Who You Are: The Camel, The Lion, and The Child

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche outlines three “metamorphoses of the spirit”; how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and finally the lion became a child. Let’s think of these as the three stages of an individual’s philosophical development. —And notice these creatures amongst us.

In the comments that follow, I promise very little fidelity to Nietzsche’s original idea—because the passage from which his comments can be gathered is vague and sparsely populated. The passage that I’m referring to, however, provides a workable outline. —And I plan to fill it with colour. If you find that the resulting picture is not even coloured within the lines, it’s because not even that is a rule I’m concerned to follow.

My intention is to caricature the types of qualities that we all exhibit as participants at ILP. Each quality is a function of what stage an individual is at, in their philosophical development (their ‘spirit’). However, let’s agree that a progression from one stage to another is not a departure, but a development. Each stage has some characteristic qualities, but we all have them to some degree within us. So, I consider someone to be at a certain stage when a particular quality is disproportional to the whole.

The spirit becomes a camel:

The kind of poster who represents the camel is the kind who kneels down and takes upon himself some massive load from the whole history of philosophy, carrying as much text inside himself as he can. Camels are beasts of burden, and the burden is always someone else’s—some historical figure. If you cannot buy the text in paperback or hardcover, chances are that the camel-type of poster is not going to carry it. And of course, the direction a camel takes is always decided by the kind of load he has. Camels are strong, and probably carry a lot. So, this type of poster has a wide range of knowledge to draw from, and repeat. However, a well-burdened camel is always a tired and frustrated creature. Also, camels spit and chortle, chew and regurgitate, and spit again. And this type of poster usually offers nothing more than a spit and a chortle when they write—being too tired for anything else, except perhaps to drop a name. What you’re likely to hear from a camel is a tired and frustrated, “this idea is good” or “…stupid”—but not much more. And don’t leave it to the camel to decide what to say—again, that’s decided by the load they carry (their master’s burden).

Somewhere in the lonliness of the desert a metamorphoses occurs, and the camel becomes a lion.

As Nietzsche says, “the lion wants to capture freedom and be the lord of its own desert”.

It’s clear that nobody can become a lion who still chews and regurgitates the will of the master who they carry on their back. The lion is freedom. For Nietzsche, the lion is capable of clearing for itself the freedom to create (values, ideas, --whatever). This type of poster is willing to show his teeth and roar against some historical figure or idea. But the lion does this in a way unlike the camel, who can disagree with some idea only when he also carries some other idea on his back. The lion is rebellious, it wants to think for itself—and only knows how to do this by warding off others. You might hear a mighty defensive roar from this type of poster, when some idea approaches too closely—but you will hear little else from the lion’s own voice.

Zarathustra is the child (Prologue 2). There is some connection between the creation of values and the child. When you think about it, a child is capable of imbuing life into lifeless objects. Creating the rules of a game they didn’t themselves need to be taught. Seeing and noticing only the world itself, before being taught to read and burdened like a camel. Of course, none of this is literal. What characterizes the child isn’t the total absence of the history of philosophy, but the ability to look on and use the history of philosophy like earthy material for it’s own creation. After all, each of the progressions (metamorphoses) is not a departure, but a development. Someone at this, highest, stage of their development will probably be saying something highly original. And in response, you will likely see the camel spitting, and the lion roaring.

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Okay, how does the camel, the lion and the child encompass a philosophically rational approach to virtuous human behavior?

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What?

How do tires encompass a philosophically rational approach to wherever you’re driving?

These categories are just how you get there.

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I’m with you as far as your outlines of the archetypes go, but I want to say that I believe this is a circular progression rather than something that happens from start to finish. One metamorphoses from camel (actually I believe it starts with child, but that’s neither her nor there) to lion to child and back to camel again ad infinitum. Each new time one goes round the circle and comes back, he carries with him some of the traits of the lion/child back into the camel and then into the lion and child and so on… and on and on and on. No one (or maybe very few) ever become a child “Once and For All!”. Eventually that freedom leads to greater challenges and one has to carry greater burdens again, but each go round the Camel gets stronger (and the Lion, and the Child). At least that’s how I’ve experienced my own life journey. I can’t speak for anyone else.

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I have no objection to thinking of these as points along an on-going cycle. I like that idea. What I do want to emphasize, though, is that some of these qualities are pronounced and predominate continually in the character of some posters. Perhaps, for some people, the wheel just turns slower—maybe.

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Care to list em out as you see it ?

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Not particularly.

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Or maybe some sort of obstruction gets jammed in the spoke, so to speak.

p.s. - If you read this as a remark with spitting, just add some p’s to the s words. If roaring, read it as though it with a growly voice. But don’t knock yourself out too much thinking about it. :wink:

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I think that I came into full camel-hood after having attempted, with the self-image of a Lion on the verge of child, to establish new values but failed. I came to realize recently that I had not carried enough of what is mine to carry. But the strange thing is that these values actually bring out child- and lionlike tendencies in my daily life. Maybe I have transcended the trinity, by realizing that the load of the camel is the lions will and the consciousness of the child.

