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In the essay 'On the Uses and Abuses of History for Life', Nietzsche
attacks Hegelian historicism.
According to that essay, great men are not the products of 'history'
but are rather a-historical and supra-historical.
attacks Hegelian historicism.
According to that essay, great men are not the products of 'history'
but are rather a-historical and supra-historical.
Therefore the Superman is not an *historicist* conception by these
lights [i.e., he is not 'formed' by history].
Of course, there is the added complication that Nietzsche shifted some
of his positions after this essy - or did he?
In 'Uses and Abuses' he even announces the Superman and the Eternal
Recurrence!
lights [i.e., he is not 'formed' by history].
Of course, there is the added complication that Nietzsche shifted some
of his positions after this essy - or did he?
In 'Uses and Abuses' he even announces the Superman and the Eternal
Recurrence!
In this essay we see Nietzsche taking sides with Schopenhauer
against the Hegelian conception of historicism [a position in which
Hegel insisted that philosophy itself was historical, and so
rejecting the notion put forward by Nietzsche of such a 'republic of
geniuses' - (a 'republic'? - Plato?)]
Again, does Nietzsche's subsequent rejection of Schopenhauer signal a
rejection of any shred of Platonism [Schopenahuer's philosophy being
based on Plato, Kant, (anti-Hegel) and the Upanishads] ?
And does not the later Nietzsche then go beyond Hegel in not only
historicising philosophy but in historicising [or 'genealogising']
Spirit itself?
against the Hegelian conception of historicism [a position in which
Hegel insisted that philosophy itself was historical, and so
rejecting the notion put forward by Nietzsche of such a 'republic of
geniuses' - (a 'republic'? - Plato?)]
Again, does Nietzsche's subsequent rejection of Schopenhauer signal a
rejection of any shred of Platonism [Schopenahuer's philosophy being
based on Plato, Kant, (anti-Hegel) and the Upanishads] ?
And does not the later Nietzsche then go beyond Hegel in not only
historicising philosophy but in historicising [or 'genealogising']
Spirit itself?
But is his genealogy not a form of anti-historicism?
In this essay he worries about the 'historical sense' - with its emphasis on 'becoming', with its debunking of religion and art, and its alliance with evolution [which he says there is probably true but deadly] - conspiring to destroy all 'timeless universal standards'.
To avoid this one must take a supra-historical [and anti-evolutionary stand] he says there: a 'noble lie' a la Plato.
But the will to power cannot be borne out of such a stance.
The will to power can only derive from a Dionysian acceptance of the historical and the evolutionary.
The will to power itself has become, like all things have become.
Therefore there is no 'standard' ; all is becoming, which is exemplified as the will to power.
All so-called standards are merely perspectives [i.e., they 'look' like a standard from our own frog-perspective, but they are as historical and shifting as we ourselves are].
There are no 'timeless' standards because nothing can exist outside of time [i.e., the concept 'existence' presupposes 'time' as an unspoken component of its existing]; and there are no universals because nothing is the same as anything else and everything changes through time.
I say that the will to power has become, this is not to say that it is just another 'becoming' , it is rather the source of all becoming.
The will to power can only derive from a Dionysian acceptance of the historical and the evolutionary.
The will to power itself has become, like all things have become.
Therefore there is no 'standard' ; all is becoming, which is exemplified as the will to power.
All so-called standards are merely perspectives [i.e., they 'look' like a standard from our own frog-perspective, but they are as historical and shifting as we ourselves are].
There are no 'timeless' standards because nothing can exist outside of time [i.e., the concept 'existence' presupposes 'time' as an unspoken component of its existing]; and there are no universals because nothing is the same as anything else and everything changes through time.
I say that the will to power has become, this is not to say that it is just another 'becoming' , it is rather the source of all becoming.
But this is not to say that it is a Being- rather, as Nietzsche says in some places, it is a pathos.
So there is nothing here to suggest a metaphysics in the Platonic sense.
The will to power, being the source of Becoming means that it is the Becoming of all Becoming.
It cannot be a Being, as there is no explanation given as to how Becoming can derive from a primal Being. Being can only produce Being - Becoming can only produce Becoming just as the dead cannot give birth to life - only the living can create life. All matter - inorganic (dead) or organic (living) - has/is Becoming.
While living things become dead, dead things do not become living -
and this is a product of Time.
Perhaps if Time were reversed then the opposite would be the case.
What else 'Is' there?
Space? [- i.e., Nothingness.]
Matter then is a "very rare species", whether it be living or dead.
Nothingness dominates - if such a thing can be said of what seemingly
isn't.
And if, as the scholastics say, 'nothing can come from nothing', -
whence came Something [i.e., the 'Is']?
History is Time as understood by man [man's understanding of man in
Time].
The ring of recurrence is due to the limited extent of Matter and the
unlimited extent of Space (i.e., Nothingness) [in Time].
Is Nothingness the gaps between all matter both spatially and
temporally?
Is this 'pathos' [the will to power] an attempt to synthesise the
antitheses of Being and Becoming?
For if something is neither Being nor Becoming, then what 'Is' it?
'Is' 'it' Nothingness?
Being/Becoming/Nothingness - what else 'Is' there?
Does Nothingness 'Is'?
When Schopenhauer lambasts the Hegelian historians, whith their endless change of the Heraclitean 'World Process', he states that the true philosopher is uninterested in the world of change.
He is rather interested only in what is Eternal, Unchanging and Bounded.
Schopenhauer said that a philosopher only needed to know Heredotus - that was enough history [what Hegel blithely called 'original history' which was superseded - according to him - by reflective and finally philosophical history].
Burckhardt agreed with him and studied history only on the basis of 'powers'.
Nietzsche agreed with Burckhardt too at the time of Use and Abuse.
---------------------------------------
In the essay Nietzsche has two perspectives of Life running parallel.
There is life as Becoming which is like his will to power, which we can call Life (L1). However, the essay is mainly concerned with promoting a different view we can call Life (L2).
L1 is due to an excess of history which becomes hostile to L2 by making man cynical, pessimistic, believing himself to be an epigone, and weakening his personality. This is typical of Historicism [deriving from Hegel and those historians who oppose Hegel].
Of course, L2 is the quality whereby a rare individual has a strong personality, is affirmative, and utilises art and religion to justify life. Such were the ancient Greeks and a Goethe.
This L1 becomes to the later Nietzsche his 'will to power' - L2 becomes his Superman [and therefore a kind of Hegelian synthesis occurs].
By this, the Superman [not yet named of course] would be supra-historical, while according to the will to power [L1] he would be historical [or genealogical].
Nietzscheans must get to grips with this essay first before they go on to quote from later works, in my view.
According to L1, death is merely part of the process of life, which itself is just a rare [freak] species of oblivion and nothingness. Indeed the latter has far greater an empire as we are all 'a long time dead'.
But to L2, Death is vital. The whole of philosophy, art, religion and myth attempt to come to terms with this enemy to Immortality.
What tells us that the Universe is chaos?'Truth' tells us that.
A pessimistic truth.
And truth is thus hostile to life [L2]
And if we cannot know the Universe as a thing-in-itself, but only know it through our re-presentations of it, then we ourselves are willing that knowledge be hostile to life.
We are then willing our own decline and ultimately our own Deaths.
Science [via Historicism] has killed God and has finally killed ourselves.
Knowledge has become a poison [look at the Existentialists as intellectuals commit suicide via the intellect].
Ah - but look at the ahistorical man who claims to be oblivious to this pessimism.
Is he not an actor with his ideal?
Why?
Because he founds his claims on the basis of knowledge.
He needs Faith, not Knowledge.
Death results when we cannot join the end of the ring to its beginning.
There is an implicit 'why' behind science: that the universe exists
because there is an underlying Order to it.
Science searches to describe that Order.
Man therefore does science to set things in Order.
The faith of the scientist [like that of the Hegelian historian] is
that reason [Geist] rules the universe which is ultimately Ordered,
even if that Order eludes us at some points.
So yes, Nietzsche's second 'Unfashionable Observation', 'On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life' [OADHL - which Kaufmann didn't even translate, if I remember rightly] is a very important work.
Speaking generally of Greek philosophy he refers to the theory of intrusions, of an 'alien' influence; "an imported plant, something that is actually indigenous to Asia and Egypt; we must conclude that philosophy of this sort essentially only ruined the Greeks, that they declined because of it -Heraclitus because of Zarathustra of Iran; Pythagoras, because of the Chinese; the Eleatics because of the Indians; Anaxagoras, because of the Jews ..." [ib. p.3]
Zarathustra as the ruination of Heraclitus!
And Socrates as the ruination of Plato [cf. BGE Preface]!
He says that Socrates was the last (philosophically) pure type of the Pre-Platonics; with Plato we arrive at a mixed type, and henceforth philosophy is always mixed. But here we see that the ruinous mixing was prepared beforehand with the flood of eastern ideas affecting even the Pre-Platonics.
Nietzsche certainly thought there was a connection between
Zoroastrianism and Heraclitus of course, although in the context of that
passage he is referring to the tendency to exaggerate any 'eastern'
origins of Greek philosophy amongst academics of the time, and so is
ridiculing these ideas, somewhat.
That doesn't mean that Nietzsche completely denies eastern influences,
of course.
And Nietzsche goes on to add to his own version of a
Heraclitus-Zarathustra connection mythos in his later work.
There is, though, a definite movement from [the historical and mythic]
Zarathustra > Heraclitus > Nietzsche.
And all three are historical/mythic.
But there is no progress towards 'perfection' - perhaps just flourishing
realisation.
I don't feel that 'perfection' with its lack of open-endedness and its
lack of perspective is a proper word to use.
I would revalue the word perfection to have that sense of meaning a striving towards the impossible.
The imperative being not know thyself but perfect thyself.
In other words, strive for the impossible ... or the forbidden.
Perfection would then be akin to the apeiron in all its unthinkability!
Greg Whitlock's commentary in the aforementioned book is
excellent and takes Nietzscheanism to another level. Those lectures
demonstrate that Nietzsche is taking over from the Pre-Platonics in his
crystallisation of their implicit or adumbrated notions of the eternal
return, the will to power etc.,
Also Nietzsche's reliance on Boscovich if fully explicated here.
I find Nietzsche's discussion on music in relation to the
Pythagoreans very interesting too.
Of course, as I said, when Nietzsche says
that "Heraclitus is ruined by Zarathustra" he is lampooning a species
of historical argument prevelant at the time which sought to put the
position that all Greek philosophy was derived from the Orient.
He rather wants to suggest the opposite [at least for the Pre-
Platonics].
No matter - the idea was a suggestive one - the ambiguous
relationship between Heraclitus and Zarathustra plays itself out in
Nietzsche's later philosophy
This links to On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life. He says there that the Greeks were faced with an influx of foreign ways and ideas. They only became great when they purified themselves by a rigorous selection [and so knowledge served life - their life - they became who they were.
So this is the antithesis to universalism - a particularism if you will - which former certainly encourages liberalism. And as metaphysics tends towards universalism ... However, metaphysics needs to be watered down [often as the religion of an 'all-pervasive God', or as political/social ideology] so that liberals (i.e. weak-willed mixed types) can even understand it: Platonism for the People. When ethics is universalised [most notorious example is Kant, of course], you have a similar example.
While it is certainly doubtful that "reality is a coherent, intelligible world", it is also doubtful that it is "merely a chaos of empty reveries or experiences" as Strauss says. Both positions pretend to a knowledge they don't have. There is no universal existence of either kind - there is my particular existence, though.
'Herd' is a value-laden term; it suggests that this particular collective [the herd in question] is sub-human. However, 'Elite' suggests that another collective [the particular elite] is elevated and superhuman.
Great things are rare; the elite is few - sometimes there is often an elite of one.
The elite certainly produces its philosophers - Nietzsche counted himslef as one [and here, Socrates is his antithesis because Socrates "is plebiean"].
Of course, many from the elite 'cross the floor' and become philosophers to the herd. However, can the herd [by definition] really produce a philosopher? Philosophy cannot be carried out by subhumans [political rants and ideologies are hardly philosophy].
It is rather the case that the elite philosophy will carry within it an implicit treatment of the herd too [such Master Morality] and this will be taken up [and often perverted] by renegades from the elite, mixed types and subhuman sloganeers.
When it comes to the eternal recurrence of the same and amor fati an "all-pervasive God" is super-fluous; worse than that it is injurious, as one cannot have real Solitude when one has an "all-pervasive God" prying into one's innermost secrets.
A great Master who combines all three of the Aryan castes in 'one breast'.
The Fuhrer was such a one in the modern age - artist, warrior, spiritual man, builder.
But here is the problem:
If the collective only works in the caste-order, with beings who are appropriately one-sided and so able to function effectively, then isn't the 'synthetic man' an anomaly?
Is there a place in the caste-order for someone who is above caste because he encompasses the whole [and is therefore 'out-of-order']?
Did the Germans [or the Europeans] really deserve a Hitler?
Has any collective, whether primitive, feudal or political ever deserved the 'renaissance man'?
Isn't the fate of Socrates still paradigmatic as Nietzsche may have suspected to his horror?
Isn't the hatred directed towards the Fuhrer today by the many totally indicative that even the caste-order and the synthetic man are at odds?
In other words, was the early Nietzsche right to toy with the Schopenhauerian notion of a 'Republic of Genii' ?
Would such a republic be therefore unrelated to the caste-order and rather an autonomous Great Power of Solitude mirroring Atlantis?
The Logic of the Holocaust*(*'Holocaust' is literally a 'whole scale burning' - there would be no survivors from a real Holocaust).
And what qualities does pathos have?
Is it an eternal universal standard?
No - it is something shifting, unpredictable, irrational and changing.
Pathos is a Becoming.
So there is nothing here to suggest a metaphysics in the Platonic sense.
The will to power, being the source of Becoming means that it is the Becoming of all Becoming.
It cannot be a Being, as there is no explanation given as to how Becoming can derive from a primal Being. Being can only produce Being - Becoming can only produce Becoming just as the dead cannot give birth to life - only the living can create life. All matter - inorganic (dead) or organic (living) - has/is Becoming.
While living things become dead, dead things do not become living -
and this is a product of Time.
Perhaps if Time were reversed then the opposite would be the case.
What else 'Is' there?
Space? [- i.e., Nothingness.]
Matter then is a "very rare species", whether it be living or dead.
Nothingness dominates - if such a thing can be said of what seemingly
isn't.
And if, as the scholastics say, 'nothing can come from nothing', -
whence came Something [i.e., the 'Is']?
History is Time as understood by man [man's understanding of man in
Time].
The ring of recurrence is due to the limited extent of Matter and the
unlimited extent of Space (i.e., Nothingness) [in Time].
Is Nothingness the gaps between all matter both spatially and
temporally?
Is this 'pathos' [the will to power] an attempt to synthesise the
antitheses of Being and Becoming?
For if something is neither Being nor Becoming, then what 'Is' it?
'Is' 'it' Nothingness?
Being/Becoming/Nothingness - what else 'Is' there?
Does Nothingness 'Is'?
When Schopenhauer lambasts the Hegelian historians, whith their endless change of the Heraclitean 'World Process', he states that the true philosopher is uninterested in the world of change.
He is rather interested only in what is Eternal, Unchanging and Bounded.
Schopenhauer said that a philosopher only needed to know Heredotus - that was enough history [what Hegel blithely called 'original history' which was superseded - according to him - by reflective and finally philosophical history].
Burckhardt agreed with him and studied history only on the basis of 'powers'.
Nietzsche agreed with Burckhardt too at the time of Use and Abuse.
---------------------------------------
In the essay Nietzsche has two perspectives of Life running parallel.
There is life as Becoming which is like his will to power, which we can call Life (L1). However, the essay is mainly concerned with promoting a different view we can call Life (L2).
L1 is due to an excess of history which becomes hostile to L2 by making man cynical, pessimistic, believing himself to be an epigone, and weakening his personality. This is typical of Historicism [deriving from Hegel and those historians who oppose Hegel].
Of course, L2 is the quality whereby a rare individual has a strong personality, is affirmative, and utilises art and religion to justify life. Such were the ancient Greeks and a Goethe.
This L1 becomes to the later Nietzsche his 'will to power' - L2 becomes his Superman [and therefore a kind of Hegelian synthesis occurs].
By this, the Superman [not yet named of course] would be supra-historical, while according to the will to power [L1] he would be historical [or genealogical].
Nietzscheans must get to grips with this essay first before they go on to quote from later works, in my view.
According to L1, death is merely part of the process of life, which itself is just a rare [freak] species of oblivion and nothingness. Indeed the latter has far greater an empire as we are all 'a long time dead'.
But to L2, Death is vital. The whole of philosophy, art, religion and myth attempt to come to terms with this enemy to Immortality.
What tells us that the Universe is chaos?'Truth' tells us that.
A pessimistic truth.
And truth is thus hostile to life [L2]
And if we cannot know the Universe as a thing-in-itself, but only know it through our re-presentations of it, then we ourselves are willing that knowledge be hostile to life.
We are then willing our own decline and ultimately our own Deaths.
Science [via Historicism] has killed God and has finally killed ourselves.
Knowledge has become a poison [look at the Existentialists as intellectuals commit suicide via the intellect].
Ah - but look at the ahistorical man who claims to be oblivious to this pessimism.
Is he not an actor with his ideal?
Why?
Because he founds his claims on the basis of knowledge.
He needs Faith, not Knowledge.
Death results when we cannot join the end of the ring to its beginning.
There is an implicit 'why' behind science: that the universe exists
because there is an underlying Order to it.
Science searches to describe that Order.
Man therefore does science to set things in Order.
The faith of the scientist [like that of the Hegelian historian] is
that reason [Geist] rules the universe which is ultimately Ordered,
even if that Order eludes us at some points.
So yes, Nietzsche's second 'Unfashionable Observation', 'On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life' [OADHL - which Kaufmann didn't even translate, if I remember rightly] is a very important work.
Here I want to look at the well known triad of 'three kinds' of history - the monumental, antiquarian, and critical: which had been prepared and awakened by the Hegelian school of historiology in the first half of that century. To Hegel there was a definite providential plan which saw the inexorable unfolding of 'Geist' up through the ages of the nations, culminating in the Prussian State
Hegel died in 1831, but his many followers elaborated on his blueprint where philosophy and historiography merged. Historians who regarded Hegelianism as 'bad history' presented rival approaches such as the meticulous and archival-based work of Leopold von Ranke with the result that historiology became an 'exclusively sovereign power' above that of art, religion and philosophy itself.
While Hegelian historicism had fewer detractors among philosophers the lonely figure of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) inGermany
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) discovered the work of Schopenhauer in 1865 and quickly became an adherent, and in 1869, at the unusually young age of twenty-four, he was appointed professor of classical philology at theUniversity of Basle
After his first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy' (1871) caused controversy amongst classical philologists due to its unorthodoxies, Nietzsche decided to turn social critic and planned a series of 'Untimely' essays which would examine the state of contemporary German culture. The second essay of the series, 'On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life' marked the first fundamental challenge to the premisses of historicism - and yet so pervasive was the culture of history at the time that the essay met with a deafening silence. The work wanted to examine the very value of historiology and opined that -Germany
The damage that Nietzsche recognises is fivefold: weakened personality; arrogance of the present age over others; immaturity of instincts; belief that one is a perpetual late-comer; and a propensity towards cynicism. [OADHL 28]
The central paradox of the essay is that, while mankind needs to have a consciousness of his history [OADHL 7] in order to be human, an excessive or inappropriate concern with that sense of his own history actually prevents him from living fully: "history, so far as it serves life, serves an unhistorical power." [OADHL 14]
Hegel had distinguished three different 'modes' of historiography: original, reflective and philosophical. These were three stages, each one a successive and therefore higher form than the one that precedes it, with its zenith - philosophical history - being the Hegelian. Burckhardt, who studied under Ranke, managed to combine the precise archival approach to history with a poetic flair he derived from Goethe. Dismissing the Hegelian notion of history as a "progress towards freedom," he rather structured history into 'three great powers': - the state, religion and culture - i.e. synchronically rather than diachronically ; an almost unhistorical approach to history. [OADHL 14] Note that these are based on different types of human temperament and existence. The person who is "active and striving" possesses monumental history, while the one who "preserves and admires" owns antiquarian history. Critical history, though, belongs to those who "suffer" and are "in need of liberation." [ib.]
