartans themselves were art;- they lived art, they embodied
art, they personified art - so much so, that there was no distinction
bewteen art and life in Sparta."

The Pessimism of Strength.

"Learn and become who you are."
[Pindar, Second Pythian Ode, 71]

"Judaism must be said to be fundamentally optimistic. Gen. i. proclaims that all that God made was good, very good. Man alone of all creatures is not so described. He is endowed with the freedom to choose evil or good. Hence the evils of life are not inherent in the nature of things, but are consequent upon man's conduct. This is the theory worked out in Gen. ii. These two basic concepts—the essential goodness of Creation and man's moral liberty, in which is involved his freedom to sin and thus to bring upon himself both physical and moral suffering as the wage of sin—recur, though in various forms, in the successive developments of Jewish thought. According to this theory happiness and goodness must be coincident. This simple faith was rudely shaken by abundant observation of both public and private experiences to the contrary (Hab. i. 3-4; Isa. xlix. 4; Jer. xii. 1-3; Mal. ii. 17, iii. 13-15; Ps. xliv. and lxxiii.; comp. Ber. 7a). The Messianic hope, however, or the ultimate manifestation of the all-harmonizing retributive power of God, was urged as the solution of the perplexity (Ps. xxxvii. 10-22, xcii. 13-16; Isa. ii. 2-4, xi. 9; Mal. iii. 18, iv. 1-3). It is characteristic of these Biblical attempts at a theodicy that no reference is made to retribution or recompense in the hereafter (but see Ibn Ezra on Ps. lxxiii.). "

surpass: go beyond (another or oneself/previously) in degree, amount, or quality; be or do more or better than ...(OED)]

"Verily, I advise you: depart from me, and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he hath deceived you. The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends. One requiteth a teacher badly if one remain merely a student. And why will ye not pluck at my wreath? Ye venerate me; but what if your veneration should some day collapse? Take heed lest a statue crush you! Ye say, ye believe in Zarathustra? But of what account is Zarathustra! Ye are my believers: but of what account are all believers! Ye had not yet sought yourselves: then did ye find me. So do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account. Now do I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when ye have all denied me, will I return unto you. [TSZ I: The Bestowing Virtue]
"No Conqueror believes in Chance". [GS 258]

We are not satisfied that some Overhumans have been hitherto created by chance.
As I wrote some time ago: on the Christ-Souled Roman Caesar;
In early 20th century ... Spengler proclaimed his ... doctrine of 'Caesarism' ;
"...The prototypes of Caesarism will soon become more clearly defined, more conscious, more brazen ...The Legions of Caesar are reawakening ". [Spengler, 'Years of Decision',1933]

Karl Jaspers in 1938 wrote in his 'Nietzsche and Christianity'.;
"The most amazing attempts to bring togather again into a higher unity what Nietzsche has first separated and opposed to each other...the synthesis of the ultimate opposition ..."

... Nietzsche intended to carry forward the Christ Soul in his Transvaluation.


To Nietzsche, Caesar was an example of the "Highest Human Being".
[Nietzsche, WM 544].

So in this polarity Christ is the lowest human being.

And yet both Christ and Caesar were conquerors in their own spheres.

The Emperor Julian [called the Apostate], who tried to turn Rome back to paganism, said on his deathbed that the Galilean Jesus had conquered. He knew that the Empire would never again be pagan.
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath[A. C. Swinburne, Hymn to Proserpine]

This struggle between Christianity and Paganism is put in a formula by Nietzsche;
"Dionysos versus the Crucified" [WM 1052] ,and;
"We believe in Olympus--and NOT in the Crucified". [WM 1034].

But I suspect that this war is an Eternal one. An ascending spirit recognises not only that Caesar/Dionysos must have victory over Christ Soul/Crucified, but that the enemy is necessary and part of the economy of the whole.
No Christ, no Caesar; No Caesar, no Christ.

Do we have in Nietzsche's formulation of the Christ-souled Caesar [WP 983] the key which unlocks those great cultivators, of which Caesar is the exemplar?
I think we do.

