I am not sure what the difference is between the men and their function?
He can affirm it if he views them as necessary.
I think it’s all connected to the master/slave dialectic; you can’t have one without the other; everything works in a tension.
Indeed it would I think, and it is summed up with amor fati -
“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it.”
“I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.”
I’m not claiming anything about some kind of bubbly kumbaya, flowery fluff, or what have you - I agree in that isn’t at all what Nietzsche has in mind with regard to love. Nevertheless, I think he had a profound conception of love, and I don’t think his notion of amor fati can be understood apart from it. amor fati = love of fate - the love part is indispensable.
His views on Christianity are complicated (he has reverence for Jesus, that is, the man himself, but despises what followed in his wake (Christianity)).
I believe Nietzsche had profound metaphysical views, but what I’m saying is that he didn’t posit ER as truth. ER is a thought experiment which could be true, and if true, would one still affirm one’s life? One should perhaps even assume it to be true, and then pose the question. This is the test, which serves many a purpose (e.g., does one harbor resentment? for one cannot will ER if one harbors resentment.) It also ties into the Moment, as discussed above, and also - you guessed it - love.
I disagree about the supposed project of breeding a noble caste - isn’t that more or less that shameful misconception the Nazis made use of? Perhaps you could shed a little light on what you mean here? Nietzsche criticized society and politics of his time, sure, but his primary concern throughout his writings squares directly on the individual, and his most important ideas concern, yes, the individual.
As far as the moment being a romantic idea, I’ll certainly beg to differ here as well - “the moment” is an ancient idea. In Western philosophy, Plato discusses “the moment” at length in his dialogue Parmenides, and in the East, the notion is central to both Buddhist and Vedic/Hindu philosophies, particularly in regard to enlightenment.
amor fati,
— I agree. Somewhere in the corpus (Ecce Homo I believe) he says that whatever may befall a man, be it called good fortune or bad, in the end everything must turn out for his best. I understand this as an affirmation of necessity; as Goethe’s Mephisto says, “Joy needs woe, woe requires joy” - both Goethe and Nietzsche believed in the necessity of polarity in all things, and this is how they positively affirm even those things we find most loathsome and wretched in existence. They are necessary to the Whole, and one antipode always presupposes its opposing partner - we cannot have one without the other.
O- Zarathustra does not affirm the adder’s bite because it is rational. Sure, suffering exist, and it is necessary for the existence of it’s opposite, but the reason Nietzsche proposes to affirm suffering is because he wishes to liberate himself from the spirit of revenge. If the adder’s bite was a positive thing, then he is not someone who got bitten but someone who wanted to be bitten, and if you wanted that, how could you ever feel the need to avenge yourself on the agent of a service?
— I believe they understood that insofar as one says yes to Life, one says yes to it all, even privation and suffering; and “as deeply as one looks into life, so also into suffering.” (Zarathustra)
O- But to see the suffering, to see that the adder’s bite is poisonuous, makes him vulnerable to the spirit of revenge. For this reason you need the Child to forget, to see the surface rather than it’s depth, to attempt, really, a falsification of life. Life requires a few lies. There is nothing wrong with that, Nietzsche would say. But if that is so, then what is wrong with any other crutch? Hey, whatever floats your boat. Sure, the Superman myth may be better than the Church’s, but one devalues man while the other devalues the world.
— Where does Nietzsche claim responsibility for God’s death?
O- His madman says “we killed”, not “you killed”.
— But the camel represents the superhuman strength required to stand so firmly on one’s own two feet. Moreover, if you recall, the camel runs off into the desert, where in “the loneliest desert the second metamorphosis occurs”. The camel runs into the desert away from the herd, no?
O- I agree, but it runs off into the desert just prior to it’s metamorphosis. Initially the camel is a beast of burden. I agree with your characterization of high men as camels. The problem is that despising the rabble, the herd might itself represent a new herd. When they gather around Zarathustra’s cave, the display herdic tendencies. They look for a shepherd around which to gather. Nietzsche did not wants merelly disciples who followed him, but who followed themselves. For this reason he argued that a student serves his master badly if he always remains a student, a disciple, a camel basically.
