The Lion tears up the Child (and eats himself)

From Nietzsche’s notebooks:

The second part seems a context to the first, which reads:

“And he did not manage to overcome / conquer his virtue.
The lion in him tore up the child in him, and finally the lion devoured himself.”

A fascinating observation of one of the ways in which the chain of metamorphoses can be broken.
I’ve been pondering this since I read it, and haven’t fully grasped in a rational manner in which ways the lions virtue needs to be overcome to become a child.

Does anyone have experience with overcoming lion-like virtue, to become a self-propelling wheel of creative innocence? Or maybe there are examples, in literature, or other forms of drama, of someone who either suffers the same fate as this cruel hero?

"Inhuman was this hero, and wild - -
See, I teach you the love for the superman.

    • He took it on him and broke under the load."

Is there a causal link between the hero being cruel/inhuman, and his failure to carry the love for the Superman?
It’as possible I simply dont see the meaning.

As I see it… [not having read much Nietzsche]

Malevolence unchecked destroys itself.

Like in the tarot card ‘strength’ which depicts the jaws of the lion being held open with seemingly no effort. One must master the lion not be mastered by it, once the lion knows you are its master or that you have something over it [that it doesn’t know how to deal with], there is no longer any need to apply force or aggressions against the lion.
If you master the beast by becoming one you have failed.

[something hitler could have learned much from]

But malevolence is hardly a virtue, it seems to me.

So, would you say that the child is the master of the lion? If so, what does it have over the lion, that the lion doesnt know how to deal with?

Indeed, but power over it is. The child is lacking in what is to be aspired to here.

No I don’t, the lion is the master of the child [as like e.g. a father/adult] but if it consumes innocence it also consumes the truth in it, and hence its own derivatives.
I am not sure if this is what he means, but a lion has this ignorance ~ it can be subdued by a chair [lion tamer uses], or anything that it doesn’t understand but has a simple fear that it can cause harm to it. I once saw a documentary where a chap sat near a lions den and held up a toilet roll whenever the lion came near, to which the lion retreated. It doesn’t understand what a gun is but it does know that if a human is holding something it can cause it harm or kill it. This is in a way similar to innocence [ignorance].

i may be a bit off target here…
The superman [in the tarot quest] is the world, the end of a series of metamorphosis one of which is strength; once in a position of power one superior to the lion is not a lion themselves [but had been during the transformation]. Not sure if Nietzsche was into the occult or if surrounded by it, maybe it’s a common theme in human thinking.

On a similar note [and another documentary], there is an African lady witch who can walk with wild lions and they don’t eat her, what kind of presence does she have ~ ergo what process has she been through, such that she defeats the lion without force. What did Nietzsche think this was?

I see that you are using a different symbology here. The Nietzschean metamorphosis of the spirit places the child as the superior manifestation. You can read it here. It’s not too long, and you’ll find use knowing it, it is often referenced here.

Also, the quote clearly says that the lion fails to overcome his own virtue. This is rather mysterious. Why would virtue need to be overcome? Well, because the child is beyond good and evil. But still it presents a riddle, as to the type of virtue the lion holds and how it holds him back in the end.

That is a possible usage of the symbols, but in Nietzsche, the innocence is rather a surplus of power, an inability to be held back by morality, or apparently, the Lions virtue.

Okay, that is real life - and after the lion has pretty much been degraded into obedience… that is, his lion-ness has been taken away. In Zarathustra, the lion stands for the untamed (the natural condition of the lion) - for the state of mind that says “I will”.

The Strength card does not so much represent the lion, as the proper relationship of man with beast. So even though the lion is promiment in the Rider Waite VIIIth arcanum, it is only part of its significance - and the cards significance is only part of the Lion - the tamed part.

The superman as the World? There may be something in that. The image of the Sun seems appropriate to the Child.

A commanding spirit? I would guess something of the sort. What do you think of the presence she has?
I wonder how lions would have reacted if Nietzsche was walking there.

I’m not particularly fond of Nietzsche, admittedly because of how he influenced the Nazis and the Fascists; however, you may be misinterpreting the symbols here. Imm, the lion is the child and both are within the ‘hero.’ If the ‘hero’ “tore up the child within him,” he tore up a part of himself–he devoured the lion–killed the animal within himself–but he also killed the innocence within himself. That, according to Nietzsche, would be the only way he could become the ubermenschen, which I translate as the “superior man,” rather than as “superman.”