Shaw puts his finger on the problem of Caesarism/Fascism;
"The catch in it is that Fascist geniuses are not immortal, and, as happened to the Napoleons, may wear out before they die. If they leave Fascism in incapable or vicious hands, it may produce results which are at best deplorable and at worst diabolical". [ib.]

This is what Nietzsche meant by the alarmingly chance nature of greatness. The project is to cultivate the great cultivators.
To make greatness a product of Will.
To be able to make certain that a Caesar will rule, and be followed by an unbroken succession of Caesars; this is the thrust of this philosophy.
So, the Caesar must first of all cultivate his Christ Soul; that is imperative.

"In the 19th century, the major intellectual struggle arose from the tremendous impact of Nietzschean thought on the Christian civilisation of 2,000 years.
"That impact was only very slowly realised. Its full implications are only today working themselves out. But turn where you will in modern thought, you find the results of thst struggle for mastery of the mind and spirit of man...
"I am not myself stating the case against Christianity, because I am going to show you how I believe the Nietzschean and the Christian doctrines are capable of synthesis". [Mosley]

... Mosley here recognises the world historical importance of Nietzsche.

.. Mosley envisaged a combination of certain Christian virtues [e.g.,'service'], with Nietzschean ones [e.g., 'virility'].
We may say this seems unworkable and factitious.
I contend that Nietzsche's doctrine of Caesarean mastery of the Christ Soul is doctrine enough; Caesar serves no man or god because Caesar IS divine.

Hah!--just as Christ was a God become man, so was Caesar a man become god!

AUT CAESAR AUT NIHIL
Jesus Christ said, "The Kingdom of God is within you".
But Christianity came to emphasise the gulf between man and God;
A distance like that between Master and Servant; between Landlord and Tenant, between Creditor and Debtor.

Christian man had become wretchedly dependent, as the weaker partner in this power relationship.
A dependence similar to that of a physical addiction.

"All the possibilities of Christian life, the most serious and the most insipid, the most harmless and thoughtless, as well as the best thought through, have been tried out; it is time for the invention of something new, or else we repeatedly will fall back into the same vicious circle: to be sure, it is difficult to break out of this whirlpool now that it has been spinning around for a couple of millennia". [Nietzsche, notebooks 1873-4]

It would take the type of a Caesar to break this vicious circle. He shall do it by first of all mastering the Christ-Soul;

"For the strong and independent, prepared and predestined for command, in whom the art and reason of a Ruling Race is incarnated, religion is one more means of overcoming resistance so as to be able to Rule: as a bond that unites together Ruler and ruled and betrays and hands over to the former the consciences of the latter". [Nietzsche BGE 61]

So, a 'new religion' is necessary for the Christ-Souled Roman Caesar to extend His Dominion.
In rescuing the Overman from chance, or from freakish lightning strikes we are rejecting the absolute and pessimistic nature of chance or chaos.
We are then imposing Order - the Apollonian upon the foundation of this pessimism of chance.
In Nietzsche, Dionysos is never purely Dionysiac, he is always influenced by the Apollinian, even though Dionysos is the substratum.
We could also be saying that words like chance and chaos are like the word 'God' - a stop-gap to label what is at present unknown to us.
What seems to be chance could be unravelled and - presently only in retrospect as amor fati - understood as what had to happen.
The Eternal Return says that such so-called 'chance' events can be predicted to happen again in exactly the same way - thus robbing them of their uniqueness , and therefore of their chance character.
This is not a scientific optimism - it is rather a perspectival will of power.