These kinds or "species" of historiology grow only out of the corresponding human types just as a certain plant can grow only in a certain type of 'soil'. To try and 'transplant' monumental history in, say, one who "suffers" would cause "much harm". [OADHL 18]
Nietzsche then extrapolates from a man to a people, a culture - "eines Menschen, eines Volkes, einer Cultur." [OADHL 14] This tendency to extrapolate on this point without any kind of supporting argument is certainly a weakness in Nietzsche's theory as there seems little to suggest that collectives necessarily behave in the same way as individuals.
Reactions to Nietzsche's 'three kinds' have been varied. Heidegger believed that with it Nietzsche had profoundly touched upon "the historicality of Dasein". While Kaufmann - probably the most influential Nietzsche commentator and translator in the Anglophone world post-WWII - had little time for them, thinking that the other categories in the work of historical, unhistorical and supra-historical were far more important.
In the first full-length monograph on Nietzsche's philosophy, Lou Salomé not only recognised the importance of this essay and of its three kinds, but compared the latter to the three periods of Nietzsche's work - early, middle and late - which she established. While this may be somewhat fanciful, it is certainly true that the essay has many implications for Nietzsche's middle and later periods, as we shall see.
Nietzsche began making notes for the essay in the autumn of 1873 onwards and from these notebooks we can get an idea of how he developed his theory of 'three kinds'. At first, there were only two: the monumental (first called 'the classical'), and the antiquarian. The classical wants to use and transfigure the past to serve the present as its "archetype", while the antiquarian wants the past 'as it really was': "The needs of life demand the classical, the needs of truth the antiquarian." Here is another important theme: history that serves truth may actually be less useful to life than a history that serves illusion. [OADHL 39] In the notebooks he says, with some disapprobation, that the "modern historian" is "an amalgamation" of both the classical (or monumental) and the antiquarian. And this might apply to Burckhardt whose work urged the contemplation of greatness, but could not (or cared not) to explain how change
occurred in history.
Nietzsche, in emphasising action over contemplation [OADHL 7] needed to find a third kind of historiology to account for change - and he found this in critical history.
Burckhardt recognised that Nietzsche was dissatisfied with his static 'powers', and had thrown up "questions and lamentations." Indeed, critical history itself was the province of he who - stifled by stagnation and inaction - wants to destroy all barriers to 'ripe' life.
In this very essay Nietzsche is the critic who is bringing all forms of historicism to a "bar of judgment" which is not "justice", but life itself - a life which knows and cares nothing for fairness and pity, [OADHL 22] and is nothing but - as he will put it in his later works - 'the will to power'.
This emphasis on vitalism influenced the Lebensphilosophie movement which flourished in the 1890s right into the 20th century, this essay being an "important inspiration" to it.
So the critical historian must be ready to destroy a past life, a "first nature" – such as his own learnt and inherited persona, so that a new life and a "second nature" might be created - and indeed, every first nature was a second nature at one time. [OADHL 22] And this is the usefulness of the critical. But it is also a great "danger" as its inherent self-destructiveness - i.e., destroying a first nature may not leave enough fertile ground on which to create a second - could spell the end for life itself. [ib.] As Nietzsche was later to describe himself: "I am not a man - I am dynamite!"
The natural conservative needs antiquarian history if he reveres his own heritage. He will lovingly tend and husband his ancestral inheritance; he will engage in local history, local festivities and be at one with it all: "he will greet the soul of his people as his own soul even across the wide, obscuring and confusing centuries." [OADHL 19]
And when this kind of historiology is found amongst a whole people - even though they be simple and poor - they will be content with their lot, never wanting to leave the warmth of their own hearths and the loving security of their kindred. [OADHL 20]
Here history serves life; although it is easy to see how this kind can also - when taken to excess - paralyse life. Only the old and the traditional becomes respected, while any innovation is rejected out-of-hand. Then the juices begin to dry up and things become sterile, because this kind "merely understands how to preserve life, not how to generate it." [OADHL 21] The symptoms are well-known: `Egyptianism' and a preference for the museum. Rituals are doggedly adhered to even when they have long become meaningless and irrelevant.
Those whose tendency is towards the monumental in history are able to take the great examples of the past and use them in the present and so create the future. They know that if greatness was possible once, then it can be repeated again today and tomorrow. They have the courage to do great things. They are strong men and fighters who require similar exemplars from history for them not only to emulate but to find camaraderie with as they gaze - from peak to peak - across the mountain range of the ages. [OADHL 15] And just as they have little concern for what goes on in the valleys, so too do they have scant regard for the historical truth of their models. Nor do they bother themselves with the 'causes and effects' of such things, or whether 'chance' may have played a role in the past. For they are like artists, and they fashion the world to their own plan. "Thus, whenever the monumental vision of the past rules over other ways of looking at the past, I
mean the antiquarian and the critical, the past itself suffers damage." [OADHL 17]
Taken to excess, the monumental leads to fanaticism, megalomania, madness and the wanton catastrophe of revolution - all due to its willful distortion of reality. [ib.]
If, on the other hand, the monumental is taken up by those who are of the wrong type (e.g. the inactive), then one might have a similar result to that of an excess of the antiquarian. A 'canon' of those great men of the past is set up with which to denigrate any great men of the present. [OADHL 18] Here as elsewhere, only critical history is capable of liberating life from such a deadlock.
In connection with monumental history Nietzsche mentions the Pythagorean notion of an exact repetition of past events. Known as `the eternal recurrence of the same' it will become central to his late philosophy. The monumental desire that great men recur eternally can certainly be linked to his later evocation of the Overhuman.
Critical history would seem to be the starting point for Nietzsche's later project of 'genealogy' which sought to expose the illusions of (Christian) morality by demonstrating its 'shameful origins'.
Foucault takes this up and suggests that Nietzsche's genealogy makes use of all three kinds of history, stating that monumentalism is reversed into a "parodic double" while the antiquarian is reversed into a "systematic dissociation," Critical history is said to be taken to its extreme of a "sacrifice of the subject" (which is after all just the excess which Nietzsche warns against).
I think these points apply more to Foucault's own use of Nietzsche than to Nietzsche himself. In his On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche always affirms an alternative to that which he is 'deconstructing' without any sense of 'parody'. Nietzsche's belief that the "goal of humanity" lay "in its highest specimens" [OADHL 53] never waned throughout his career, and he saw a balance between the constructive and destructive aspects of his three kinds of history as a way of affirming that goal.
To many Germans of the Second Reich, the Prussian victory of 1871 seemed to vindicate their sense of 'world historic' destiny,
Nietzsche, too, chose to structure history into what he called 'three kinds': monumental, antiquarian and critical.
I have a book on Stefan George which quotes the latter decrying Nietzsche for "betraying Wagner"!
Reading the book 'Wagner and Philosophy' [I forget the author for the moment a fusty English writer on philosophy - Brian McGee, I think] I was struck by how much of an insufferable Lefty Wagner was - far from the right-wing bigot he is portrayed as. But I digress.
I think the monumental is the most certainly the heroic and the artistic, and so can be associated with the warrior. It links to the suprahistorical, the eternal return and to the Overhuman. We would also add our Artist-Tyrants and Blond Beasts there too.
I am not sure I agree with the identification of the priest and the antiquarian. Indeed, it is because the antiquarian piety is so rigorous that I discount the priest. I think it is more like the kind of ancient Germanic priesthood which rested with the father of the tribe. There is no exalted office involved.
I think that Nietzsche was already identifying himself with the critical historian at the time of OADHL. However, there is a link to Socrates, I would say, who in 1874 was still somewhat of a 'hero' to Nietzsche [Nietzsche put Socrates amongst the Presocratics, and so called them the Pre-Platonics].
So I would say that the critical is very much the domain of the philosopher - and as I suggest we may see a connection here with the Foucaultian, Derridaean thrust of 20th century deconstructive philosophy, relativism etc.
Heidegger's contention that the the three kinds give a complete picture of the historicality of Dasein is interesting as the latter is defined by him in its very historicality. However, I have a feeling that Nietzsche would care little for the tautologies of Being and Time.
I think that the three kinds, while having a wider application than history, must be kept within the realms of knowledge [in the wider sense of that term].
So my summation of the three kinds into roles would be artist, father and philosopher. Interestingly, I believe that great artists and great philosophers never become fathers in the accepted sense, so there is certain completeness in the triad.
After Salome, we might identify he antiquarian with Nietzsche's early phase [as classical philologist], the critical with his middle period [his 'positivist' phase] and the monumental with his late period [Zarathustra etc.,] To be more accurate on Salome's identification of the the three kinds
of history with Nietzsche's 'transitions'; she puts the antiquarian
with the earliest philological period, then the monumental with his
so-called 'discipleship' of Schopenhauer and Wagner, and then the
critical with the positivist phase of Human. From Dawn onwards she
suggests that Nietzsche became more mystical and employed all three
kinds of history at once in the late period [so agreeing with
Foucault here except she doesn't believe that he reversed them in any
way, although they undergo some modification, of course].
That there are three broad periods in Nietzsche's life-work is beyond question; but the detail
is contentious.
Did Nietzsche ever attain the Child phases in his working life - was not his collapse into insanity in early 1889 the beginning of his Child phase? Was he not still a Lion right up until the fateful day of his collapse? - the vehemence of
the Antichrist and the last letters make me wonder whether he ever
got to that kind of innocence of becoming of the Child ...
Salome's charge of mysticism was certainly controversial, but it
reminds us of the same 'accusation' put Heidegger's way after
his 'Turn'. But note that in OADHL Nietzsche says that life needs
that "atmosphere, a mysterious circle of mist" [OADHL 40]. Isn't that
remarkable in light of Salome's comments? This is why I have come
back a few times to Salome's book [which I didn't think much of at
first]. Nietzsche was such a solitudinous personage that those who
did get close to him must be listened to.
Yes - metaphysics *is* an atmosphere - and like all atmospheres, it
cannot be eradicated lest we starve of oxygen. And this was
Heidegger's position, we know. But we don't want our atmosphere to be
polluted by morality ... We are that green ... Green language ...
language of the birds.
I like what Heidegger says about philosophers always being
beginners ... I feel that way. 'Boredom' - one must get through
boredom and to the other side. I have yet to be bored,
unfortunately .. or perhaps I began bored ... there is still some
hope for me. Nietzsche said that Plato was 'boring' - metaphysicians
are boring, it seems ... most certainly. Metaphysics is a vice that
its victims should keep to themselves or do behind closed doors.
Nietzsche's relation to Socrates is complex, for while he is always
fairly hostile to him, he seems to be constantly drawn to him. The
lectures he gave on the Pre-Platonics have some startling
formulations which demonstrate a profound love/hate with the 'ugly
one'. I quote some of the positive ones:
"Socrates is the first philosopher of life (Lebensphilosoph), and all
schools deriving from him are first of all philosophies of life
(Lebensphilosophien)."
[Lecture on Socrates (1872), in 'The Pre-Platonic Philosophers',
Illinois p. 145]
This a remarkable parallel with Nietzsche's insistence on knowledge
having to serve 'life' in the UMII. Further form the Socrates lecture:
"Thinking serves life [in Socrates], while among previous
philosophers life had served thought and knowledge ..." [ib.]
Remember the quote from Goethe that opens OADHL - compare this:
"Socratic philosophy is absolutely *practical*: it is hostile to all
knowledge unconnected to ethical implications." [ib.,]
And while we know that Nietzsche's view of ethics is very different
to Socrate's, this recognising of the problem for the first time is
reminiscent of Nietzsche's reason for choosing Zarathustra as his
later mouthpiece [i.e. the Persian had recognised the struggle
between good and evil as fundamental].
And back to OADHL's critical history [and the 'Untimely' nature of his
social criticism], we find Nietzsche saying this in the Socrates
lecture:
"Socrates
becomes the critic of his times: he investigates how far it behaves
from dark drives and how far it behaves from knowledge." [ib.,]
Again - virtually Nietzsche's own quest in this early period.
Nietzsche's own attacks on Socrates in these lectures [and in the
Birth of Tragedy] certainly contributed to his ostracisation by the
intelligentsia [and a very low student turn out to his lectures!]
Note the following:
"Socrates had the entirety of Greek education against him ... an
incredible animosity had gradually accumulated - he attracted
countless personal foes ..." [ib. p. 149]
Who can forget Zarathustra's exhortation that we 'die at the right
time'? This is derived from Socrates:
"Socrates believed specifically that it was the right time for him to
die ... he wanted death ..." [ib. p. 150]
Finally, he places him in this lineage:
"With Socrates] the series of original exemplary sages is completed;
we recall Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Democritus and
Socrates ..." [ib. p. 151]
The translator of this piece [Greg Whitlock] elaborates on these
connections in his commentary, saying that Socrates was something
like the kind of "philosopher that Nietzsche had sought to become"
[ib. p. 260]. Of course, they go alongside a series of attacks on
Socrates too. Socrates is like a distorted mirror image of Nietzsche
that he was unable to rid himself of.
I think this differs from his relationship to Schopenhauer because
his view of Socrates remains fairly constant [in Twilight he repeats
the comments of Socrates being ugly made in this early lecture -
comments that must have shocked his university colleagues], whereas
with Schopenhauer there is a clear 'transition'[to use Salome's word].
At the very begining of the lectures on the Pre-Platonics, Nietzsche says something inadvertently astounding. Hegel died in 1831, but his many followers elaborated on his blueprint where philosophy and historiography merged. Historians who regarded Hegelianism as 'bad history' presented rival approaches such as the meticulous and archival-based work of Leopold von Ranke with the result that historiology became an 'exclusively sovereign power' above that of art, religion and philosophy itself.
While Hegelian historicism had fewer detractors among philosophers the lonely figure of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) in
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) discovered the work of Schopenhauer in 1865 and quickly became an adherent, and in 1869, at the unusually young age of twenty-four, he was appointed professor of classical philology at the
After his first book, 'The Birth of Tragedy' (1871) caused controversy amongst classical philologists due to its unorthodoxies, Nietzsche decided to turn social critic and planned a series of 'Untimely' essays which would examine the state of contemporary German culture. The second essay of the series, 'On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life' marked the first fundamental challenge to the premisses of historicism - and yet so pervasive was the culture of history at the time that the essay met with a deafening silence. The work wanted to examine the very value of historiology and opined that -
The damage that Nietzsche recognises is fivefold: weakened personality; arrogance of the present age over others; immaturity of instincts; belief that one is a perpetual late-comer; and a propensity towards cynicism. [OADHL 28]
The central paradox of the essay is that, while mankind needs to have a consciousness of his history [OADHL 7] in order to be human, an excessive or inappropriate concern with that sense of his own history actually prevents him from living fully: "history, so far as it serves life, serves an unhistorical power." [OADHL 14]
Hegel had distinguished three different 'modes' of historiography: original, reflective and philosophical. These were three stages, each one a successive and therefore higher form than the one that precedes it, with its zenith - philosophical history - being the Hegelian. Burckhardt, who studied under Ranke, managed to combine the precise archival approach to history with a poetic flair he derived from Goethe. Dismissing the Hegelian notion of history as a "progress towards freedom," he rather structured history into 'three great powers': - the state, religion and culture - i.e. synchronically rather than diachronically ; an almost unhistorical approach to history. [OADHL 14] Note that these are based on different types of human temperament and existence. The person who is "active and striving" possesses monumental history, while the one who "preserves and admires" owns antiquarian history. Critical history, though, belongs to those who "suffer" and are "in need of liberation." [ib.]
These kinds or "species" of historiology grow only out of the corresponding human types just as a certain plant can grow only in a certain type of 'soil'. To try and 'transplant' monumental history in, say, one who "suffers" would cause "much harm". [OADHL 18]
Nietzsche then extrapolates from a man to a people, a culture - "eines Menschen, eines Volkes, einer Cultur." [OADHL 14] This tendency to extrapolate on this point without any kind of supporting argument is certainly a weakness in Nietzsche's theory as there seems little to suggest that collectives necessarily behave in the same way as individuals.
Reactions to Nietzsche's 'three kinds' have been varied. Heidegger believed that with it Nietzsche had profoundly touched upon "the historicality of Dasein". While Kaufmann - probably the most influential Nietzsche commentator and translator in the Anglophone world post-WWII - had little time for them, thinking that the other categories in the work of historical, unhistorical and supra-historical were far more important.
In the first full-length monograph on Nietzsche's philosophy, Lou Salomé not only recognised the importance of this essay and of its three kinds, but compared the latter to the three periods of Nietzsche's work - early, middle and late - which she established. While this may be somewhat fanciful, it is certainly true that the essay has many implications for Nietzsche's middle and later periods, as we shall see.
Nietzsche began making notes for the essay in the autumn of 1873 onwards and from these notebooks we can get an idea of how he developed his theory of 'three kinds'. At first, there were only two: the monumental (first called 'the classical'), and the antiquarian. The classical wants to use and transfigure the past to serve the present as its "archetype", while the antiquarian wants the past 'as it really was': "The needs of life demand the classical, the needs of truth the antiquarian." Here is another important theme: history that serves truth may actually be less useful to life than a history that serves illusion. [OADHL 39] In the notebooks he says, with some disapprobation, that the "modern historian" is "an amalgamation" of both the classical (or monumental) and the antiquarian. And this might apply to Burckhardt whose work urged the contemplation of greatness, but could not (or cared not) to explain how change
occurred in history.
Nietzsche, in emphasising action over contemplation [OADHL 7] needed to find a third kind of historiology to account for change - and he found this in critical history.
Burckhardt recognised that Nietzsche was dissatisfied with his static 'powers', and had thrown up "questions and lamentations." Indeed, critical history itself was the province of he who - stifled by stagnation and inaction - wants to destroy all barriers to 'ripe' life.
In this very essay Nietzsche is the critic who is bringing all forms of historicism to a "bar of judgment" which is not "justice", but life itself - a life which knows and cares nothing for fairness and pity, [OADHL 22] and is nothing but - as he will put it in his later works - 'the will to power'.
This emphasis on vitalism influenced the Lebensphilosophie movement which flourished in the 1890s right into the 20th century, this essay being an "important inspiration" to it.
So the critical historian must be ready to destroy a past life, a "first nature" – such as his own learnt and inherited persona, so that a new life and a "second nature" might be created - and indeed, every first nature was a second nature at one time. [OADHL 22] And this is the usefulness of the critical. But it is also a great "danger" as its inherent self-destructiveness - i.e., destroying a first nature may not leave enough fertile ground on which to create a second - could spell the end for life itself. [ib.] As Nietzsche was later to describe himself: "I am not a man - I am dynamite!"
The natural conservative needs antiquarian history if he reveres his own heritage. He will lovingly tend and husband his ancestral inheritance; he will engage in local history, local festivities and be at one with it all: "he will greet the soul of his people as his own soul even across the wide, obscuring and confusing centuries." [OADHL 19]
And when this kind of historiology is found amongst a whole people - even though they be simple and poor - they will be content with their lot, never wanting to leave the warmth of their own hearths and the loving security of their kindred. [OADHL 20]
Here history serves life; although it is easy to see how this kind can also - when taken to excess - paralyse life. Only the old and the traditional becomes respected, while any innovation is rejected out-of-hand. Then the juices begin to dry up and things become sterile, because this kind "merely understands how to preserve life, not how to generate it." [OADHL 21] The symptoms are well-known: `Egyptianism' and a preference for the museum. Rituals are doggedly adhered to even when they have long become meaningless and irrelevant.
Those whose tendency is towards the monumental in history are able to take the great examples of the past and use them in the present and so create the future. They know that if greatness was possible once, then it can be repeated again today and tomorrow. They have the courage to do great things. They are strong men and fighters who require similar exemplars from history for them not only to emulate but to find camaraderie with as they gaze - from peak to peak - across the mountain range of the ages. [OADHL 15] And just as they have little concern for what goes on in the valleys, so too do they have scant regard for the historical truth of their models. Nor do they bother themselves with the 'causes and effects' of such things, or whether 'chance' may have played a role in the past. For they are like artists, and they fashion the world to their own plan. "Thus, whenever the monumental vision of the past rules over other ways of looking at the past, I
mean the antiquarian and the critical, the past itself suffers damage." [OADHL 17]
Taken to excess, the monumental leads to fanaticism, megalomania, madness and the wanton catastrophe of revolution - all due to its willful distortion of reality. [ib.]
If, on the other hand, the monumental is taken up by those who are of the wrong type (e.g. the inactive), then one might have a similar result to that of an excess of the antiquarian. A 'canon' of those great men of the past is set up with which to denigrate any great men of the present. [OADHL 18] Here as elsewhere, only critical history is capable of liberating life from such a deadlock.
In connection with monumental history Nietzsche mentions the Pythagorean notion of an exact repetition of past events. Known as `the eternal recurrence of the same' it will become central to his late philosophy. The monumental desire that great men recur eternally can certainly be linked to his later evocation of the Overhuman.
Critical history would seem to be the starting point for Nietzsche's later project of 'genealogy' which sought to expose the illusions of (Christian) morality by demonstrating its 'shameful origins'.
Foucault takes this up and suggests that Nietzsche's genealogy makes use of all three kinds of history, stating that monumentalism is reversed into a "parodic double" while the antiquarian is reversed into a "systematic dissociation," Critical history is said to be taken to its extreme of a "sacrifice of the subject" (which is after all just the excess which Nietzsche warns against).
I think these points apply more to Foucault's own use of Nietzsche than to Nietzsche himself. In his On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche always affirms an alternative to that which he is 'deconstructing' without any sense of 'parody'. Nietzsche's belief that the "goal of humanity" lay "in its highest specimens" [OADHL 53] never waned throughout his career, and he saw a balance between the constructive and destructive aspects of his three kinds of history as a way of affirming that goal.
To many Germans of the Second Reich, the Prussian victory of 1871 seemed to vindicate their sense of 'world historic' destiny,
Nietzsche, too, chose to structure history into what he called 'three kinds': monumental, antiquarian and critical.
I have a book on Stefan George which quotes the latter decrying Nietzsche for "betraying Wagner"!
Reading the book 'Wagner and Philosophy' [I forget the author for the moment a fusty English writer on philosophy - Brian McGee, I think] I was struck by how much of an insufferable Lefty Wagner was - far from the right-wing bigot he is portrayed as. But I digress.
I think the monumental is the most certainly the heroic and the artistic, and so can be associated with the warrior. It links to the suprahistorical, the eternal return and to the Overhuman. We would also add our Artist-Tyrants and Blond Beasts there too.
I am not sure I agree with the identification of the priest and the antiquarian. Indeed, it is because the antiquarian piety is so rigorous that I discount the priest. I think it is more like the kind of ancient Germanic priesthood which rested with the father of the tribe. There is no exalted office involved.
I think that Nietzsche was already identifying himself with the critical historian at the time of OADHL. However, there is a link to Socrates, I would say, who in 1874 was still somewhat of a 'hero' to Nietzsche [Nietzsche put Socrates amongst the Presocratics, and so called them the Pre-Platonics].
So I would say that the critical is very much the domain of the philosopher - and as I suggest we may see a connection here with the Foucaultian, Derridaean thrust of 20th century deconstructive philosophy, relativism etc.
Heidegger's contention that the the three kinds give a complete picture of the historicality of Dasein is interesting as the latter is defined by him in its very historicality. However, I have a feeling that Nietzsche would care little for the tautologies of Being and Time.
I think that the three kinds, while having a wider application than history, must be kept within the realms of knowledge [in the wider sense of that term].
So my summation of the three kinds into roles would be artist, father and philosopher. Interestingly, I believe that great artists and great philosophers never become fathers in the accepted sense, so there is certain completeness in the triad.
After Salome, we might identify he antiquarian with Nietzsche's early phase [as classical philologist], the critical with his middle period [his 'positivist' phase] and the monumental with his late period [Zarathustra etc.,] To be more accurate on Salome's identification of the the three kinds
of history with Nietzsche's 'transitions'; she puts the antiquarian
with the earliest philological period, then the monumental with his
so-called 'discipleship' of Schopenhauer and Wagner, and then the
critical with the positivist phase of Human. From Dawn onwards she
suggests that Nietzsche became more mystical and employed all three
kinds of history at once in the late period [so agreeing with
Foucault here except she doesn't believe that he reversed them in any
way, although they undergo some modification, of course].
That there are three broad periods in Nietzsche's life-work is beyond question; but the detail
is contentious.
Did Nietzsche ever attain the Child phases in his working life - was not his collapse into insanity in early 1889 the beginning of his Child phase? Was he not still a Lion right up until the fateful day of his collapse? - the vehemence of
the Antichrist and the last letters make me wonder whether he ever
got to that kind of innocence of becoming of the Child ...
Salome's charge of mysticism was certainly controversial, but it
reminds us of the same 'accusation' put Heidegger's way after
his 'Turn'. But note that in OADHL Nietzsche says that life needs
that "atmosphere, a mysterious circle of mist" [OADHL 40]. Isn't that
remarkable in light of Salome's comments? This is why I have come
back a few times to Salome's book [which I didn't think much of at
first]. Nietzsche was such a solitudinous personage that those who
did get close to him must be listened to.
Yes - metaphysics *is* an atmosphere - and like all atmospheres, it
cannot be eradicated lest we starve of oxygen. And this was
Heidegger's position, we know. But we don't want our atmosphere to be
polluted by morality ... We are that green ... Green language ...
language of the birds.
I like what Heidegger says about philosophers always being
beginners ... I feel that way. 'Boredom' - one must get through
boredom and to the other side. I have yet to be bored,
unfortunately .. or perhaps I began bored ... there is still some
hope for me. Nietzsche said that Plato was 'boring' - metaphysicians
are boring, it seems ... most certainly. Metaphysics is a vice that
its victims should keep to themselves or do behind closed doors.
Nietzsche's relation to Socrates is complex, for while he is always
fairly hostile to him, he seems to be constantly drawn to him. The
lectures he gave on the Pre-Platonics have some startling
formulations which demonstrate a profound love/hate with the 'ugly
one'. I quote some of the positive ones:
"Socrates is the first philosopher of life (Lebensphilosoph), and all
schools deriving from him are first of all philosophies of life
(Lebensphilosophien)."
[Lecture on Socrates (1872), in 'The Pre-Platonic Philosophers',
Illinois p. 145]
This a remarkable parallel with Nietzsche's insistence on knowledge
having to serve 'life' in the UMII. Further form the Socrates lecture:
"Thinking serves life [in Socrates], while among previous
philosophers life had served thought and knowledge ..." [ib.]
Remember the quote from Goethe that opens OADHL - compare this:
"Socratic philosophy is absolutely *practical*: it is hostile to all
knowledge unconnected to ethical implications." [ib.,]
And while we know that Nietzsche's view of ethics is very different
to Socrate's, this recognising of the problem for the first time is
reminiscent of Nietzsche's reason for choosing Zarathustra as his
later mouthpiece [i.e. the Persian had recognised the struggle
between good and evil as fundamental].
And back to OADHL's critical history [and the 'Untimely' nature of his
social criticism], we find Nietzsche saying this in the Socrates
lecture:
"Socrates
becomes the critic of his times: he investigates how far it behaves
from dark drives and how far it behaves from knowledge." [ib.,]
Again - virtually Nietzsche's own quest in this early period.
Nietzsche's own attacks on Socrates in these lectures [and in the
Birth of Tragedy] certainly contributed to his ostracisation by the
intelligentsia [and a very low student turn out to his lectures!]
Note the following:
"Socrates had the entirety of Greek education against him ... an
incredible animosity had gradually accumulated - he attracted
countless personal foes ..." [ib. p. 149]
Who can forget Zarathustra's exhortation that we 'die at the right
time'? This is derived from Socrates:
"Socrates believed specifically that it was the right time for him to
die ... he wanted death ..." [ib. p. 150]
Finally, he places him in this lineage:
"With Socrates] the series of original exemplary sages is completed;
we recall Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Democritus and
Socrates ..." [ib. p. 151]
The translator of this piece [Greg Whitlock] elaborates on these
connections in his commentary, saying that Socrates was something
like the kind of "philosopher that Nietzsche had sought to become"
[ib. p. 260]. Of course, they go alongside a series of attacks on
Socrates too. Socrates is like a distorted mirror image of Nietzsche
that he was unable to rid himself of.
I think this differs from his relationship to Schopenhauer because
his view of Socrates remains fairly constant [in Twilight he repeats
the comments of Socrates being ugly made in this early lecture -
comments that must have shocked his university colleagues], whereas
with Schopenhauer there is a clear 'transition'[to use Salome's word].
Speaking generally of Greek philosophy he refers to the theory of intrusions, of an 'alien' influence; "an imported plant, something that is actually indigenous to Asia and Egypt; we must conclude that philosophy of this sort essentially only ruined the Greeks, that they declined because of it -Heraclitus because of Zarathustra of Iran; Pythagoras, because of the Chinese; the Eleatics because of the Indians; Anaxagoras, because of the Jews ..." [ib. p.3]
Zarathustra as the ruination of Heraclitus!
And Socrates as the ruination of Plato [cf. BGE Preface]!
He says that Socrates was the last (philosophically) pure type of the Pre-Platonics; with Plato we arrive at a mixed type, and henceforth philosophy is always mixed. But here we see that the ruinous mixing was prepared beforehand with the flood of eastern ideas affecting even the Pre-Platonics.
Nietzsche certainly thought there was a connection between
Zoroastrianism and Heraclitus of course, although in the context of that
passage he is referring to the tendency to exaggerate any 'eastern'
origins of Greek philosophy amongst academics of the time, and so is
ridiculing these ideas, somewhat.
That doesn't mean that Nietzsche completely denies eastern influences,
of course.
And Nietzsche goes on to add to his own version of a
Heraclitus-Zarathustra connection mythos in his later work.
There is, though, a definite movement from [the historical and mythic]
Zarathustra > Heraclitus > Nietzsche.
And all three are historical/mythic.
