— Read Zarathustra - Of the Despisers of the Body.
Tell me what you think in light of that.
O- That it is an influence on Freud.
— I think the distinction here is that Luther does not seem to even believe in the existence of a “self”, so in the case of a lutheran, there is no donkey to harness.
O- Yes he does. In fact the “donkey” analogy is Luther’s. In Nietzsche the Self, the body, calls the shots with it’s great wisdom, reason, and impels the ego or little reason to think, so in effect, it is the rider of the donkey. But look further and you see that the Self is itself a product of other materials, so that it is not that it decides pain or pleasure and direct the ego in this way but that it’s circumstances cause pain or pleasure upon it, and as a secondary effect, also pain or pleasure on the ego, so the Self is a donkey of it’s circumstances.
— A donkey implies self-awareness and a capacity to influence a choice - in whatever minute capacity. I cannot pretend to be knowledgeable about Luther, so correct me if I’m wrong.
O- A donkey in Luther’s perspective or narration, despicts a beast of labor, a slave, the opposite of freedom, which is the rider. A donkey makes no choice about whether to go left or right. The choice is made for it by the rider. I compare this with Nietzsche because neither denies the phenomenology of a choice, that is, that we think that we are choosing to do or not to do a thing, but each declares this an illusion and narrates a story of “drives”, driving us, riding us, as it were, like a rider in Luther’s analogy.
— If there is a self in Luther’s perspective, then it would involve active submission on the part of this self towards gods will.
O- That would imply a freedom that Luther denies. A person’s ego might submit to God but not because it wanted to be “good”, or made a choice, but because it was made in this way. A horse with good legs runs well. A horse with a bad leg runs badly and God, the rider can only ride them as good as they are, created, before any choice was ever made, because this is how they were made by God, either good or healthy or bad and unhealthy (Luther’s analogy, not Nietzsche) in His election.
— So, we’re back at square one again; a lutheran is an empty vessel, bereft of will;
O- Not at all. Luther objects to the “free” and would argue instead for a “mutable will” for example, but of course, as in Nietzsche, it is hard to follow where will, free or mutable or limited in any way, remains a will at all rather than necessary and predetermined effects of material causes or divine causes as well.
— the nietzschean is a multitudinous being whose self acts as tyrant to a nation of many other souls, which is called the body.
O- The Self is the body (Despisers of the Body section)
— This nation is constrained and has no “free” will and yet is capable of enacting it’s own will upon reality around it.
O- The body has the will of material reality imposed upon it. The heat of the sun determines the success of a revolution within the Self and it’s tyrants, not the strenght of any tyrants within. It’s will is no will “upon” or “over” reality…that would be but to cling to the bones of a dead god that stands apart from materials, but the self is then reality, period. Any narration of action is just a figure of speech, according to the logical conclusions that must be reached through his argument.
In Luther the same is also said, though differently.
Reality, of course is God, who is “All in all”. He says:
“But He works according to what they are, and what He finds them to be:”
(Which they are according to His election.)
“which means, they are evil and perverted themselves, that when they are impelled to action by this movement of Divine Omnipotence they do only that which is perverted and evil. It is like a man riding a horse with only three, or two, good feet; his riding corresponds with what the horse is, which means that the horse goes badly. But what can the rider do?”
Of course God is omnipotent, but his choice not to intervene and change His choice is unscrutable. It can only be blessed, not understood.
So, in each there is a belief that a man is and acts in accordance with what he is. A genious person is him who patiently works and studies and sharpens his vision and attention to details…but these are not acts of freewill, or even will but the effects of physical/psychological factors, outside of his control that have determine this effects. Same way a good person may give away all he owns and love his enemies etc, but not because he has made this choice to act in such a christian way but this is an effect of his status as a chosen one of God. A person might believe in God or he or she may not but this is not because of the weakness of the preacher or teacher, but because God has made it so.
It makes one wonder, again, if that “Will” of Nietzsche is referring to God’s will? I mean that like Hegel tried to drop the tribalism of monotheism, perhaps Nietzsche did as well-? Perhaps…