— It is also innocence, laughter, forgetfulness - why is the latter, forgetfulness, important? See, for instance, Genealogy of Morals, first essay, section 11:
Nietzsche wrote:
To be incapable of taking one’s enemies, one’s accidents, even one’s misdeeds seriously for very long—that is the sign of strong, full natures in whom there is an excess of the power to form, to mold, to recuperate and to forget […] Such a man shakes off with a single shrug many a vermin that eat deep into others; here alone genuine “love of one’s enemies” is possible, supposing it to be possible at all on earth.
O- I agree that forgetfulness is paramount, but he said it best: “incapable”- what is that but a weakness? Not taking one’s enemies, accidents and misdeeds seriously for long is a risk, is to make one self vulnerable. Sure, it might be taken out of a surplus of strenght, but also from an child-like vulnerability.
The Nazis twisted it. Nietzsche wasn’t a fan of nationalism, anti-Semitism, and resentment - all three of which the Nazis embody, (however, I believe N did possess resentment for some). Plus, the Nazi’s belief in superiority lies in eugenics, Nietzsche’s is based in power quanta, the ability to create, transfigure, and mould into form. The fomer is an extremely lazy way to claim superiority, the latter is done honestly and through years of self-discipline.
I agree that Nietzsche focussed initially on the individual, but as the self-overcoming project became advanced for those engaged in it, it was supposed to form a ‘class consciousness’, to use a Marxist term.
In regards to the “the moment”, if it is similar to buddhist/Hindu philosophies, how does that fit in with his castigation of them in regards to “annihilating the will”?
Fent, is it not rather the opposite, namely that you had to have automatically twisted the Nazis, in order to make them conventionally into one of the mathematically perfect axes of evil? A clearly defined and permanently available reference yardstick of badness for all to see and “castigate”?
Perhaps some would want to say that it is tradition, and the Jewish way, to heap all the sins of the world onto the sacrificial scape-goat, who is then beaten and driven into the outer Desert, where its haunting bleatings will be heard by nobody. But I would by all means want to give a preliminary accounting to myself, whether or not I should have any personal reason to join in with that particular (and it is indeed very particular!) folklore tradition!
One cannot dispense with hypothetical questions: “Supposing there were no deathcamps or war atrocities, and not a single person of any nationality died at the hands of the Nazis throughout the whole War, what then would be my objection to them as such, what then would I be able to set up to repel the intellect and to invite castigations? And why, furtheremore, should I?”
“Supposing that many people had died torturously in wartime camps and laboratories, but no Jew was ever harmed (as happened in Japan for instance, whose military experiments on prisoners, men, women and even newborn children, with their scale and “ambition” easily make the Nazi killer doctors pale into colloquial insignificance)- should that now excuse the entire project of inhumanity from being the centre of public blame? Yet the United States, the current paragon of virtue and morality on the World Arena, did not find it at all objectionable to appropriate the results and records from said Japanese experiments after the war for its own use, and afforded various protectorate agreements to those involved - because in this case, you see, no one spoke of “genocide”, and no Jew was harmed. We can be of varying opinion regarding the ethical or practical sides to this. Yet is not every single war, from the times of great Ghengis Khan to the present a largescale project of inhumanity? Does not the philosopher in me easily digest this simile, even as the public figure must balk at it in righteous self-denial?”
Given due consideration, those questions and others of kin will in time tend to reveal many uncomfortable inner facts. One comes to realize, perhaps, that the similarity or dissimilarity between the infamous Nazi ideologists and their philosophical quasi-contemporaries is ordinarily not at all a question of their respective personality, personal virtue - their goodness or badness as people; but rather it is the direct consequence of what behind-the-curtain intellectual-forming forces and VIP “golf clubs” were at work during those times around universities, concert and publishing houses, and other familiar venues. We may observe this same process as well during our times, when, as it happens, the same forces have elected to strategically shift the blame for the inevitable consequences of their own plan, in their inimitable folkloric way, onto the “hated” swastika.
