The Lion tears up the Child (and eats himself)

You think the Christ speaks only through the Bible? You ought to read the Bible.

“Stop attributing made-up quotes to me”

  • Christ

I can see you’re clever. Probably a mathematician.

I’m an awful dancer tho’ I do enjoy it.

That Nietzsche who wrote ‘without music life would be error’ is the one I’m after!

kp

jonquil absolutely a d o r e s the idea of taking life and philosophy v e r y seriously, to the exponential nth degree so that a life spent without worrying out heavily and gravely the distinctions between the lion, camel and child in Nietzsche’s extremely weighty, extremely significant allegory would hardly be worth living. Most def, Nietzsche stands on a par with my favorite author for heavy, important symbology and absolute truth without irony or ambiguity: Nathaniel Hawthorne.

HTH, jonquil the unsmiling

No… You are Helptheherd?

Never took notice of him but I had the feeling googling this Hawthorne would result in a fitting quote, and surely:

“A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.”

Now, since I have about 5 aliases on this site, what does that say about me?
I guess that Im no fan of Hawthorne either.

But what you may interpret as worry, others refer to as thought. It can be a heady wine, surely.

Drifting way of topic I guess but Hawthorne is a great writer second only to Melville for me!

kp

Okay. Since I don’t know about either of them, I move back to the topic: did or did Nietzsche not eat himself in his own terms?

Dunno - but in the mean time I’m writing a play called ‘waiting for sauwelios’ whilst painting a picture…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4WM-0ZlgDo[/youtube]

Was krossie’s comment

A. Unhelpful

B. Lazy

C. Not all that funny

D. All of the above

kp

I enjoyed it krossie O:)

Now I think I’m going to revisit “What is Called Thinking?”.

Krossies comment gave me the first laugh of the day… and I love that video.
I don’t think Sauwelios is coming back here, I pissed him off by calling him Talmudic because he didn’t fall for my interpretation and let his analytical method loose on me.

I see he has his own high powered Nietzsche forum - ah well pity though - the debate above was quality!

kp

That forum is like a fortress.

If you ever finish that play, or painting, I must see it.

I’ll bet it is!

If I can churn anything out even philosophy - I’ll put it up here somewhere - chance it’d be a fine thing - maybe over the Summer!

kp

This summer will be a good one.

I like to think that my Buddhist-like approach to life keeps my inner (Nietzschean) child alive and puts aside the angst of the lion. It’s something about believing that nothing really matters that sets one free. The lion still believes things matter - his virtues matter.

This isn’t to say that I’m a Buddhist nor that absolutely nothing matters to me - I think anyone who claims that really nothing matters to them is lying - but it is, as they say, the ‘spirit’ of the philosophy that guides me.

Good call. Broadly speaking also the direction W. Locomotive was going into with the Saints.
What’s missing yet from my perspective is the “cruelty” which Nietzsche is so keen on. We non hardline-Aryans may need to refine that concept, as also “will to power”.

What an excellent thread. I just wish I hadn’t caught it so late in the game. I hardly feel qualified to respond after having read through it all, but your comment about the characteristic “cruelty” got me thinking…

Perhaps the cruelty lies in the passion and persistence behind the lion’s virtue. That is to say, his pursuit of virtue [as virtuous as it may be] becomes his offense. The more obstinate he becomes, the less he is willing to tolerate the occasional exceptions in thought or action. In a sense he becomes more upright and stubborn [static], whereas his actions actually become more aggressive and unpredictable [dynamic]. Until eventually he becomes the aggressor in all situations, believing primarily in that which he reveres in himself while stepping on, or around, the rest. Thus, maybe his cruelty comes in the form of incidentally devaluing all of that which he is not, or does not represent. He regards himself and his virtue[s] as the ‘ends’ rather than a ‘means’, so to speak. And he destroys his relationships as a consequence, alienating and embittering himself until he looses all sight of the child in him.

I can’t help but wonder: By this paradigm, did Socrates himself die a lion? Or a child taken for the lion he once was? Or was it the final metamorphosis from child back to camel?

[Note: I’m not sure how Nietzsche intended the model, obviously, but I don’t take the progression to be necessarily linear. Perhaps it can be cyclical and repetitive throughout the course of a life.]

Haha, well, I just found this at random: The Spirit of Nietzsche

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I guess I’m not alone in my conception of a non-, or possibly more-than-, linear progression.

The cool part is that the article gives credit to Sauwelios as a contributor.

That sounds plausible. But I also have this idea in my head, I don’t know where it comes from, that Nietzsche designates the Child as being cruel as well. Innocence of becoming as being indifferent to the suffering it causes. I am now wondering if this is coming from Nietzscheans rather than Nietzsche, but I think not.

Or even from lion back to camel? As in bearing the burden of himself, of his own truth-mongering?
I think he was a lion, but he had a lot of playfulness to him, a great sense of humor. Part of what I see when I think of him is that he just went around carelessly changing peoples minds - as literally as anyone ever does that. He was what he was, and he just let that happen to the people around him. Like a phenomenon unchained, very child-like. He had those qualities WL designated as saintly.

I had not thought of that… but I suppose that someone who is a child also automatically becomes a "holy one’, and very possibly even to himself, which makes him a camel. Yes, there is truth to this - periods in life full of inspiration and boundless courage to express that spirit, and then ‘when the spirit wanes and the form has appeared,’ who is there to reflect on this, to pick up on it, to take it forward? It must be the camel. But are we really talking about what Nietzsche was describing then? Does a spirit that has reached child-hood take himself up as a burden? Is this not a contradiction to the perspective on life that comes with child-ness?