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Thursday 20 April 2006

Polarities

Polarities run right through Nietzsche's work, from the 'Dionysian/Apollonian' of his first work, to the 'Dionysos/Crucified' of the last letters of his madness.
This notion of polarity can be imagined as the north and south poles of planet earth; both are either ends of the same axis, and are subject to axial shifts and magnetic reversals. Both are necessary; indeed, as Nietzsche said, " there are no ' laws ' in nature, only necessities".

The notion of ' polarity ' is therefore a philosophical Arche;

" The essence of Goethe is the concept of 'polarity' which is also reflected in the mind of Nietzsche and of many of the great German thinkers. The duality is the wholeness of the teaching.
The idea of opposite poles being complementary to each other, and even serving each other, is inherent in the German mind".
[Sir Oswald Mosley]

There is in this complementariness, a continual cycle of 'war and peace/peace and war', each following the other into perpetuity;

" At the end of his 'Will To Power', that is, at the end of the life of his mind, Nietzsche once more returned to the antagonism within the Greek Soul between the Dionysian and Apolline, and once more celebrated the triumph of a god who wrests the utmost of glorifying beauty from the monstrous terror of chaotic passions".
[ib.]

Incidentally, Mosley here gives the lie to the absurd notion that Fascists did not 'understand' Nietzsche, and only 'twisted' his philosophy. Clearly, Fascism is in the stream of Germanic/European culture which flows out from antiquity into the present and onto the future.
Going back to the philosophical perspective of 'polarity', which Mosley divines in both Goethe and Nietzsche, the Fascist Leader has this to say;
"The essence of the doctrine is the 'ewig Werdende' [eternal Becoming]. In this respect the German neo-Hellenists are all nearer to Heraklitus than to the 'absolute' of Christian or even of Platonic teaching.
The 'ewig Werdende' must in turn be related to the 'ewig Strebende' [eternal Striving] ; it is impossible to BECOME without effort".
[ib.]

To illustrate the latter point, Mosley quotes Goethe's Faust;

"He only earns his freedom and existence
Who daily conquers them anew".

This is the Dionysian aspect seen in Nietzsche;
"The ecstatic, and yet agonised attempt of the mind to grasp and hold forever the moment of beauty through achievement, which must elude it, and can only be found again through fresh achievement".
[ib.]

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