It is a simple enough truth that nationalist ideology is not in itself absolutely abhorrent; nor is it perverted, twisted, distorted, or otherwise very bad. To begin with, we must grudgingly force ourselves to admit that in fact nothing about Fascism necessarily spells out the killing of innocents; and it’s a good question still whether the modern COVERT methods of promoting the speedy death of various undesirables (used by the states and other “public shepherds”) are not actually morally more corrupt than any overt (and publically avowed) programme of state sponsored eugenics (which means simply, good breeding - now a student may read F. Nietzsche’s constant references to the same with opened eyes). That this “Evil Nazism” is always our first (automatic) presupposition in every discourse, whenever the whole “Nazi question” comes up in reference to the activities of some philosopher or public man, is testament to the power of war propaganda. The invisible war, as now you may better see, never ceases.
-WL
I am wracking my brain trying to figure out the point of this exercise on genocide. I think it’s a properly directed concern with the idea that somehow many of us do not engage emotionally or intellectually with acts of genocide that are not directed against Jews by the Nazis or people who have embraced the Nazi ideology. The idea is that genocide has occurred across times and cultures, that inhumanity and atrocity is not necessarily culture-specific, and that there is much to be absolutley appalled by both historically and contemporaneously. I presume that this is not an effort to diminish the Nazi horror or to let the Nazi’s and their followers off the hook, but rather a kind of lament over the destruction of many other groups of people over the years across the world.
It is true that we westerners like to hold a mirror up to the Nazis as the poster children of evil and criminal, genocidal insanity to the exclusion of much that is just as bad or worse going on in the world right now, as it did in the past. I think maybe that’s because it’s easy to project out on the Nazi’s in order to deflect attention away from our own crimes and evils. It’s imprinted in our national psyche that way, and it’s constantly available and ready for projection and reflection. That cannot be said of the evils committed by other groups such as the Japanese or the genocidal factions in Africa and other nations. Even as I type this, some tribes are now being displaced in Brazil, and some factions are being killed off in other countries. Certainly American black ops and CIA activity has its place in these operations, and in keeping certain countries destabilized so that rightwing puppets can be kept in place for economic exloitation purposes. So, no, I would never underestimate the inhumanity that people are exhibiting across the world, including our own. I think about it often, and it disturbs me greatly. However, I would always want to be careful to make sure that I never find myself trying to minimize or mitigate any notions about the absolute heinousness and evil of the Nazis either. The key is to keep reflecting that mirror back on ourselves also and to find a way to connect with the deep humanity in all of us in order to heal the hates and divisions and find common ground on which to walk in peace.
Dear jonquil,
And how about smashing the illusionary moral hall of mirrors altogether? How now? One wonders, is it possible that you think this simple Nordic solution would have never occured to a trapped animal being deliberately driven to neurosis by cruel captors?
Given to understand again and again that it is not permitted, some, or perhaps even most, will continue to see the escape (e.g. through Nietzschean intimacy with power, sans moraline), yet dare it not.
What in particular is to be the fate of Fent in this respect? That’s what I want to find out, and if possible, to bear witness in the rude awakening of an immoralist. For you have to understand, for some among us, the general issue of warcrimes etc. in itself is of very little significance compared to the active potential of philosophical truth to prevail over doctrinal illusion in the personal life of one man. Let it even be secret, let it be for a long time obscure, misunderstood - all of that is acceptable and even desirable, so long as the taste for truth really does prevail over the much stronger taste for illusionism and social approval.
For, to speak with the wise, that is already an event of cosmological significance.
-WL
WL, a few points. Amor fati raised the issue of “evil” Nazism, I merely responded. I didn’t denounce the Nazis on moral terms, rather, on textual terms. The doctrines of Nazism and of Nietzsche don’t gel together too well. Nazism leads to basically an overinflated sense of self-importance to herd animals by arming them with guns and propaganda; see Twilight of the Idols - “what the Germans lack” - where he claims the obsession with the Reich has resulted in a stupefaction of Germans. Nietzsche’s is a self-transfiguration project involving overcoming obstacles in order to mould oneself into a desired form. He uses examples such as Goethe, Napoleon, and Wagner. It’s not the artworks themselves that has significance for Nietzsche, but the immense inner forming powers to be able to write novels, be a military commander, or musical composer. Whether performing medical experiments is an act of “positive freedom”, I am not so sure. I don’t see how these acts of war relate to self-transfiguration in the sense Nietzsche had in mind. Also, Nietzsche’s immoralism doesn’t mean “anything goes”. He ranks people according to the ability to overcome resistances and create form. The term “immoralism” is more of a pot shot at what has been called moral up to now, namely alturism, love thy neighbour etc.