I think it would have been funnier if you’d said, “Lion tears up child and then eats itself!” People might think you were referring to a “current event”. Anyway;

Again, a source would be nice. Anyway, your last comment above suggests that the metamorphoses form some kind of necessary chain that must be “broken” for it not to automatically lead to the child. The converse is true, of course: just like most people will never attain the camel-spirit, most of those who do will never attain the lion-spirit and most of those who do the latter, in turn, will never attain the child-spirit. The chain must be forged rather than broken.

Here are some things Lampert says about Zarathustra’s speech “On the Sublime Ones”:

[size=95]Zarathustra differentiates himself from the “sublime ones,” heroic modern seekers of knowledge. These seekers have discovered truths of great value and have freed themselves from the old superstitions, but they have been left skewed and lack the beauty of serenity that ought to be present in the most sublime Erhabenste(n)]. He never calls the sublime ones “wise” (see II.8, 12), but neither does he say that they are moved by a desire for fame. His look into their souls confirms that they live lives of service to knowledge as adherents of the youngest virtue, honesty, or intellectual probity [Redlichkeit: see Zarathustra’s speech on the “Backworldsmen” (I.3)]. […]
They are the ones who have hunted down the deadly truths of sovereign becoming, the fluidity of all concepts, types, and species, and the lack of any cardinal difference between man and animal (UD 9). In the words of Beyond Good and Evil, they are the ones who sacrifice God to stupidity and worship the stone (55).
[Lampert, Nietzsche’s Teaching, page 121.][/size]
Now as Strauss says,

[size=95]The transformation of the world-denying way of thinking into the opposite ideal [see BGE 56] is connected with the realization or divination that the stone, the stupidity or the Nothing to which God is being sacrificed, is in its “intelligible character” the will to power (cf. aph. 36).
[Strauss, “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil”.][/size]
The overcoming of the youngest virtue means its transplantation to a new God. Before that transplantation, that virtue is the stinger of the scorpion Christianity whose body was the Christian God, or more generally the moral God (i.e., the God of “Good and Evil”). Its overcoming means its turning from a moral virtue into a transmoral virtue (“beyond Good and Evil”). The new God to which it is to be transplanted is the will to power: the will to truth shall be a form of the will to power—i.e., it shall no longer be a “Thou shalt” (see GS 344), but now an “I will”: namely, “I will to truth because the truth enhances the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in me” (compare AC 2). See WP 55.

Okay, here’s how i see it…

The camel as the load bearing animal is the one fully immersed in society and it’s goals, doing his duty and more than that. Being the one that is the most fully immersed in that societal narrative, he can see best were it’s all going and comes to see everthing as false and pointless.

The lion awakes and he begins tearing down the whole societal charade in his mind, and versus other people too… anger and destruction, “truth” is his virtue that pours out of him. As you can imagine this creates quite a rift between him, the image he build up as a camel, and the rest of society still imersed in society. It’s like saying over and over to a 5-year old and everyone who’ll hear it, “santa doesn’t exist you stupid …, it’s all false, all lies!!!”

Leaving this virtue unchecked, will destroy all his ties with society and eventually himself, because nobody will listen to a percieved freak and society won’t change… it’s no solution in the end.

The child ideally finds a way to overcome this virtue and come up with actual solutions. I can’t really think of specifics or examples of child-like overcoming right now, but i think i do know examples of such a failed cruel hero, in real live, and maybe also in literature.

[tab]You know Herman Brusselmans? He’s popular in Holland isn’t he? He strikes me as the type who is stuck in this cruel truth-telling/don’t-want-to-fool-myself mode, and never really came up with solutions. Maybe he has, but i didn’t really see them then. Both his interviews in media and his books are in that style. Some more interesting trivia, he says he likes Schopenhauer and is influence greatly by Gerard Reve (Editted). Two cheerfull fellas![/tab]

it’s that paradoxical freedom which is at once both uncomplaining self-reliance and unfrightened self-abandonment.

Jakob

Seams I misinterpret Nietzsche. I do have a copy of thus spake Zarathustra, I just needed to get my head back in that space perhaps.
from your link [thanks]
“the spirit becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child“.

Can we assume the child to be as like the fool? As this carries right through the tarot sequence to the world. This way we have something in the child which after all the trials remains, grows and is finally completed. The camels strength is in endurance and its load, this is then transformed into the lions strength, here it appears to be internalised into ‘I am, I will’, the power of purpose imposed upon the world. Perhaps the child’s strength occurs ‘after the fact’ or ‘after the needs’, there is no need to assert ones power upon the world when all objectives to its purpose have been fulfilled. Difficult to explain and understand, but I am just getting a fleeting glimpse of the world card, the man stood there as if no longer seeking, of innocence restored, journeys end ~ though it is all a beginning to being man [superman].