But there is no progress towards 'perfection' - perhaps just flourishing
realisation.
I don't feel that 'perfection' with its lack of open-endedness and its
lack of perspective is a proper word to use.
I would revalue the word perfection to have that sense of meaning a striving towards the impossible.
The imperative being not know thyself but perfect thyself.
In other words, strive for the impossible ... or the forbidden.
Perfection would then be akin to the apeiron in all its unthinkability!
Greg Whitlock's commentary in the aforementioned book is
excellent and takes Nietzscheanism to another level. Those lectures
demonstrate that Nietzsche is taking over from the Pre-Platonics in his
crystallisation of their implicit or adumbrated notions of the eternal
return, the will to power etc.,
Also Nietzsche's reliance on Boscovich if fully explicated here.
I find Nietzsche's discussion on music in relation to the
Pythagoreans very interesting too.
Of course, as I said, when Nietzsche says
that "Heraclitus is ruined by Zarathustra" he is lampooning a species
of historical argument prevelant at the time which sought to put the
position that all Greek philosophy was derived from the Orient.
He rather wants to suggest the opposite [at least for the Pre-
Platonics].
No matter - the idea was a suggestive one - the ambiguous
relationship between Heraclitus and Zarathustra plays itself out in
Nietzsche's later philosophy
This links to On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life. He says there that the Greeks were faced with an influx of foreign ways and ideas. They only became great when they purified themselves by a rigorous selection [and so knowledge served life - their life - they became who they were.
So this is the antithesis to universalism - a particularism if you will - which former certainly encourages liberalism. And as metaphysics tends towards universalism ... However, metaphysics needs to be watered down [often as the religion of an 'all-pervasive God', or as political/social ideology] so that liberals (i.e. weak-willed mixed types) can even understand it: Platonism for the People. When ethics is universalised [most notorious example is Kant, of course], you have a similar example.
While it is certainly doubtful that "reality is a coherent, intelligible world", it is also doubtful that it is "merely a chaos of empty reveries or experiences" as Strauss says. Both positions pretend to a knowledge they don't have. There is no universal existence of either kind - there is my particular existence, though.
'Herd' is a value-laden term; it suggests that this particular collective [the herd in question] is sub-human. However, 'Elite' suggests that another collective [the particular elite] is elevated and superhuman.
Great things are rare; the elite is few - sometimes there is often an elite of one.
The elite certainly produces its philosophers - Nietzsche counted himslef as one [and here, Socrates is his antithesis because Socrates "is plebiean"].
Of course, many from the elite 'cross the floor' and become philosophers to the herd. However, can the herd [by definition] really produce a philosopher? Philosophy cannot be carried out by subhumans [political rants and ideologies are hardly philosophy].
It is rather the case that the elite philosophy will carry within it an implicit treatment of the herd too [such Master Morality] and this will be taken up [and often perverted] by renegades from the elite, mixed types and subhuman sloganeers.
When it comes to the eternal recurrence of the same and amor fati an "all-pervasive God" is super-fluous; worse than that it is injurious, as one cannot have real Solitude when one has an "all-pervasive God" prying into one's innermost secrets.
Monotheism is part of the problem.
Perfectionism is part of the problem.
It is not only a moral issue.
Will to power is not monotheistic.
Will to power is not perfect.
Will to power is not moral.
Will to power is not God.
While the metaphor of a collective Folk, a Culture as a "single
living unity" can be insightful, it is still not demonstrated that a
collective behaves *the same* as an individual [or vice versa] so as
to enable us to blithely make the transition as Nietzsche does in
OADHL.
Indeed there is ample evidence that an individual's consciousness is
radically altered [mostly for the worse as far as intellect and
idependence is concerned] when involved in collectives.
Why else would Nietzsche advocate Solitude for the rare few if it
wasn't for the contagion of stupidity that arises in collectives?
Much of the degeneracy recognised in OADHL is due to the pressure of
mediocrity and uniformity arising from the collective [whether the
state sanctioned historians or general education].
Also, taking it further, I believe that a caste based culture has no
parallel in a single individual [whereas a socialist culture might].
We can only use the metaphor of an individual for each seperate caste
[I know that the poetic idea of the castes referring to parts of a
single superhuman body is used, but I think it militates against
Distance].
When the castes are alongside each other in the hierarchy [as they
must be to make sense, albeit with a constant pathos of distance
between all castes] then the metaphor of a single individual breaks
down.
In other words, the metaphor equalises, it makes the same that which
is not the same. The superhuman's feet are superhuman feet and are as
noble as his head. They are not to be compared to 'slaves'!
I object to it on those grounds, and think that it is not argued
beyond the point of metaphor [possibly as a kind of pedagogy], and
yet it is often taken literally.
In OADHL where he speaks of an individual who may suffer the effects of "excess of history" [causing "weakening of the personality" etc.,] and that the same applies to a Folk, a Culture.
It seems unlikely that this is so as a Folk, a Culture are not affected in the same way as an individual.
I agree with Salome that Nietzsche's judgment may have been skewed here by his own over-worked state at the time which caused his health to suffer [and made him eventually quit teaching].
He tended to project this individual and personal state onto a Folk, a Culture without offering a convincing argument.
Indeed, a Folk, a Culture is well equipped to taken on an excess of knowledge in the way that an individual cannot.
As I said before, this does not mean that microcosms in macrocosms, and pyramids etc., are not good metaphors, but they must be treated with care.
Possibily Nietzsche extrapolated rather hastiliy in OADHL because of the prevelance of such [unquestioned] metaphors.
As we know, he went on to reverse the metaphor, saying the individual incorporated a state within himself.
There seems to be two distinct things here:
1) The wrong kind of history/knowledge, and
2) An excess of knowledge/history.
In OADHL Nietzsche targets 2) as the reason for the parlous state of
German culture in his time, extrapolating form the affect that 2) can
have on the individual.
Now I would say that it is quite plausible that an individual can
suffer from 2), especially if he has been thrust at the age of 24 to
be a professor of classical philology, while at the same time being
pressured by Wagner to become a propagandist for the cause.
I would also say that Nietzsche makes a brilliant insight when he
says that in order to act one needs to 'forget' [prefiguring Freud's
repressive hypothesis].
Where I differ is in applying this to a people or a culture as these
collectives are able to cope with 2) in a way that an individual
cannot.
While it is true that the ancient Greeks had "less history", I do not
feel that this is the decisive factor when it comes to a Folk or a
Culture.
It is 1) that is decisive here.
In the case of the Third Reich, for example, it is 1) that was dealt
with, and the same with the Greeks.
It is not so much a people or a culture only having less, but having what little
they have in *better shape*.
Now while that may mean rejecting and exiling certain forms of
knowledge and history, it also means *increasing* certain forms of
[right] knowledge and history.
So I say that Nietzsche is wrong to claim that an hypertrophy of a
virtu is just as bad as the hypertrophy of an evil as far as a
collective is concerned.
No, the hypertrophy of a virtu *can* be handled by a Folk and by a
Culture.
Indeed, that is part of their justification for being - they can
carry a weight far above the capacity of an individual.
Nietzsche may be right that the hypertrophy of a virtu could be
harmful for an individual as the individual needs 'sleep'.
But the collective allows us to maintain guard while the other sleeps!
Here as elsewhere, Nietzsche seems spot-on when it comes to the noble
individual, but less convincing when he extrapolates [without making
adjustments] to the collective as in OADHL.
The symptoms of an over-loaded individual are clear and well-
described by Nietzsche in OADHL. But they ring less true
when 'transplanted' to a collective as it takes far more over-load to
affect a collective.
As I said, when it comes to a collective it is not so much the
quantity of knowledge, but the quality of knowledge that is decisive.
This is the difference as I see it which makes a simple slippage from
man - to people - to culture contentious if the point is
only "excess" of knowledge [as it is in OADHL].
An ocean can deal with excess in the way that a stream cannot.
A tree trunk can carry an excess in the way that a branch cannot.
A Folk can carry an excess in the way that an individual cannot.
The heaviest weight can be borne by a culture: i.e. the Eternal
Return.
The latter will crush most individuals.
Does the cultural support of the Eternal Return help the individual
to bear it?
The virtu-centred Romans [virtu being a Roman word, of course] charged decadent Greece.
The Imperium Romanum, a very powerful Aryan culture, interposes between the decline of Greece and its subsequent Hellenistic phase and the Christian period which follows the Roman.
The Roman was certainly far more 'excessive' than the Greek; it was an oceanic culture.
It was not an excess of races and castes which destroyed it, but rather the gradual toleration of race and caste-mixing.
Quality, not quantity.
The eternal recurrence of the same is an example of excessive history according to Nietzsche - it is the most excessive history possible. It is such that it will actually destroy history!
The culture that can bear that kind of excess is truly superhuman.
Therefore, it is only puny cultures which are crushed by an excess in this sense - as Zarathustra says, one has to be an ocean to be able to recieve several rivers.
The Folk and Culture must be massive and monumental and able to take on a Spenglerian excess of history, including monumental, antiquarian and critical - and even including the Eternal Recurrence of the Same. ..
The fascist and NS state is such an Atlas.
Contrary-wise, on an individual level, the amount of excess one can take depends on the levels of energy one is able to put out - how much one can 'burn off'.
Individuals are only able to take on what is conducive to the type they are [whether monumental, antiquarian or critical].
The only exception is the Leader - but even he must have his loyal delegates to help ease the load.
The imperium is a very different thing to the emperor.
The imperium is the Camel, the weight bearing spirit.
Like Leonardo, like Goethe - a man who is across a whole range of disciplines and activities. Perfectionism is part of the problem.
It is not only a moral issue.
Will to power is not monotheistic.
Will to power is not perfect.
Will to power is not moral.
Will to power is not God.
While the metaphor of a collective Folk, a Culture as a "single
living unity" can be insightful, it is still not demonstrated that a
collective behaves *the same* as an individual [or vice versa] so as
to enable us to blithely make the transition as Nietzsche does in
OADHL.
Indeed there is ample evidence that an individual's consciousness is
radically altered [mostly for the worse as far as intellect and
idependence is concerned] when involved in collectives.
Why else would Nietzsche advocate Solitude for the rare few if it
wasn't for the contagion of stupidity that arises in collectives?