Making sense in a clear, direct way is a high good when speaking from any perspective. Thus, deliberately obfuscating one’s language always sends blips on my bullshit detection radar, just as much as deliberately sharpening down one’s rhetoric to fine needle points in the interest of a crazed fanatical elitism.
When anyone starts talking about morality from a Nietzschean angle, I get very nervous. Amorality is not the answer to immorality or the atrocities of humans who have lost their humanity. Any philosopher or leader can be manipulated or exploited for an agenda, Nietzsche being the favorite amoralist du jour because his writings are so aphoristic and amenable to convenient neonazi soundbytes. Of course, if one considers the elitist stance to be one of linguistic pseudo-intellectualism, then we get more lengthy and abstruse monomaniacal pronouncements on the supposed wisdom of smashing moral halls of mirrors. The problem isn’t with morality, though. It’s with the way morality is directed outward on other people in order to smash them; and that is why any mirror must reflect both ways.
Thus, I think it’s more useful to call for an end to double standardism and selective morality for some but not for others. Just as PK Dick pointed out that “money is the official seal of sanity,” it could just as correctly be said that money is the official arbiter of morality. So if any of us wish to arbitrarily call for the breaking of all moral mirrors like any good Nietzschean iconoclast would, would we also wish to burn all the money as well? Not to do so would seem to be the height of hypocrisy or turning a blind eye to the real problems of fear and greed which overlay all moral systems in place in the world today.
I haven’t decided whether humans are hardwired for morality or not. But for the sake of argument, let’s say that we are. What do we do then with those people who are born without the moral gene so to speak? Do we just lie down like dogs because we are moral and allow them to rule us because they are amoral and will do anything to make money, succeed, and gain power over others? Here our morality hurts our chances for survival, and their amorality helps their chances. This is the insanity of devolution as evolution.
But if we are not programmed for morality, meaning that free will and intelligent flexibility are essential aspects of our nature, then wouldn’t sociopathy be the product of “nurture” and the fear of scarcity? If so, there would always be a very good human being somewhere inside that cold, hard carapace built up to protect the psyche from fear and abuse, a person who deeply wants to love and be loved, to connect with people on a human basis. In that case there is always the potential for healing.
Very good questions WL.
I have been critical of the Nazis over the years, but I have tried to be consistent and to keep in the forefront “the banality of evil”, the natural propensity for aggression specially in the name of asserting a prejudice, be it the “Master Race”, the “Chosen People” or in the name of a “Manifest Destinity”. That said, admiting that it is most natural, and that everyone does it, does not entail that one should bless it. Is it not written that “Man shall be overcome”?
Just one question. Did the japanese craft small furniture and appliances out of the skin of their prisioners?
It’s generally common knowledge that where it comes to imaginativeness, the Japanese are by far superior to the Germans, and- what shall we have to say? Perhaps also the Jews?
The vivid Eagle’s Eye view, the philosophical perspective sans moral blinders - that is our constant recurring subject, and not who is good and who is bad. On that last matter, I know of no better wisdom than what the happy Italian peasants used to say while weaving braids: “God is their judge.”
It is true, immoralism does not now mean that “anything goes”, or that self-destruction ought to be blessed. We formulate this immoralism even shorter: “Judge not”, and then apply this not where it’s easy and self-congratulating to do so, but where all the world will be against us if we said a word of it. That is a good test, you will agree, and a good example of an exercise in religious self-overcoming. Judge not - that means, refuse to lay blame. It certainly does not mean that one cannot punish, if it is one’s direct duty to punish a specific miscreant biomass that makes life unnecessarily difficult. Rather, it is the sanctioned, intellectualized blaming that must be worked against, the organ for it must be dissolved, for it is simultaneously the handle by which the puppetmaster runs the show. After all, is it not all merely a form of congratulating ourselves for being good, at the expense of “the evil”, which is the equivallent of making ourselves rich - in counterfeit money. And do our dear counterfeitors really think that when certain Christian saints advised their closest to see themselves in truth as the worst scumbags to walk the earth, and all others (regardless of who they are, even criminals) as the next best thing after God’s angels… do they truly think that it was all merely a piece of impractical grandfatherly advice?