Whoever, in reality, can truly shed the burdens of his heart and mind? I can only affirm them, and act as if they are not burdens but simple ground of existence - the substance of my consciousness.

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So, you can be a camel, then a lion, then a child and come to completely conflicting and contradictory convictions regarding what constitutes virtuous behavior out in the world? How then is this philosophical trajectory deemed “progressive”?

If the intellectual “development” does not enable you to know what in fact constitutes virtuous behavior why explore or invest in it at all?

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Pardon eh moi?

Whether you are a camel, lion, or child says nothing about what you think—what ideas you have. It says nothing about what ideas you have anymore than your tires tell you where you’re going. You might even think similar general things from one progression to another.

We’re speaking into different channels on different frequencies. I don’t copy you.

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If lions and camels have the tendency to mistake the child for a fool, which archetypes have the greatest tendency to mistake the fool for a child?

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Zarawashisname was always in danger of turning into a hermit or tramp, if he wasn’t one already, living in the mountains alone with his still or whatever he used to keep things chippa.
Witt was a flugel-bird, they say, a wanderer, an easy target. I roam the alleyways around the university buildings on wind-swept sunday afternoons, sometimes wandering up the steps and knocking to no reply. I rummage in their bins.

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Zarathustra talked to his animals, which were all metaphors for certain types of people. He lived in the mountains, and worked in the valleys—but this is also a metaphor the heights and depths of knowledge. However, he did not rummage through anyone’s trash.

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Well, I don’t know about any other dragons but the dragon within me also says “I WILL” - otherwise why bother being one? It’s quite easy to say “Thou shalt” but the one who says “I will” is autonomous and determines his own actions and the child can be like that too. But perhaps you’re correct in that we transform into the child lastly, or develop that strong aspect of ourselves as the ‘true’ child may be freer than all three, including the lion. It is not an easy thing to become as free, playful, trusting and wonder-filled as the child…and I think it has the greatest advantage.

The child, the human child, unfortunately, at times is born right into the camel that carries the burdens in the desert.

We all have a bit of all three in us, some more predominant than others and despite what I say above, I don’t personally feel that we are to give up any of them. They all suit our purposes and growth/becoming…we flow in and out of all three at different times. Like one who has 3 multiple personalities, we have to simply ‘merge’ and incorporate them all to make the strongest potential possible for what is human. Why rid ourselves of them as they are all part of the same process and serve us at different times. I see them all as swimming together within the same “waters”… :laughing: or perhaps I ought to say taking turns drinking together from the same water hole in the desert.

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One more random point.

To me the child is the one who rises beyond Good and Evil (i.e. Dualism and Idealism)

The very idea of a camel transforming into a lion and then into a child is of no concern for the child. The “thou shalts” “I wills” and “burdens” are of no concern to the child. He does not take seriously what the philosopher-camel formerly took seriously. He is free of the burdens of fantasies that he once took for realities. He has overcome nihilism. He (paraphrase) “concerns himself with only things that do not trouble him”. At the height of the childs maturity, he is a Jesus, a Buddha, an Echhart, and apperantly a Nietzsche once Nietzsche had transformed his decedent self into the anti-thesis of a decedent. He has found his centre, moved beyond the vicious circle of the Dionysian/Apollonian carnal/rational Self into a self freed of its self. In that sense, the Child is at the end of the metamorphosis of the spirit. One begins life as a child and going through the vicious circle returns to a child transformed.

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Feel free to invent another archetype.

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…maybe the earth mother, the messiah and the destroyer…is a clown an archtype?

…but how about on the positive side the serpent, who can symbolize stealth, knowledge/wisdom, healing, union and creation; and, then there’s the eagle who with his wings is able to rise above it all - to soar - and with his eagle eyes, enjoys the great panoramic view, is able to take it ALL in and sees everything clearer than the rest of us because he does rise and flys above it all, able to distinguish the meaningless from the meaningful, and to interpret what is below in relation to what is above.

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What about a Canada goose instead? …They squawk a lot—which I think is fitting for the type of poster who is so concerned with objectivity, as per the metaphor.

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So, you are saying you can develop and make progress in your thinking [your philosophical skills?] yet still behave in a clearly undeveloped and/or backward manner?

From my perspective, a tire is not the same thing as a driver. If a driver develops and progresses from a camel to a lion to a child she will make certain her car [with its tires] avoids accidents and obstacles and unnecessary detours.

In other words, as long as the progress can be clearly measured, thinking skills can evolve. But some things in life will always be just a matter of opinion and it doesn’t matter how much [technically] your reasoning capacities improve. So, the freer more creative [and original] thinker is still forced to acknowledge [and to live with] the limitations of human cognition.