Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
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Part Two, The Free Spirit
Lia wrote: "I don't know, Roger. I feel like what we have now -- capitalism, unlivable minimum wage, military conscription, factory farm, using money to make poor people in poor countries "consent" to deal wit..."Non sequitur. Other things being awful has no bearing on whether or not we should be horrified at the idea that slavery enhances the human condition.
The point is that we continue to do it but call it something different. (At least, the slavery Nietzsche was referring to was the Greco-Roman kind of slavery, which was probably a lot less horrifying compared to modern slavery, and a lot more comparable to the the social hierarchy we have today.) Judging by the way Nietzsche talks about other culture that are not pro-egalitarian, it's probably fair to say that HE thinks a "free-thinker" should not be horrified by it.
Roger wrote: "Lia wrote: "I don't know, Roger. I feel like what we have now -- capitalism, unlivable minimum wage, military conscription, factory farm, using money to make poor people in poor countries "consent"..."Roger, even if the horror of slavery is what enhances the human condition, boom, QED.
Knowing the difference between freedom and slavery, or not knowing the difference- which would enhance your humanity?
Roger wrote: "So Nietzsche says that "slavery . . . serves . . . to enhance the species 'humanity.'” Should we not be horrified by this?"The way I read this is that virtually everything that the more powerful does to the less powerful will be justified, in some way, by the powerful. Even slavery can be justified in this way: some cook up asinine theories of racial purity. Some point to a line in scripture or a foundational legal text. