Nietzschean Truthfulness as the Highpoint of Humanity.

1.

Against the value of that which remains eternally the same […], the values of the briefest and most transient, the seductive flash of gold on the belly of the serpent vita [“life”]—
[The Will to Power, section 577.]

Nietzsche repeatedly expressed this idea. I was reminded of it while reading Heidegger’s commentary on ‘How the “True World” Finally Became a Fable’ (from Twilight; the commentary can be found in Volume I, chapter 24, of Heidegger’s ‘Nietzsche’). I will use Krell’s translation here.

(Midday; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; highpoint of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.)
[‘How the “True World” Finally Became a Fable’, step 6 of 6.]

I re-turned to Heidegger’s study in the course of my recent study of truthfulness in Nietzsche. In the light of that study, I can now offer the following interpretation of this section from Twilight.

The abolition of the true world—and with it, the apparent one—follows from Platonic/Christian morality’s turning against itself. I like to liken Christianity to a scorpion which has stung itself. A scorpion has eight legs (two of which have claws), a tail, and a head. These make ten extremities in total. Christianity has ten commandments.

It doesn’t really matter which commandment corresponds to which extremity—with one exception. That exception, incidentally, is the only one of which I’m certain: the tail is “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour”—the commandment to truthfulness.

Now the tail has killed the scorpion’s body—the Christian God—, how long will its extremities survive? Without the Christian God to sanction it, Christian morality will perish sooner or later. And this will include the commandment to truthfulness! I contend that midday, the moment (‘Augenblick’, literally “glance of an eye”) of the shortest shadow, is the period in which God is dead but the tail still lives. This period is, from a Nietzschean perspective, the highpoint of humanity: it is the period of Nietzsche’s mature philosophy (as Heidegger says, step 5 of ‘How the “True World” Finally Became a Fable’ describes Nietzsche’s positivistic period, not his mature philosophy). And what happens at that point? INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA, Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra?) begins… And how does Zarathustra begin?

Incipit tragoedia.—When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and Lake Urmi, and went into the mountains. There he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not weary of it. But at last his heart changed,— […] Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going.
[Joyful Wisdom, section 342.]

The highpoint of humanity is the wisdom of Zarathustra. But in the course of TSZ, Zarathustra chooses Life over Wisdom. This is already prefigured in the Prologue:

And if my wisdom should some day forsake me:—alas! it loveth to fly away!—may my pride then fly with my folly!
[Zarathustra’s Prologue, 10.]

And so it does. Indeed, at the end of Part IV, Zarathustra says:

Just now hath my world become perfect, midnight is also mid-day,—
Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun,—go away! or ye will learn that a sage is also a fool.
[The Drunken Song (a.k.a. The Nightwanderer’s Song), section 10.]

This feeling of perfection, however, is also called “wisdom” by Nietzsche on occasion:

Philosophy as love of wisdom, up to the sage as the most blessed, most powerful one, who justifies all Becoming and wants to have it again,—not love of men, or of gods, or of truth, but love of a condition, of a spiritual and sensual feeling of perfection: an Affirming and Benedicting out of an overflowing feeling of shaping power. The great distinction.
[Nietzsche, Nachlass, found in Umwertung aller Werte.]

And indeed, the word translated by Common as “wisdom” in section 10 of the Prologue is not ‘Weisheit’ (as in ‘Weiser’, “sage”), but ‘Klugheit’, “cleverness” (compare the first two chapter titles of Ecce Homo). And yet Zarathustra chooses Life over ‘Weisheit’:

And we gazed at each other, and looked at the green meadow o’er which the cool evening was just passing, and we wept together. Then, however, was Life dearer unto me than all my Wisdom [‘Weisheit’] had ever been.
[TSZ, The Second Dance Song.]

I think the Wisdom sacrificed by Zarathustra isn’t the condition mentioned above; it’s rather to attain that condition that he sacrifices it. The “wisdom” he sacrifices is truth, which is indeed (a) god.

2.

The first thing Zarathustra says to the hermit in the Prologue is: “I love mankind” [‘Ich liebe die Menschen’, “I love men”]. And I think all the Wisdom Zarathustra possesses in the Prologue (after having spent ten years in solitude) is sacrificed to said feeling of perfection in the course of the book. But the crucial sacrifice is not his love of men or of gods, unless it be the divine truth. The crucial sacrifice is his love of truth.

3.

Now I will, in true War God style (see http://www.nietzscheforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=1225#p1225), introduce a new “clock”—one corresponding to ‘How the “True World” Finally Became a Fable’:

00:00 Plato (step 1);
02:24 Christianity (step 2);
04:48 Kant (3);
07:12 cockcrow of positivism (4);
09:36 Nietzsche’s positivism (5);
12:00 Nietzsche’s mature philosophy (6).

(I have chosen these times to correspond with Nietzsche’s own division into six of the history of Platonism. In history, however, there has not nearly elapsed an equal amount of time between Plato and the advent of Christianity on the one hand and between that advent and Kant on the other (not to mention between the other steps); indeed, it seems the historical succession of these stages became ever more rapid.)

In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche wrote:

Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His doctrine and his alone posits truthfulness as the highest virtue[.]
[EH Destiny, 3.]

And Peter Berkowitz wrote about this:

Dearer to Zarathustra than friends, honor, dignity, or even the intellectual conscience that Nietzsche praised so extravagantly and the truthfulness he insisted was prized by Zarathustra as the highest virtue, is life and the myth of redemption that makes life bearable.
[Berkowitz, ‘Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist’, page 206.]

Zarathustra’s down-going is a down-going of truthfulness—which attained its highpoint when it stung to death the God who alone sanctioned it.

From the beginning of Zarathustra, the sun sinks; and the history of Platonism suggests that the history of Nietzscheanism will be as follows:

12:00 Nietzsche’s mature philosophy;
14:24 Nietzscheanism for the people (as Christianity was Platonism for the people);
16:48 the Antikant;
19:12 owl’s hoot of negativism;
21:36 a new Plato’s negativism;
00:00 said new Plato’s mature philosophy.

At 12:00, Zarathustra begins—that is, the tragedy begins, a new tragic age (and with it a new history of Philosophy in the Tragic Age) begins… With the setting of the Nietzschean sun (around 18:00), nothing can prevent the recurrence of Platonism anymore. At 02:24 of the new day, a new Christianity may arise.

Ah, man returneth eternally! The small man returneth eternally!
[TSZ, The Convalescent.]

This is Zarathustra’s last objection to the eternal recurrence. But he overcomes even that for the sake of said feeling of perfection: even the return of the smallest man, the Christian, is not too high a price to pay for said condition!

4.

(Midday; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; highpoint of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.)
[Twilight, “True World”, 6.]

Midday, the flash of gold on the belly of the ouroboros (the serpent biting its own tail), is the moment of the shortest shadow. (Ironically, the “moment” (‘Augenblick’) is also the time segment in which the eternal recurrence is affirmed.) It is not a moment of no shadow. The shadow (and note that night is the shadow of the earth) is still present at midday, even as the darkness of Yin is still present at the core of Yang at its highpoint. Likewise, at midnight there is no complete darkness (there is no such thing, as darkness is a relative lack of light). In looking up to the “sun” of the ideal, Plato looked away from the “shadow” beneath his feet.

5.

Logically, if God is dead, the faith in science will perish, too. People’s faith in science will never perish only if their faith in God will never perish. And logically, if their faith in God does not perish, this God’s commandment to truthfulness must make them kill him. Paradox, paradox. I would agree, though, that most people are inconsistent. The Jews of the Diaspora are the most prominent example of that. But if one is inconsistent in this regard, there is no question of truthfulness! If God commands truthfulness, and one does not kill him, one sins against his commandment! Modern science’s truthfulness is like a beheaded chicken: as long as it runs on, it will exist; and while it exists, it’ll have to acknowledge that it is headless, and will therefore soon perish.—What’s “soon”, though? “Soon”'s a relative term. So enjoy it while it lasts! Embrace the moment…

I saw Berkowitz speak the other day. He seems to have abandoned philosophy altogether, and has become little more than the bourgeois yuppie apologist, that I always suspected him to be. Of course he was just a political science professor to begin with.

And what bearing does this have on my thesis?

In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche wrote:

  Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His doctrine and his alone posits truthfulness as the highest virtue[.]
  [EH Destiny, 3.]

And Peter Berkowitz wrote about this:

  Dearer to Zarathustra than friends, honor, dignity, or even the intellectual conscience that Nietzsche praised so extravagantly and the truthfulness he insisted was prized by Zarathustra as the highest virtue, is life and the myth of redemption that makes life bearable.
  [Berkowitz, ‘Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist’, page 206.]

C+P from your thesis ^

So Berkowitz is saying Nietzsche/Zarathustra values life over truthfulness. Here I am in consonance with him wholeheartedly. Indeed as Berkowitz notes life trumps everything else, as it should. The highest intellect can accompany the most savage barbarism, as Nietzsche points out. It should not reign supreme, life should.

I am still just curious as to Berkowitz’s motivation in writing his book. I think he views Nietzsche as just one more stepping stone.

I suspect him to be a Straussian.

Indubitably. Just like, Paul Wolfowitz.

Hi Sauwelios,

I am trying to understand the last sections of your thesis. You say ‘Plato’s mature philosophy’, in your unique interpretation, is the new dawn, but end the essay with science biting its own tail, someday. When science finally bites its own tail, does then ‘Plato’s mature philosophy’ become apparent? I am just trying to fit the pieces together.
People need a myth, I know, but whether the myth is science or Platonism, does it matter? Nietzsche does desire a new myth, but it should somehow be reconciled with the tragic vision and there being only becoming, not a final state. Plato had time for neither. Or maybe I am misinterpreting your ‘Platonic mature philosophy’?

The ouroboros does not symbolise science biting its own tail, though there’s indeed a remarkable similarity between a poisonous snake biting its own tail and a scorpion stinging itself. Science (truthfulness) stings itself to death with the death of God (around 6am)—when it stings God to death. The ouroboros symbolises time as a circle—the eternal recurrence. But I do not mean the recurrence of time as a whole here, but the recurrence of the Plato-Nietzsche cycle.

Plato’s mature philosophy is neither dawn nor dusk. From a Nietzschean perspective, it’s midnight; whereas from a Platonist perspective, it’s midday and Nietzsche’s mature philosophy’s midnight.

Why? Because it’s more truthful? But with the death of God, there is no longer any ground for truthfulness.

Between 12:00 (Nietzsche’s mature philosophy) and 18:00 (the counterpart to the death of God, namely the death of tragedy—see an upcoming post for more on this), there can be no myth idealising truthfulness, as truthfulness would shatter that myth.

I know this is not Nietzschean, but that’s precisely my point: was Nietzsche consistent?

I envision a new Tragic Age, which may well end with a new Socrates and a new Plato.

6.

[A]ll philosophical idealism has hitherto been something like illness, when it wasn’t, as in the case of Plato, the prudence of an over-rich and dangerous health, the fright at over-powerful senses, the shrewdness [‘Klugheit’] of a shrewd Socratic.—Perhaps we moderns simply aren’t healthy enough to have need of Plato’s idealism? And we do not fear the senses, because------
[Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom, section 372.]

Because our senses are not that powerful. And for that reason, “[a]ll of us [philosophers] today are sensualists” (ibid.). This is to say we seek to increase the power of our senses (cf. Twilight, “Reason”, 3)…

The sense of the tragic increases and diminishes with sensuality.
[Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, section 155.]

Since Nietzsche has inverted Platonism and twisted free from it—that is to say, since the sensuous is no longer depreciated in favour of the supersensuous (non-sensuous; see Heidegger, ‘Nietzsche’ I:24)—, sensuality and, with it, the sense of the tragic have been on the increase. And where will this upward slope end?

His [Socrates’] success was such that the young tragic poet Plato burned all his writings in order to qualify as a student of Socrates.
[Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, chapter 14.]

Forward and upward, march, to such (an) over-richly and dangerously healthy, over-powerfully sensual young tragic poet(s)!

If reason does not provide a balance, then we are, again, victims of happenstance.

The question is: Where do we draw the line?

I doubt whether that’s “the” question. For if we draw a line, where does that impulse come from? Not from “happenstance”? And be it internal happenstance…

Certainly not from will…because that would have to precede existence or consciousness.

What do YOU feel inside you?
What is it that drives your willing?

Nonsensical question. The will is what drives me.

Something “preceding existence” reeks of Sartre—it does not smell good.

The will precedes self-consciousness, yes (but itself is conscious).

The impulse comes from will, is will. The will to power works in cycles.

The will draws the line. When the will to sensuous power achieves its goal, its ideal, it by that very fact transcends it.

“Whatever I create, and however much I love it,—soon must I be adverse to it, and to my love: so willeth my will.”

Thus spake Life to Zarathustra.

Yes.

And what you say reeks of Nietzsche and your reactions to both as “good” and “not good” are moralistic if not plain subjective.

Existence is not my creation, it is my interpretation of what I find myself in.
I am a manifestation of it.

My will is not my creation. It is, as well, a manifestation of the world; a reaction to it.

I will what the world is void of and the void makes my willing necessary.
I will what I do not posses.

How do you figure?
You believe in a Deus, that there is one universal consciousness and we but manifestations of it?

The “impulse” becomes an impulse once conscious and it cannot be called one before that.

The ideal is never reached. It can never be reached or else it would not be ideal.

Because it is never perfect.

It’s not slave-moralistic, because I meant “good” as opposed to “bad”, not to “evil”, of course.

Subjective, yes—I affirm that.

Interpretation is will to power, and willing is creating.

Your will is a part of the world, which is will.

The will to power is a vindication of God, yes (though a wholly un-Christian God).

A universal consciousness, but fragmented; whenever it reaches oneness, it’s for that reason fragmented again.

It’s conscious even in quanta.

Nonsense. It’s an ideal before it’s reached. Of course, you can argue that the reality will never match the idea; but that’s precisely why the latter’s transcended once the corresponding reality is reached.

Or because it’s too perfect.

And what do you think is the difference other than that one is based on a religious dogma that assumes that goodness is related to an external source?

Good.

Then “interpretation” can be in error and is not the same as reality.

I interpret the world as existing independently from me, as having existed before my birth and that it will continue doing so after my death, and my will, as a product of this world, is my focus upon an ideal which I am not nor do I possess.

I have a will because I am conscious of what I lack and so I focus my energies towards it…as an ideal.
Before I was alive, animate, conscious, I had no will.

My will is my consciousness focused upon a goal.

Inanimate objects have no will.
They are will-less and so easily manipulated.
Only life has a will, because life is the focus of energies through detachment from the world.

Then you have not killed God but only usurped Him with another idol.

There is no universal consciuosness, except in the imagination of desperate nihilists trying to avoid the responsibilities of self. Consciousness is the product of multiplicity and so is, by definition, fragmented.

Without selection, distinction, multiplicity there is no life and where there is no life there is no consciousness…as a reaction to the unconsciousness of the universe.
Without consciuosness there is no will. If there were then the will implies an ultimate goal, a universal purpose, a meaning, outside man’s creation and so makes of man a slave…again. This time to a new ideal.

This is your religion…not mine.

This is ridiculous.

An ideal exists as an ambiguity, with no real substance, in the human mind. The mind is not an ideal and so its products are not ideals.
An ideal is an absolute.

All there are are competing ideals, based on particular psychological drives with different motives.

God, for example, is a Christian ideal with no reality. It is possible only because it remains ambiguous and with no real definitions.

Perfection would require no such games or to create anything.

That the “good” of the one is the “bad” (or “evil”) of the other.

But reality itself is interpretation (will to power).

But then, before you were alive, animate, conscious, “you” did not exist.

So-called “inanimate objects” consist of quanta of force. This force is the outward manifestation of an inner will—the will to power.

We have killed the moral God, i.e., the slave-moral God (who was supposedly good as opposed to “evil”). The God vindicated by the will to power doctrine is the “Devil” of slave morality.

Yes, but that ideal is transcended in the short period in which it’s consummated. It’s a circle, there is no end.

Nietzsche didn’t mean to make man absolutely free, to subject the universe to man’s creativity. Thus Spake Zarathustra tells the story of the failed thought-experiment to do so. The next book he wrote was Beyond Good and Evil;

The complementary man “is the first who consciously creates values on the basis of the understanding of the will to power as the fundamental phenomenon.” [Leo Strauss, ‘Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil’.] Just what those values are Strauss is going to make clear—they are in no way arbitrary, they are not invented or created in order to celebrate mere inventiveness. Such creativity for its own sake counts for less than nothing for Nietzsche, less than nothing because mere creativity is the modern way, the way of the actor, the way Nietzsche most opposes: Nietzsche contra Wagner. Understanding the will to power as the fundamental phenomenon generates values of a precise sort, natural values, naturalizing values. Insight into the fundamental fact [i.e., the will to power] gives birth to new highest values.
[Laurence Lampert, ‘Leo Strauss and Nietzsche’.]

It’s Nietzsche’s philosophy.

I meant “ideal” simply in the sense of something desirable envisioned in the future. If I want to buy a cake when I go to the supermarket this afternoon, is that cake (or the state in which I possess a cake) an ideal? As I said, I agree that the cake I buy will not match the image of the cake I had in my mind.

My last remark, “that’s precisely why the latter’s transcended once the corresponding reality is reached”, was a bit cynical, and certainly does not apply in all cases. But once I possess a cake, I will no longer want to buy a cake. To the contrary: when I have my cake, I will want to eat it. And as you can imagine, this is a circle: when I’ve eaten my cake, I will want to obtain a cake again.

It would require destruction.

Reality is what is being interpreted.
Belief, faith, opinion, judgment,a abstraction is the interpretation of it.

If you equate interpretation with reality then you are a solipsist.

I can interpret the reality any way i want or can, and call it the world, but reality is unaffected by my judgments.
In fact superior/inferior is based on the quality of these interpretations and how one can cope with them.

Not as a cohesive unity.
The world did.

Otherwise not only do we exists within our own reality but one reality has nothing to do with any other and so are equally valid.

This is your way of substituting the soul with soemthing else.
You assume there is a will “inside” these quanta.
Therefore you asume a meaning and purpose beneath all activity. Therefore you have only denied God and replaced Him with a new Will outside your control.

In what was are you a follower of Nietzsche?

and you’ve only killed morality, as the world of God…God, still lives for you, as a Will inside these quanta…although what “inside” means when it isn’t in reference to an organism of exclusion, I cannot imagine.

It’s submission to a p[articular, hypothetical, word of God, you deny, although you retain a belief in His will.
You don’t have to follow rules because you are a manifestation of God and so not really independent or real.
The absolute lives.

Why would a God will anything if He is already perfect?
If He wills power then He lacks it…therefore He is not omnipotent and not perfect.

Then it is not ideal.
What does the ideal transcend to?

Are you purporting to know what Nietzsche did or did not mean?
Absolute freedom is an ideal, precisely because it is unattainable and so always activity.

If one, in accordance to yuor views, achieves freedom, the ideal, then what would he transcend to and why?

Man creates values in accordance to necessity.
I value what I do not have. I do not value what I have an abundance of.
I value in reference to an ideal.

“Higher” values…because then what does one transcend them to if they are the “highest”?

One has superior values in relation to another.
A value judgment.
Values are inherited as a surrender to others, or created as an opposition to others - as a mark of distinction.

I repeat…this is your faith and you present yourself as the high priest of it, in reference to an idol that has substituted God.

The precise thing to say is: This is YOUR interpretation of His philosophy.

Ideal for whom and in relation to what?

You buy the cake, to use your metaphor, in reference to a cake you’ve seen on T.V. or in a picture or how you imagined it should be in a perfect world where icing doesn’t melt and ovens bake cakes perfectly.

The cake need not be ideal to be eaten.
This is why we need to eat again.

If it were ideal it would satiate our need for cakes or food.
The ideal would have been reached. No transcendence required.

Food is never overcome because it is never perfect and we are never fulfilled.
We are imperfect feeding on the imperfect…finally resulting in fragmentation where we are eaten.
The “ideal” exists only as a metaphor in our mind. Our expectations always disappointed and so we always active always moving towards the ideal…Will to power.

Why would the perfect want to destroy perfection, unless it was dissatisfied with it and so it was not as perfect as imagined?
We destroy so as to create and we create because we lack…precisely because we are imperfect and everything we create is imperfect.

If perfection were attained no action would be required.

And I say it’s also the interpreting.

Why? In my interpretation, not just my interpretation exists.

Yes, can (or can want). It’s determined by your power.

I repeat, you’re a part of reality—and I say reality consists entirely of such “judgments” (interpretations, wills to power).

It’s based on power—interpretative and coping power (and is not coping an interpreting? a digesting?).

Yes, and I say the world has will, is will.

Yes, a vindication of the soul, excellent.

I’m part of that will. I’m not deluded into thinking I’m a God.

Come again?

He is will. And there’s no reason for the will to exist; it just does.

The ideal does not transcend, it is transcended.

I already told you what I meant by “ideal”.

I base my “knowledge” on his communications.

I never said one achieved freedom (nor did I identify that with the ideal; your ideal, perhaps, but not mine).

If one would achieve freedom, I think he would then transcend into someone wanting unfreedom.

And your ideal is determined by your reality.

To new highest values. Both the highpoint of a mountain parabola and the lowpoint of a vale parabola are called “summits” or “tops”.

“Midnight is also midday.”
-Zarathustra

Fair enough.

Nonsense. I’ve had cakes before.

No, I never envisioned it that way.