Each of the virtues needs to be overcome that the next metamorphosis may occur, it is perhaps that each virtue is as like the virtue of innocence in the child at the beginning of the sequence [that’s how I see it anyway]. Perhaps it is not that there is anything wrong with the virtue, but regardless the journey must continue and in doing so we eventually reach ‘all-virtue‘; perhaps each virtue is only partial and hence can never be fully attained [like the fool clutching at butterflies] until at last hey all become full as one?

The child at the beginning and end are indeed both impervious to moral impetus. Perhaps the superman is more like Jesus [not meaning to get religious here] than a superhero of contemporary ilk?
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I think there is a language to language, how we mirror one another, sometimes we can see exactly what another soul wants us to see, other times we don’t see at all. You can meet someone and in an instance fall in love, even others can sometimes see it. Point being that we could easily understand this as a metaphor, where the lion just ‘knows’ there is the latter metamorphosis innate in ones being [the witch]. It somewhat more inspiring when this occurs and is not a metaphor!

The same if he attained that level, obviously I havent been interpreting him very well so far, so when I say there doesn’t appear to be completion in his works [more the lion than the child level?] I could be entirely wrong. Equally the African witch may have been at a lower level, displaying some semblance of the full virtue that is in the child.

Thus spake Zarathustra is certainly a very fluid works though, so I could be wrong. There is something penultimate about it that’s all.
:slight_smile:

Further thoughts…

The super-man/person at the end has no message to convey and no one to convey it to, it would seam that one has to be at a given level in order to understand the book or words of that level.

You rarely get someone who attains that, maybe Jesus, Buddha, perhaps even Nietzsche!

Then you get the pretenders to the throne [e.g. in this case hitler] to whom their negatives and failures are inevitably put upon the true supermen.

:wink:

That’s a surprisingly close to home interpretation! I like it a lot. I dont have to go to Brusselmans for an example of this type, I’ve been this type. Looking down on the myths the government spins and being frustrated with those around me who believe it. Until I realized that my aggression. or cruelty indeed, toward my surrounding was actually doing more damage to them and me than their belief in the lies, and started playing the game, looking for ways in which to handle the situation within the narrative. This is also when I realized that the stories are largely lies, but that the general spirit of the culture that is spinning the lies is still worth a lot to me, so much that I am even willing to help telling lies to defend it and sustain it. Lies, of course, are creative, a property of the child. (Now “I Am” this lie spinning culture (every culture spins lies, is a lie, a subjective story, I prefer mine, me) instead of obeying it.)

This is a very fresh look at it, would never have though of it but it makes a lot of sense in a simple and relevant way, and it explains the quote very clearly.

It’s also from 1882 section 4.

I appreciate the scrutiny but I don’t really see a relevant difference between a definitive failure to forge the chain and breaking it.

Diekons reply sheds light on how this “I will the truth” then eventually thwarts power, and turns the lion into a kind of cancer, which is consistent with Nietzsche’s description. The virtue of truth becomes an unwholesome obstacle to participation in the organism and a cruel (grausam) antagonism to it.

Anyway, these quotes (as far as I can understand them or place them in a context which I understand) only seem to deal with the transition from camel to lion, not with lion to child.

What I am missing here essentially is the creative aspect of the child. The “I Am” of the child is in it’s perpetual, self-propelling wheel of creation. Being, when understood as becoming is creation. It is nothing else.

The Camels understanding of being is thus flawed, as he sees things as static, as fixed values that he has to uphold. The lion takes a step to subjectivity, but still considers himself as something fixed, and only his will as dynamic. So the becoming is in him a property of being. Only in the child does the fluidity of existence come fully into play, as this I Am does not say “I Am such and such”, but only describes the process of play, of creative transformation.

This creative aspect leads me to think that the child is as much the Magician as he the Fool.

Nietzsches symbology here is a bit problematic since it posits the child as a the end of a sequence, when in nature it is of course the beginning. The Tarot is circular, but I think that we must not see the metamorphoses of the spirit that way. The Child really is the goal.

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child. ~ Picasso

I think that actually the person on the World card does have moral motivations, but that he has balanced them so that they do not hinder him. He is surrounded by symbolizations the four fixed signs of astrology, which which all have their virtues, which could be seen as morals. But is the card below not much more like a creative innocence saying “I Am”?