Similarly, I see just what impelled Omar to write this post on revenge, and the hollowness any doctrine. We have to ask ourselves, you and I, why do we even hear at all about some obscure little Nietzsche, an almost-Nazi sister-loving syphylitic hack? Why all the advertisements and endorsements (Kaufmann etc.)? I was rather curious and have perhaps gotten to the bottom of this with my realization that, a little while ago, there was a certain group of influential intellectuals with “German” surnames, who thought that Nietzscheanism would be an excellent liberalizer and corroder of the innately present public morality. A natural morality and mentality, which had naturally by then become a nuisance to this group in the industrialization process, as part in their exalted plan. We can see that they were certainly right, in a manner of speaking, to administer Nietzsche in the West as a cultural poison, but the dosage was clearly miscalculated. As we see at the present, people are beginning instead to focus on the inner Nietzschean doctrine of intimacy with Power, and that makes our intellectual group extremely nervous. The poisoned public has ironically learned from the same Niezsche how to convalesce, and this, forgive me for saying out loud! Sets the unworthy onto the actual path to genuine religious awakening!
To see oneself as the worst of all… What is in that saintly antidote? It is exotic. The microscopic structure of the suggestion is very unusual, to the point that the majority will always reject it as artificial, fake. And yet, is it not precisely by means of this that we have chances and attempts, trials and tribulations, and finally, victory - in the task of smashing the hall of moral mirrors?
On the pages of Nietzsche’s books there can be found striking depictions of just how the deeply embedded will to truth had eventually subverted and destroyed Christianity, and how this was all quite inevitable… One way to read it is the ordinary schoolboy fashion: “Here Herr Nietzsche is declaring that Christianity is outdated, outmoded, over. How right he is!” Perhaps so. But there is another way to read: Herr Nietzsche percieves the approaching triumph of the true pagan core over the corrupt periphery of Christendom. The truth is a strange thing, embed but a miniscule amount of it into any filthy matter, and in time the whole thing is transfigured, as sweet flowers blossom from out of mountains of impure manure.
-WL
^ ‘Resist not evil!’, as the Gospels say. A snippet from The Brothers Karamazov also comes to mind:
“There is only one salvation for you: take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all. Whereas by shifting your own laziness and powerlessness onto others, you will end by sharing in Satan’s pride and murmuring against God.”
But while on one hand we aim to shatter this hall of moral mirrors, on the other hand it seems quite necessary for a man to transfigure himself and his worldview in such a way, that the world itself must for him become a mirror, one great big cosmic reflection in which he sees himself in everyone and everything, even in what to him is questionable, objectionable, most wretched, terrible, and depraved in existence.
I’m on the run now, but I should have more to say later.
O- very interesting quote from the Brothers. The only question now is whether one can, after realizing that he should not judge, even ask: “What is Noble”?
I think the idea here is to move outside the bounds of onesided religious zealotry. To those of us who want to use Nietzsche as a tool towards shining a mirror outwards on the depraved or herd masses, this serves as a cautionary metaphor by evoking the image of Christ telling us to turn that mirror on themselves first. And to those of us who wish to make value judgments on various perpetrators of atrocities and war crimes in some sort of bizarre effort to mitigate against the Nazis, I would repeat that this can be viewed as a total corruption both of Nietzsche and of human thought. While it’s always good to shine a light on the flawed and criminal actions and mistakes of all humans, it is generally best to make it clear that one also has shed that light on one’s own culture, past and present, with a view towards honesty and reflection. Christ spoke to this as well: look to the beam in your own eye before worrying about the mote in the other’s.
Fact: One cannot have the rye bun and eat it too.
Fact: Individual religious accomplishments are socially disruptive in the highest degree.
And how else would we expect it to manifest, except as transgression? Life by the venerable social default is the antithesis of religious attainment.