Here is an excerpt of some of Sweet's 'Anglo-Saxon [i.e. OE] Dictionary' entries for play:
plegan - play in its various meanings, frolic, amuse oneself; play (harp); applaud; strive for ...
plegere - player, athlete
plega - quick movement; game, athletic sport; fighting; applause
plegmann - athlete, wrestler
According to the OED the word is related to the Middle Dutch pleien, dance - and is perhaps related to Old Saxon plegan, OHG pflegan, attend to.
Skeat's Dictionary of Etymology, gives;
Anglo-Saxon plega, a game, a sport; also (commonly), a fight, battle. cf. plegian, to strike, clap ... I suspect this to be merely a borrowed word from Latin, plaga, a stroke.
Skeat gives his Aryan Root for this as *Plak-, to strike.
I think we are in very conducive territory here, where play, dance, athletics, fighting etc., are all linked together [and so with implied death, innocence].
Apparently Piaget listed three main classes of play;
a) games of mastery ...
b) games with rules ...
c) games of make-believe ...
'Players' - the child, the actor, and the gambler. The idea of chance is absent from the world of the child and the primitive. The gambler also feels in service of an alien power. Chance is a survival of religion in the modern city, as is theatre, more often cinema, the religion of possession. [JDM, The Lords]
So the gambler, like the conqueror [and the child], doesn't actually believe in chance - he makes a 'leap of faith' - amor fati.
A pessimism of strength.
All our major themes are emerging like some vast symphony.
Parkes' translation of TSZ has:
"Innocence the child is and forgetting, a beginning anew, a play ..."
Parkes adds as a footnote;
cf., Holderlin's Hyperion: 'That one can become as children, that the golden time of innocence recurs.'


This is the manifesto of The Pessimism of Strength:



Man now no longer needs a 'justification of evil' [evil as 'deserved', as 'punishment']; 'justifying' is exactly what he abhors: he enjoys evil raw, undiluted; he finds meaningless evil the most interesting form.


If he used to need a God, now he's delighted by a world disorder without God, a world of chance in which the dreadful, the ambiguous, the seductive is of the essence ...


In a state like this, it is precisely good that needs a 'justification' - that is to say, it must be rooted in evil & danger or else imply a great stupidity: then it can still be pleasing.


Animality now no longer arouses horror; in times like these, a brilliant & happy exuberance in favour of the animal in man is the most triumphant form of intellectuality.


Man is now strong enough to be ashamed of believing in God - he may once again play the devil's advocate.


If in practice he recommends the upholding of virtue, he does so for the reasons that reveal in virtue a subtlety, cunning, a form of covetousness & lust for power.


The pessimism of strength also culminates in a kind of theodicy [ a vindication of the existence of evil], i.e., an absolute saying Yes to the world, but for the very reasons that used to prompt one's No to it ...


It would perhaps be the sign of a decisive & most essential growth, of the transition into new conditions of existence, that the most extreme form of pessimism, real nihilism would be born.

This I have understood.
[Nietzsche Notebook 10[21-22] Autumn 1887]

Friday 24 February 2006

Keep Death Behind You


Death leaves beasts free.
Only we humans foreknow it. Animals
keep death behind them, & before them, God.
And when a beast passes, it passes in
eternity, as rivers run ...
[Rilke, from 8th Duino Elegy]

Thursday 23 February 2006

Monday 20 February 2006

To Struggle

We today are in the Process of Fighting to bring about the New Reality.

We are merely a Transition, a Willing Sacrifice.

As the Warriors in this Struggle we must be a hard race that cares for nothing of its own, that rests firmly on the Foundation of the People and the Nation.

The Struggle is not about individuals and colleagues, nor about empty tokens and general measures.

All genuine Struggle bears some Permanent Mark of the image of the Combatents at their work.

Struggle alone reveals the True Laws whereby things are brought into Being.

The Struggle we seek is one in which we stand Shoulder to Shoulder, Man to Man.
[Martin Heidegger]












Thursday 16 February 2006

The Superhuman


The beauty of the
Superhuman came to me as a
shadow.
Ah, my brothers!
What are the
Gods to me now!
[Nietzsche TSZ II:24]

Thursday 9 February 2006

Wednesday 8 February 2006

The Birth of Dionysos


And Zeus, snatching the sixth-month abortive child from the fire, sewed it in his thigh ...
... and at the proper time undid the stitches and gave birth to Dionysos, and entrusted him to Hermes.
And he conveyed him to the couple Ino and Athamas, and persuaded them to rear him as a girl.
[Apollodorus]