Much of the degeneracy recognised in OADHL is due to the pressure of
mediocrity and uniformity arising from the collective [whether the
state sanctioned historians or general education].
Also, taking it further, I believe that a caste based culture has no
parallel in a single individual [whereas a socialist culture might].
We can only use the metaphor of an individual for each seperate caste
[I know that the poetic idea of the castes referring to parts of a
single superhuman body is used, but I think it militates against
Distance].
When the castes are alongside each other in the hierarchy [as they
must be to make sense, albeit with a constant pathos of distance
between all castes] then the metaphor of a single individual breaks
down.
In other words, the metaphor equalises, it makes the same that which
is not the same. The superhuman's feet are superhuman feet and are as
noble as his head. They are not to be compared to 'slaves'!
I object to it on those grounds, and think that it is not argued
beyond the point of metaphor [possibly as a kind of pedagogy], and
yet it is often taken literally.
In OADHL where he speaks of an individual who may suffer the effects of "excess of history" [causing "weakening of the personality" etc.,] and that the same applies to a Folk, a Culture.
It seems unlikely that this is so as a Folk, a Culture are not affected in the same way as an individual.
I agree with Salome that Nietzsche's judgment may have been skewed here by his own over-worked state at the time which caused his health to suffer [and made him eventually quit teaching].
He tended to project this individual and personal state onto a Folk, a Culture without offering a convincing argument.
Indeed, a Folk, a Culture is well equipped to taken on an excess of knowledge in the way that an individual cannot.
As I said before, this does not mean that microcosms in macrocosms, and pyramids etc., are not good metaphors, but they must be treated with care.
Possibily Nietzsche extrapolated rather hastiliy in OADHL because of the prevelance of such [unquestioned] metaphors.
As we know, he went on to reverse the metaphor, saying the individual incorporated a state within himself.
There seems to be two distinct things here:
1) The wrong kind of history/knowledge, and
2) An excess of knowledge/history.
In OADHL Nietzsche targets 2) as the reason for the parlous state of
German culture in his time, extrapolating form the affect that 2) can
have on the individual.
Now I would say that it is quite plausible that an individual can
suffer from 2), especially if he has been thrust at the age of 24 to
be a professor of classical philology, while at the same time being
pressured by Wagner to become a propagandist for the cause.
I would also say that Nietzsche makes a brilliant insight when he
says that in order to act one needs to 'forget' [prefiguring Freud's
repressive hypothesis].
Where I differ is in applying this to a people or a culture as these
collectives are able to cope with 2) in a way that an individual
cannot.
While it is true that the ancient Greeks had "less history", I do not
feel that this is the decisive factor when it comes to a Folk or a
Culture.
It is 1) that is decisive here.
In the case of the Third Reich, for example, it is 1) that was dealt
with, and the same with the Greeks.
It is not so much a people or a culture only having less, but having what little
they have in *better shape*.
Now while that may mean rejecting and exiling certain forms of
knowledge and history, it also means *increasing* certain forms of
[right] knowledge and history.
So I say that Nietzsche is wrong to claim that an hypertrophy of a
virtu is just as bad as the hypertrophy of an evil as far as a
collective is concerned.
No, the hypertrophy of a virtu *can* be handled by a Folk and by a
Culture.
Indeed, that is part of their justification for being - they can
carry a weight far above the capacity of an individual.
Nietzsche may be right that the hypertrophy of a virtu could be
harmful for an individual as the individual needs 'sleep'.
But the collective allows us to maintain guard while the other sleeps!
Here as elsewhere, Nietzsche seems spot-on when it comes to the noble
individual, but less convincing when he extrapolates [without making
adjustments] to the collective as in OADHL.
The symptoms of an over-loaded individual are clear and well-
described by Nietzsche in OADHL. But they ring less true
when 'transplanted' to a collective as it takes far more over-load to
affect a collective.
As I said, when it comes to a collective it is not so much the
quantity of knowledge, but the quality of knowledge that is decisive.
This is the difference as I see it which makes a simple slippage from
man - to people - to culture contentious if the point is
only "excess" of knowledge [as it is in OADHL].
An ocean can deal with excess in the way that a stream cannot.
A tree trunk can carry an excess in the way that a branch cannot.
A Folk can carry an excess in the way that an individual cannot.
The heaviest weight can be borne by a culture: i.e. the Eternal
Return.
The latter will crush most individuals.
Does the cultural support of the Eternal Return help the individual
to bear it?
The virtu-centred Romans [virtu being a Roman word, of course] charged decadent Greece.
The Imperium Romanum, a very powerful Aryan culture, interposes between the decline of Greece and its subsequent Hellenistic phase and the Christian period which follows the Roman.
The Roman was certainly far more 'excessive' than the Greek; it was an oceanic culture.
It was not an excess of races and castes which destroyed it, but rather the gradual toleration of race and caste-mixing.
Quality, not quantity.
The eternal recurrence of the same is an example of excessive history according to Nietzsche - it is the most excessive history possible. It is such that it will actually destroy history!
The culture that can bear that kind of excess is truly superhuman.
Therefore, it is only puny cultures which are crushed by an excess in this sense - as Zarathustra says, one has to be an ocean to be able to recieve several rivers.
The Folk and Culture must be massive and monumental and able to take on a Spenglerian excess of history, including monumental, antiquarian and critical - and even including the Eternal Recurrence of the Same. ..
The fascist and NS state is such an Atlas.
Contrary-wise, on an individual level, the amount of excess one can take depends on the levels of energy one is able to put out - how much one can 'burn off'.
Individuals are only able to take on what is conducive to the type they are [whether monumental, antiquarian or critical].
The only exception is the Leader - but even he must have his loyal delegates to help ease the load.
The imperium is a very different thing to the emperor.
The imperium is the Camel, the weight bearing spirit.
In OADHL Nietzsche says that the masses [and so collectives] are of little consequence.
Cultures, and Peoples are therefore to be understood mainly as the plinths and scaffolding to support Great Men.
Ultimately only [Great] Individuals matter to history.
In that sense only, I would say that Nietzsche's extrapolation is valid.
The Great Man is then a synthesis of all three types.
This 'synthetic man' [a rather nasty title in English] then is a radical version of the 'renaissance man'.
Cultures, and Peoples are therefore to be understood mainly as the plinths and scaffolding to support Great Men.
Ultimately only [Great] Individuals matter to history.
In that sense only, I would say that Nietzsche's extrapolation is valid.
The Great Man is then a synthesis of all three types.
This 'synthetic man' [a rather nasty title in English] then is a radical version of the 'renaissance man'.
A great Master who combines all three of the Aryan castes in 'one breast'.
The Fuhrer was such a one in the modern age - artist, warrior, spiritual man, builder.
But here is the problem:
If the collective only works in the caste-order, with beings who are appropriately one-sided and so able to function effectively, then isn't the 'synthetic man' an anomaly?
Is there a place in the caste-order for someone who is above caste because he encompasses the whole [and is therefore 'out-of-order']?
Did the Germans [or the Europeans] really deserve a Hitler?
Has any collective, whether primitive, feudal or political ever deserved the 'renaissance man'?
Isn't the fate of Socrates still paradigmatic as Nietzsche may have suspected to his horror?
Isn't the hatred directed towards the Fuhrer today by the many totally indicative that even the caste-order and the synthetic man are at odds?
In other words, was the early Nietzsche right to toy with the Schopenhauerian notion of a 'Republic of Genii' ?
Would such a republic be therefore unrelated to the caste-order and rather an autonomous Great Power of Solitude mirroring Atlantis?
The Logic of the Holocaust*(*'Holocaust' is literally a 'whole scale burning' - there would be no survivors from a real Holocaust).
1) Hitler was a dictator
2) Hitler gave orders
3) In a true dictatorship nothing significant is done without the signature Order of the dictator.
4) There was no Holocaust Order.
Therefore;
5) There was no Holocaust.
or
6) Hitler was not a dictator.
If 6), then Hitler was not responsible for the Holocaust - but the Holocaust relies on the existence of Hitler as a dictator. If Hitler was not responsible then there was no Holocaust.
7) Given 1) to 4) above, Hitler was aware of the horrific nature of the Holocaust and so kept it top secret [hence 4].
8) If it was top secret then nobody would have been released from the so-called extermination camps.
9) People were released from the camps.
10) Therefore the Holocaust was not top secret
11) If it was not top secret then Hitler would have given an Order.
12) There was no Order.
13) There was no Holocaust [back to 6 etc.,]
Holocaust Believers say:
Never Again!
The Eternal Recurrence of the Same says:
Again and Again!
The Holocaust believers say:
Never Forget!
The etrnal recurrence says:
Learn to Forget!
Only when a man forgets can he really live!
1) The 'Never Again' and its non-forgetting will recur eternally.
2) The 'Again and Again' and its forgetting will recur eternally.
3) The 'Holocaust 'will return eternally.
4) The 'Hoax' will recur eternally.
Now choose.
And there will be no redemption.
No redemption, only exact repetition.
The eternal recurrence obliterates history.
History is bunkum.
World History is redundant.
Only 'original history' matters - the set of Amor Fati.
Eternal recurrence destroys all history beyond 'my life' and 'my struggle'.
It clears the way for Amor Fati.
It enables forgetting.
The Holocaust is forgotten.
Light another cigarette,
Learn to forget,
Learn to forget ...
History is replaced by a telling [mythos]
As Foucault had it, before the paradigm of 'History' [which is shattered by the Eternal Recurrence], there was the paradigm of Order.
The Return of Order.
And as 'man' was the invention of the Historical paradigm, so too is man shattered.
The new man of the next paradigm is the Uebermenschen, the creature of The New Order.
'The Eternal Recurrence of the Same'
- and yet there is no 'sameness' in things to Nietzsche.
Logic is founded on this false perspective, i.e. that things can be the same.
Does it follow from the assumption that 'matter is limited and time infinite'
that sameness in terms of matter would recur?
It seems not - for if matter is infinitely divisible - as Nietzsche thought -
and there are no ultimate atoms, then matter is infinitely transformable.
Even a finite amount of matter would have infinite depths of change that would
resist any 'sameness'.
The discourse of similarity in history is shattered.
