Heraclitus' "gods" and Nietzsche's Overman.

I want to compare some fragments of Heraclitus to some major ideas of Nietzsche.

The first fragment I want to dive into is related to my current signature. My current signature is:

“What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock or a bitter shame. And just that shall man be to the Overman: a laughing-stock or a bitter shame.”
[Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Zarathustra’s Prologue, 3.]

The fragment in question reads:

“The handsomest ape is ugly compared with humankind; the wisest man appears as an ape when compared with a god - in wisdom, in beauty, and in all other ways.”

So Nietzsche’s Overman corresponds to Heraclitus’ god. Note that this is “god” without a capital: there are many of these “gods” (polytheism).

The second fragment I want to look into sheds light on why the god is wiser than the man:

“For god all things are fair and just, but men have taken some things as unjust, others as just.”

This corresponds exactly to Nietzsche’s amor fati, love of fate:

“Such a spirit who has become free stands amid the cosmos with a joyous and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only the particular is loathesome, and that all is redeemed and affirmed in the whole -he does not negate anymore… Such a faith, however, is the highest of all possible faiths: I have baptized it with the name of Dionysus.”
[Twilight of the Idols, Skirmishes of an Untimely Man, section 49.]

Crowley says the same in his own way in his Little Essay toward Truth on Sorrow:

And the universe is the body of God, the mindless God, Dionysus.

Gilles Deleuze has said what Crowley says in that quote from The Book of the Law (“Remember … remains.”) in his own words:

“Only affirmation returns, only that which can be affirmed returns, only joy returns.”
[Deleuze, Nietzsche.]

This is a reference to Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Eternal Return. Negation does not return because there is no cumulative consciousness of displeasure, whereas power is eternal joy.

The next fragment is related to the Eternal Return:

“This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be - an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures.”

It only does not say that this fire will burn in exactly the same way again and again. But;

“In the circumference of the circle the beginning and the end are common.”

The next fragment deals with life and death:

“Immortals mortal, mortals immortal: the former live the death of the latter, the latter are dead in regard to the life of the former.”

This fragment may be explained in several ways.

The former may “live the death of the latter” in the sense that what constitutes life and liveliness to the former would be deadly for the latter; this concerns the “poison” Dunamis mentioned in the Your Favorite Nietzche [sic] Quote thread.

It can also be said that the life of the “gods”, of these Overmen, causes death and destruction among the mere men:

“War is father and king of all; and some he has shown as gods, others men; some he has made slaves, others free.”

May we not identify the free with the “gods” and the slaves with the men, in the light of Nietzsche’s statement from Twilight of the Idols above?

The “gods” bring death and destruction to the men below:

“The initial Aryan onslaught began with the First Aryan invasion under Indra. The barbaric Vedic Aryan hordes swept down into the Indus Valley civilization, attacking the peace-loving and tolerant Semito-Negroid civilization. Unaccustomed to such violence and blood-shed, and unable to withstand the sheer numbers of ferocious invaders, the civilization collapsed into massacres, mayhem and disorder. Following this calamity, India was plunged into 1000 years of darkness, a period referred to as the Vedic Dark Ages. Virtually the entire native populations of Negroids, Semites and Mongoloids were exterminated. The Indus irrigation system was shattered to permanently destroy agriculture in the region in the first recorded instance of ecological warfare.”
[The Bible of Aryan Invasions, Vol. II]

Note that anyone who questions the Aryan Invasion theory is thereby a Holocaust denier.

There is another explanation for the last fragment of Heraclitus I quoted. As I wrote on another philosophy forum;

“The higher men Nietzsche admires are like lone predators, or at most packs of such predators - the opposite of the flock of “sheep”. […] The deepest need of “sheep”, their will to “freedom”, their True Will, their will to power is to dissolve into the Herd, that is, to dissolve their individual souls into the Group Soul, their weak individual wills into the Herd Will”.

So “the latter are dead in regard to the life of the former” may mean that the latter die an individual death in dissolving into the herd, into the mental slumber that the herd’s security makes possible and that membership of it demands.

“Death is all we see awake; all we see asleep is sleep.”
[Heraclitus.]

“Solitude probes most thoroughly, more than any illness proper, whether one is born and predestined for life - or for death, like by far the most.”
[Nietzsche, Nachlass.]

It has often been misunderstood that Nietzsche spoke of a kind of reincarnation when he spoke of “eternal return”, when he simply spoke of the return of life-affirming becoming.
To act, to choose, as if you would embrace the eternal repetition of your act and choice.

Deleuze offers some interesting perspectives with his active and reactive forces interpretation of Nietzsche’s thought.

Here we might associate “forces” with the concept of gods.

I think Nietzsche’s affinity for Heraclitus stems from this ancient thinkers life-affirming acceptance of responsibility and its burden, and of chance, without blame or shame and without the need for gods to unburden one’s self from it.

That was very interesting, but lol who in the world wrote the Bible of Aryan invasions?

“attacking the peace-loving and tolerant Semito-Negroid civilization.”

lol, isn’t it always the peace-loving and tolerant civilizations that get attacked by aryans and evil europeans! How dare they come into lands who lived in perfect harmony, neeever wared against each other, yet conquered much land.

sorry, that just reminds me of the whole multi-cultural movement that breeds hatred for current europeans based on what some did in the past…

eternal recurrence hatred becoming…

Though I agree that the title is funny, the book is actually serious. It is written by a Professor Uthaya Naidu. The online text can be found here.

It may be possible - for instance, if there were no people living there before them; or it might have been a very late civilisation. In any case, the accounts given in the “Bible” make a lot of sense. I highly recommend you read it. Another excerpt:

Krishna launched the third Aryan invasion, invading Western India (Gujarat, Rajastan etc.) from Mathura in Aryavarta. He finally established his capital there, naming it Dwarka. He destroyed the surviving traces of the Indus Valley civilization, abducting and raping 16000 women (low-caste `gopis’) of the races he exterminated. Survivals of these acts are found in the much toned-down Krishna-gopi songs.
[ibid., Preface.]

Hail Krishna!

I put it in my favorite places. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to it. I have so much in there from over the years. ha

I have read in history books about Aryan/Indo-European invasions and the false Nazi versions or supposedly false version? In the March of the Titans they claimed that the Egyptians, Sumerians, and even rulers over the American civilizations were Aryan. I was surprised to find in a book by Zecharia Sitchen that the Sumerians spoke of the black headed ones.

And then just today Nietzsche spoke about Aryan invasions in Europe over the proto-European stock of the black headed ones or something.

My thought: “Maybe the comparisons of dark and light really were based on race afterall.” ha