I don’t mean to bore anyone with my class assignment, but i can’t seem to make sense of this quote from Nietzsche:
“There is a tremendously old popular belief…that a wise magus can be born only from incest…How else could one compel nature to surrender her secrets if not by triumphantly resisting her, that is, by means of something unnatural?..{W}isdom…is an unnatural abomination;…he who by means of his knowledge plunges nature into the abyss of destruction must also suffer the dissolution of nature in his own person.” - From Ch. 9, The Birth of Tragedy
I thought I was onto something when I told my professor that there is a parallel between the Dionysian existing prior to the Apollinian and the incestuous precondition of the wise magus’ birth, and then I fell off. I don’t know what Nietzsche means besides the obvious – that something good can come from something bad e.g. wisdom from incest, but then my prof pointed out that wisdom is not always desirable because sometimes its not admirable.
Then he asked me to expound a bit more on what Nietzsche means by wisdom, birth and nature. I can’t say what he means. Nietzsche is like taking big bite out of a hamburger – I can’t say what I want because my mouth is full (in reality my brain is overwhelmed by Nietzsche).
Unfortunately with Nietzsche, understanding him must be earned. Check out the Wisdom of Silenus, which I believe that Nietzsche quotes in Birth of T.:
Cicero says [Tusculan Disputations 1.114] that Silenus gained his release by granting a certain instruction to the king; this instruction is the well known opinion that asserts that the best thing for man is not to be born at all, but the next best is to die as soon as possible [compare for example: Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 1225]. This is also the Midas with “the golden touch”. [Hyg.Fab.191].
114 …adfertur etiam de Sileno fabella quaedam: qui cum a Mida captus esset, hoc ei muneris pro sua missione dedisse scribitur: docuisse regem non nasci homini longe optimum esse, proximum autem quam primum mori.
[size=150]“Listen and obey, not to have been born is best; but next to that, die soon.â€[/size]
It is the Wisdom of Silenus that Nietzsche is speaking of. Midas, who had a habit of wishing for things he could not handle, in cornering the companion of Dionysus and forcing forth this pearl of understanding, got more than he bargined for. It is a wisdom that Oedipus also declares in similiar words, at the hands of incest.
Im not a Nietzsche expert but it sounded like he was saying that the negitive parts of human nature are what is responsible for some advantages but he doesnt know why… only that those positive elements that arrive from human learning are not to be credited to people.
I never liked Nietzsche. mabey i just dont get it.