A clear Yes and clear No, that is noble, and is not at all related to corrupt moral judgementalism. The moralizers would coerce themselves and the world to be good (as defined, of course, by the puppet-master, and not without considerable cunning) but the noble Yes or the noble No often involves no self-coercion, it needs reference no authority, it is nature, simplicity, and the unspoken, un-advertized, unchanging duty. To cease judging (to cease it correctly) and cease giving existence the “evil eye” - do you want to breathe your faith into my words? As here, against every grammatical law, breaking the mirrors will not make the practical distinctions impossible, but on the contrary, those distinctions begin to gain more and more strength in the new, natural contrast afforded by the direct apperception of things and their relations, without parasitic intermediary.
Who is to say, is it possible that a person or two among those reading here idly may even STOP; think; and subsequently “find God” in embryo, to their own great surprise, simply by losing, once and for all, the shared debilitations of that venerable default, by forgetting that idolatrous so-called “humanity”, which is everywhere praised to no end by moralizing automatons?
-WL
jonquil,
— I think the idea here is to move outside the bounds of onesided religious zealotry. To those of us who want to use Nietzsche as a tool towards shining a mirror outwards on the depraved or herd masses, this serves as a cautionary metaphor by evoking the image of Christ telling us to turn that mirror on themselves first. And to those of us who wish to make value judgments on various perpetrators of atrocities and war crimes in some sort of bizarre effort to mitigate against the Nazis, I would repeat that this can be viewed as a total corruption both of Nietzsche and of human thought. While it’s always good to shine a light on the flawed and criminal actions and mistakes of all humans, it is generally best to make it clear that one also has shed that light on one’s own culture, past and present, with a view towards honesty and reflection. Christ spoke to this as well: look to the beam in your own eye before worrying about the mote in the other’s.
O- I wonder if it was Nietzsche’s idea to “move outside the bounds of onesided religious zealotry” when he wrote “The Anti-Christ”. I think that for him it all depended on the quality of the “side”. Was he not zealous for the Superman? Was it not one sided, for I do not believe that, thinking that man is something to be overcome, that Nietzsche affirmed all sides of humanity.
To judge, to hoist valuations, is the most natural of things. It is imbeded in our flesh and bone in our distinctions between pain and pleasure and our natural disposition for homeostasis.
All I am saying is that the exortation “Do not judge” is itself a product of a Judgment. The difference is as simple as a capitalization. The prohibition is not against Judgment, true Judgment, or Judgment by God, but against “judgment” originated in flawed man. Paul makes the same refined point about revenge. It is not that Revenge is bad but that it is for God to Avenge, to exact Revenge, for He who is without sin, or on whom no one can exact revenge, to procure Revenge against Himself.
I would not deny the fact that “One cannot have the rye bun and eat it too.” Use cake, or ice cream for the same effect. But I do deny the pseudo fact that “Individual religious accomplishments are socially disruptive in the highest degree.” because they are not. Society is not a whole. It is a conglomerate of competing wills. accomplished religious individuals have always been only partially socially disruptive. This is the reason that many, if not all of them, gain a following and that they are even recorded in history, none of which would be possible without the affirmation from a part of society. The existence of religious attainment, in those societies that see the emergence of a religiously accomplished individual, mark such possibility of the saint, as it is even today, a venerable social default class or type. His existence bring the poly a level of control. He brings them “good tidings”. That isn’t disruptive, but comforting to society.
A clear, perhaps even “Sacred Yes” and No are the source of morality, for what is moral is what is honored and this can only exists through those Yes and No algorhytims. If you want to get rid of moral judgments then what you do is that you confuse what gains a “Yes” and what deserves a “No”, to make nothing appear “clear”. Of course, Nietzsche alludes to nature, just as you would too, but nature is a mask of prejudice, of our interest. Those moralizers of the past did not create moralities, but discovered what is moral. Their dictates were in accordance with Nature or that which stood behing nature, or Creation.
Nietzsche never moved outside the bounds of religious zealotry once he declared that god is dead. Jung has written most insightfully to this. What Nietzsche did was take on the archetype of the wise old man, personified in his Zarathustra. All of his works from then on use the language of that archetype.
Whenever I hear someone preaching morality from a “humane” angle, it only takes a few probing questions to unleash their simmering hatred lying just beneath.