Is imperfection not ideal?

Or too perfect, as I said.

Unless action (and imperfection) were ideal, or considered to be so.

An interpretation is real because it is the product of a mind evolving in reality trying to survive within it and make sense of it.

No, because you can be powerful enough to be humored, if you think you are immortal or a descendant of gods, but this does not make it so.
Power is not forcing your delusions be real, it is forcing them upon others.

True power is seeing clearly and using this clarity to control what you can, avoid what you cannot and become indifferent to both.

Yes, but I, not the small percentage of living organism, constitute all of reality.
The sun doesn’t care about my judgments of it.
I can call the sun a god, and alleviate my fear of it, or I can call it energy and make use of it.
My judgment is only relevant to me, not to the world.
It becomes relevant to another conscious being when my judgment affects it, in some way.

Do I care about the poor judgment that makes one man burn himself alive? No, but if it makes him crash an airplane into the building i work at, it becomes relevant to me.

Will to power is only relevant within conscious relationships, precisely because only conscious organisms have a will.

And power, tolerance, indifference is the accurate usage and focus of will, by correctly interpreting the world around you.

If my judgment leads me to believe that chanting a few words and casting a spell, or praying to a God, can elimiante all opposition, then i will fail. If it accurately judges the forces of nature and results in me inventing a weapon, then I will succeed.

I cannot interpret someone out of existence, but I can interpret nature and find a way to use it to eliminate someone.

This is your religion.

You’ve only changed God for the nature and you asume that it has a goal.

You’ve changed masters.
Are you really a Nietzsche follower?

Twilight of the idols?
You’ve just changed idols.

Do you even realize why the wanderer walks alone outside the walls?

Then you seek vindication without. You seek a more powerful master and no independence at all.

No, you think your will is a universal will and so you are part of god.
Power through a proxy.

In what was are you a not follower of Nietzsche?

There you go…Christianity in a nutshell.
God is Love and there is no reason for love to exist; it just does.
But love has a reason to exist…it exists to facilitate survival…just as the will does.
Nothing mystical.

Then you wish to transcend your own will towards what?
No will?

Just as Christians base their own on revelation.

Are you truly convinced you understood his message.
From what I understood, the ones he was talking to were the ones that would do him violence, surpass him.

The rest, if I am not mistaken, he considered the ones that would misunderstand him and think themselves the ones he was referring to; the ones that would exchange one idol for another.

Then your ideal is what…to remain dependent?

Really? Why is that?

Would you choose to be a slave, once you’ve become a master?
Would you choose to be a worm, once you became a human being?

Why would someone who is free want anything? Isn’t this a contradiction?
When I want I am not free of want therefore I am not free.

Reality remains unaffected by my ideal. My ideal is what I wish to change reality into and so make it MY reality.

You quote as if from scripture.
How are you unchristian?
you are not the anti-Christ…you merely replace Christ with the anti-Christ as your preferred leader.
How have you understood anything?
Did not Christians go agaisnt Christ’s teachings when they followed Paul’s Church?
Did they not just replace the priests and the dogma, the middle-men, they submitted to and considered messengers of God?

The metaphor of God’s death is a coming of age one.
You’ve replaced parents and so you remain the one beneath the wanderer’s shadow.
No sunlight for you…out of Plato’s cave and under the sheltering umbrella of a master.

The sun, like Sartre’s freedom, is a terrifying thing.

Yes, and so all cakes are in comparison to that…your own experiences and your own interpretations.
None of them were ideal…They were only better or worse than others.

Then what ideal are you referring to…the Platonic idea; Spinoza’s Deus?

No, imperfection is the absence of the ideal.
How is the perfect a tautology with imperfection?

How does something exceed perfection when the very concept implies an imagined pinnacle?
Like saying…beyond infinity.
If you are to indulge in word games then, it says something about your motives.
Perhaps it isn’t clarity you seek but the maintenance of your non-existent ideals, by using absurdity, semantics and word-play.

[/quote]
Yes, that would be one way to get around it.
Like reinterpreting ugliness as beauty to get around it’s verdict.
For me an action, a creation, a movement exposes lack and lack is not perfection.

I act because I need and my need is not my perfection it is my imperfection seeking fulfillment and so I am driven to act because I am imperfect and I suffer because of it.

My Will to Power is my will towards what I lack and only have in degree in comparison to another.
I posses will as a way of directing myself towards what I feel absent in me.
I sense my own imperfection and my death proves it.