The doctrine of the Eternal Recurrrence should be seen as a destructor - we have to pass through its blood-soaked jaws in order to understand what it means to view things as being ahistorical and asimilar.
And overhuman.
Like all things related to knowledge it is self-refuting.
And as the will of power is behind the will to knowledge, then the eternal recurrence is a highpoint of the will of power.
Knowledge as the great destructive force.
Dionysian.
The man in who the will to knowledge is the strongest is the most dangerous, most evil man.
Like Heraclitus he will cover himself in shit and give himself to be devoured by shit-eating dogs.
Difference between the priest and the philosopher, the former covers himself in perfume and avoids the deepest knowledge by giving himself over to God.
Zarathustra the godless.
The Eternal Recurence does not 'rid' one of superstitions [e.g. the soul], but transforms them.
Of course, those things which are overvalued or devalued may be ridded, but other things of intrinsic worth will be revalued, transvalued.
Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad!
Similarly, do we have soul enough to make a holocaust of all our superstitions, to blacken every sun?
Aporia is good for the soul.
And is a final solution itself a superstition?
Thinking is a limitation ...
Think the unthinkable - that is the birth of philosophy.
Think what hasn't been thought before ...
The Jewish prophet says that there is nothing new under the sun, but the aryan philosopher says that there have been many suns, and many suns that have yet to flame into existence ...
The overhuman itself is an invitation to think the unthinkable ...
Consciousness is continually evolving too ...
... thinking continually changes ...
... ancient Greek consciousness was very different to present day consciousness ...
Nietzsche's interest in science has been downplayed by commentators; from his earliest days he had an avid interest in science [such as chemistry and physics] and kept himself abrest of the very latest developments.
Indeed, his interest in the Pre-Platonics was due to their being physicists - a huge gap in Nietzsche appreciation has been filled by Whitlock's translation and commentary on Nietzsche's lectures on the Pre-platonic philosophers [not to be confused with 'Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks']. I believe that not until one has read the tenth lecture on Heraclitus in that series can one really understand the foundations of Nietzsche's theories of the will to power and the eternal recurrence.
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/47fbz6xa9780252074035.html
The belief in an end time [finite time] is typical of Christianity etc.,
Concepts of time [as Kant pointed out] are merely a part of the necessary perceptual apparatus used by humans to comprehend what they think is the world.
Time does not exist as such - hence the continual use of metaphors to describe it [as lines, circles, elipses, zig-zags etc.,].
Finitude, like time is the natural result of finite human reasoning.
If time does not exist then nor does finitude.
My point is that is Nietzsche allows the unthinkable concept of infinity as regards time, then he should allow it for matter ... as there is no real distinction between time and matter.
If matter, like time, is purely a product of the mind, as you claim, then matter itself does not exist as such and cannot be finite.
We must think the unthinkable - no doubt at one stage to think a soul was unthinkable. But then the concept was gradually debased .... Christianised ... 'Platonism for the people'.
Let us think the unthinkable again ... let us think the eternal return in an unthinkable fashion ... as we are doing, if I am not "mistaken!"
At the dawn of philosophy we have the apeiron of Anaximander ...
The empire of the unthinkable [and the unthought] is far larger than the empire of the thinkable [and the thought]. Philosophy aims to make constant inroads into that vast 'empire of the senseless'.
This is not to say that any empty conjecture has value - indeed, a conjecture is often merely the thinkable. God has become a mere conjecture [although it began as an unthinkable, I would wager].
We must think the unthinkable as being conceivable as being real: hence the eternal recurrence being presented as a scientific doctrine!
We only learn as we speak - thank you Socrates, you were ugly but we are indebted to you too.
The unthinkable has to begin as poetry [and before that music]: only then does it enter philosophy - ah! we are the endebted to the muses!
The eternal recurrence is an attempt to make such an inroad into the unthinkable - note that it is Zarathustra's ape who takes the doctrine only literally. This is not to deny the unthinkable possibility that the doctrine may be literally true, but that is not its raison d'etre. It is proffered rather as a destructive, transformative and therefore Dionysian doctrine.
The unsayable and the unthinkable - those are my two ravens!
Some say that "existence is the will to power"; and yet doesn't the word existence imply something other than 'life'? Isn't ex-istence a standing-out? Does all life have this quality?
Does a stone exist in this sense - i.e. is it imbued with that force [Kraft] you are so fond of?
Then there is a soul in all things to our mystical friends - how unthinkable!
How I love those who adhere to that doctrine!
"Existence as a whole"? - how unthinkable is that!
Where does that existence end - in one of their circles?
But why would they have to impose such a thing? Isn't that rather impish, the idea that a mere human can impose a soul on a stone? Surely it is soul which emanated matter and made the man - it was soul that imposed Being upon the human, vegetable, mineral and animal!
Lo, the soul doctrine is reversing itself as it was taught my brethren!
Falsity implies truth ... what is truth?
Logic is founded on this false perspective, i.e. that things can be the same.
Does it follow from the assumption that 'matter is limited and time infinite'
that sameness in terms of matter would recur?
It seems not - for if matter is infinitely divisible - as Nietzsche thought -
and there are no ultimate atoms, then matter is infinitely transformable.
Even a finite amount of matter would have infinite depths of change that would
resist any 'sameness'.
The discourse of similarity in history is shattered.
The doctrine of the Eternal Recurrrence should be seen as a destructor - we have to pass through its blood-soaked jaws in order to understand what it means to view things as being ahistorical and asimilar.
And overhuman.
Like all things related to knowledge it is self-refuting.
And as the will of power is behind the will to knowledge, then the eternal recurrence is a highpoint of the will of power.
Knowledge as the great destructive force.
Dionysian.
The man in who the will to knowledge is the strongest is the most dangerous, most evil man.
Like Heraclitus he will cover himself in shit and give himself to be devoured by shit-eating dogs.
Difference between the priest and the philosopher, the former covers himself in perfume and avoids the deepest knowledge by giving himself over to God.
Zarathustra the godless.
The Eternal Recurence does not 'rid' one of superstitions [e.g. the soul], but transforms them.
Of course, those things which are overvalued or devalued may be ridded, but other things of intrinsic worth will be revalued, transvalued.
Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad!
Similarly, do we have soul enough to make a holocaust of all our superstitions, to blacken every sun?
Aporia is good for the soul.
And is a final solution itself a superstition?
Thinking is a limitation ...
Think the unthinkable - that is the birth of philosophy.
Think what hasn't been thought before ...
The Jewish prophet says that there is nothing new under the sun, but the aryan philosopher says that there have been many suns, and many suns that have yet to flame into existence ...
The overhuman itself is an invitation to think the unthinkable ...
Consciousness is continually evolving too ...
... thinking continually changes ...
... ancient Greek consciousness was very different to present day consciousness ...
Nietzsche's interest in science has been downplayed by commentators; from his earliest days he had an avid interest in science [such as chemistry and physics] and kept himself abrest of the very latest developments.
Indeed, his interest in the Pre-Platonics was due to their being physicists - a huge gap in Nietzsche appreciation has been filled by Whitlock's translation and commentary on Nietzsche's lectures on the Pre-platonic philosophers [not to be confused with 'Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks']. I believe that not until one has read the tenth lecture on Heraclitus in that series can one really understand the foundations of Nietzsche's theories of the will to power and the eternal recurrence.
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/47fbz6xa9780252074035.html
The belief in an end time [finite time] is typical of Christianity etc.,
Concepts of time [as Kant pointed out] are merely a part of the necessary perceptual apparatus used by humans to comprehend what they think is the world.
Time does not exist as such - hence the continual use of metaphors to describe it [as lines, circles, elipses, zig-zags etc.,].
Finitude, like time is the natural result of finite human reasoning.
If time does not exist then nor does finitude.
My point is that is Nietzsche allows the unthinkable concept of infinity as regards time, then he should allow it for matter ... as there is no real distinction between time and matter.
If matter, like time, is purely a product of the mind, as you claim, then matter itself does not exist as such and cannot be finite.
We must think the unthinkable - no doubt at one stage to think a soul was unthinkable. But then the concept was gradually debased .... Christianised ... 'Platonism for the people'.
Let us think the unthinkable again ... let us think the eternal return in an unthinkable fashion ... as we are doing, if I am not "mistaken!"
At the dawn of philosophy we have the apeiron of Anaximander ...
The empire of the unthinkable [and the unthought] is far larger than the empire of the thinkable [and the thought]. Philosophy aims to make constant inroads into that vast 'empire of the senseless'.
This is not to say that any empty conjecture has value - indeed, a conjecture is often merely the thinkable. God has become a mere conjecture [although it began as an unthinkable, I would wager].
We must think the unthinkable as being conceivable as being real: hence the eternal recurrence being presented as a scientific doctrine!
We only learn as we speak - thank you Socrates, you were ugly but we are indebted to you too.
The unthinkable has to begin as poetry [and before that music]: only then does it enter philosophy - ah! we are the endebted to the muses!
The eternal recurrence is an attempt to make such an inroad into the unthinkable - note that it is Zarathustra's ape who takes the doctrine only literally. This is not to deny the unthinkable possibility that the doctrine may be literally true, but that is not its raison d'etre. It is proffered rather as a destructive, transformative and therefore Dionysian doctrine.
The unsayable and the unthinkable - those are my two ravens!
Some say that "existence is the will to power"; and yet doesn't the word existence imply something other than 'life'? Isn't ex-istence a standing-out? Does all life have this quality?
Does a stone exist in this sense - i.e. is it imbued with that force [Kraft] you are so fond of?
Then there is a soul in all things to our mystical friends - how unthinkable!
How I love those who adhere to that doctrine!
"Existence as a whole"? - how unthinkable is that!
Where does that existence end - in one of their circles?
But why would they have to impose such a thing? Isn't that rather impish, the idea that a mere human can impose a soul on a stone? Surely it is soul which emanated matter and made the man - it was soul that imposed Being upon the human, vegetable, mineral and animal!
Lo, the soul doctrine is reversing itself as it was taught my brethren!
Falsity implies truth ... what is truth?
Let's reinvent the gods, the myths of the ages
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests
O great creator of Being
grant us one more hour to
perform our art
and perfect our lives