This card is somewhat the high-point, the climax, of the cyclus of the Great Arcana. Kind of like high noon in the day, mid-summer in the year. Where the World may rather be the time of harvest, of completion, which already premeditates the next cycle.

I would personally rather place the knowing and doing here at the woman projecting her will actively, controlling the lions by concentration. I havent seen the footage, and no doubt she looks very relaxed, but think that if she would drop her concentration, the lions would attack her. The power of commanding presence requires a persons full concentration. Its just that such persons are used to concentrate, they are trained in it, are able to concentrate all day. Which reminds me of something I overheard the other day while having a drink - two french people were talking behind me and suddenly the woman quoted something in english: “concentration is the natural piety of the soul”.

I think that you’re right there, especially in the context of Diekons post, that Nietzsche was more Lion than Child. The quote of the OP could very well be seen as a description of himself, and would quite perfectly explain his collapse!

[size=85]"And he did not manage to overcome / conquer his virtue.
The lion in him tore up the child in him, and finally the lion devoured himself.

Inhuman was this hero, and wild - -
See, I teach you the love for the superman.

    • He took it on him and broke under the load." (Nachlass 1882 4[128])[/size]

I felt that there was something important here, that’s why I posted it, something I did not fully grasp -
thanks to contributions in this thread, I’ve realized that this is Nietzsches description of himself.
He was the wild and inhuman hero.

His own virtue, the will to truth, to honesty, devoured him,
and his own love of the superman weighed down on him until he broke.

Well, at least I think it’s important to note that most people will never even attain the camel-spirit.

That’s not what I meant, though. What the beginning of that note you quoted describes corresponds to the phase when truthfulness is still a moral virtue but has already killed the moral God.

They don’t. Thus, for example, Zarathustra compares the sublime one he saw to a tiger… But I understand whence the confusion springs. After all, I basically said that the lion is still driven by a “Thou shalt”, whereas the child is driven solely by “I will”. I was aware of the paradox when I said that, though. Look:

[size=95]Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and the heaviest longeth its strength.
What is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit; then kneeleth it down like the camel, and wanteth to be well laden.
What is the heaviest thing, ye heroes? asketh the load-bearing spirit, that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.
Is it not this: [a list of examples follows.]
All these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit taketh upon itself: and like the camel, which, when laden, hasteneth into the wilderness, so hasteneth the spirit into its wilderness.
But in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lordship in its own wilderness.
Its last Lord it here seeketh: hostile will it be to him, and to its last God; for victory will it struggle with the great dragon.
What is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer inclined to call Lord and God? “Thou-shalt,” is the great dragon called. But the spirit of the lion saith, “I will.”
“Thou-shalt,” lieth in its path, sparkling with gold—a scale-covered beast; and on every scale glittereth golden, “Thou shalt!”
The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and thus speaketh the mightiest of all dragons: “All the values of things—glitter on me.
All values have already been created, and all created values—do I represent. Verily, there shall be no ‘I will’ any more.” Thus speaketh the dragon.
My brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit? Why sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reverent?
To create new values—that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to create itself freedom for new creating—that can the might of the lion do.
To create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto duty: for that, my brethren, there is need of the lion.
To assume the right to new values—that is the most formidable assumption for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. Verily, unto such a spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey.
As its holiest, it once loved “Thou-shalt”: now is it forced to find illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it may capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this capture.
[Nietzsche, Zarathustra, “The Three Metamorphoses”.][/size]
The dragon is not really the spirit’s last Lord and God; or rather, what drives it to be hostile to it, to struggle for victory with it, is the dragon itself: compare my image of the scorpion that stings itself above. So even when the external dragon has been overcome, the internal dragon remains; in fact, it was the internal dragon that commanded the lion to rebel against the external dragon. The internal dragon, however, is simply the internalised external dragon. The question is, then: How does the spirit overcome the internal dragon without being driven by that very dragon in overcoming it?—

(That I’m right in associating the jottings you quoted with “The Sublime Ones”, by the way, may be appreciated from this passage:

[size=95]His deed itself is still the shadow upon him: his doing obscureth the doer. Not yet hath he overcome his deed.
[ibid., “The Sublime Ones”.][/size]
As you can see, Nietzsche changed “virtue” to “deed”. This deed is the “subduing” of the monster “Thou-shalt” (see ibid.), to which the spirit was driven by the youngest virtue.)

Sigh.

Indeed, there are many people who do not want to carry the heaviest load. But I don’t think that makes a difference here.

The ‘thou shalt’ of the camel is not necessarily coming from ‘the moral God’, as you’ve been using the phrase, as a slave morality. A slave morality can after all not transform into a master morality, since it is is ones nature. Rather, the camel holds the spirit of reverence. This can be reverence of anything great, of the world, in general. The camel still sees the value of the world as outside of himself, the metamorphoses are steps into internalizing the value. The phase of the lion is where the notion of value has been internalized, but the actual substance of the world has been rejected in order to make this step. The Child merges with the world as himself. He is reconciled with the fact that what he is isn’t the whole world, but that his greatest knowledge and highest value is in his total participation. This is against the pride of the lion, who rather holds back, who holds on to the pathos of distance to secure his pride.

the Child sees not difference between him and the world - his pride is not in his superiority over the world, his pride is like a sun, his pride is not in his roar, but shows only in the clarity and strength of his deeds.

Firstly, what makes you extend the notion of the dragon to a kind of internal demon of the lion? I can not find reason for this in what you quoted or highlighted. But, assuming that there is reason for this, to answer the question: because the spirit is overtaken by the spirit of lightness. The dragon just vanishes, if the spirit is fortunate (well-constituted) as its work is done. It is only a relatively ill-constituted spirit, which may account for the majority at the stage of the Lion, that holds on to the dragon, because the inner dragon, or inner demon, or forceful virtue, seems to the spirit to be the power of the spirit itself.

I don’t see that Nietzsche has replaced it - to me they are different passages, with different meanings.
The meaning may correlate in part, sure, and it is possible that what you quote here has sprung from the thought in the note. But the note is the topic, and I think it describes himself. Perhaps he ‘replaced’ (falsified) it later because he was fearful of what he saw.

Jacob

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Well the first metamorphosis of the child/fool is the magician, here he has the first tools to utilise his creative potential [often the magician is shown next to a table with tools upon it]. I’d say that the creation aspect remains out of his hands ~ as shown by the metaphors of the camel and the lion, the lion thinks it finally has it within its clasp but is only an egoistic shadow of what occurs in the world card [where all the elements of creation are at his fingertips].
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Agreed.

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The child androgen is equally at the end of the tarot sequence, but the unnumbered card the fool/child is not the cycle and is only expressed through the cycles. I don’t know why Nietzsche uses the symbol of the child, the fool is an element within the child that carries through which for me is a better symbol. Presumably he is either thinking of the child as one would the fool, or he had some reason I am missing for using the child.
Naturally though the tarot belongs to an ancient set, perhaps Nietzsche wanted to get away from all the symbolism and bring such common themes down to fundamental symbols known to all. A kind of Occam’s occult!

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I would think the balance in the world card does not need moral enforcement any more than the innocence in the child. The sun is the lion yes, very much so [the sign of Leo]. Perhaps the burning rays of the sun eventually melts the ego of the lion, hence the lion eats itself? This somehow reminds me of Akhenaton and the Atun, eventually he and his religion of the sun [lion] destroys itself.

A high point, hmm yes. perhaps the world is Osiris painted with a green face [the green man], to me that is more like spring, the sewing of the seeds, and would put the sun at the harvest. Again the sun is reaping and the child on the horse is like someone showing the seeds of the harvest with all the often premature assurance that brings.
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In the footage she casually strolls along with lions around her, it is instantly recognisable that there is some manner of communication going on here. This is a common theme when you consider Hindu scene of Krishna sat with animals of the woods around him [even a tiger if I remember correctly], and I think there are similar Buddhist images. You threw me there at first saying it was concentration, but yes I suppose its like driving, there is a learned manner of concentrating without effort.
I like the unspoken conversation you had with the French people - cool when stuff like that happens.
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Hmm maybe similar to Jesus’ intent to destroy himself [though I doubt if many would accept that lols], though here became manifest as eventual mental illness. If there was a physical medical condition, then I would expect that also to be a manifestation of this. This seams to be quite a general and familiar theme with thinkers and artists etc.
Somehow I think its all within the seed of their life that it unfolds to such an end, however there are always signs, that if read correctly the many facets of their unfolding lives, may find eventual flowering in the world. His wish to be superman was probably the very thing that blocked his eventual progress. …he set the end point at a premature juncture [the lion].

I knew this reaction was coming from you. I wish I could block specific reactions from “Sauwelios responding to analysis of Nietzsche-as-a-man”. But I can’t. So I have to ask: What exactly is wrong with the analysis?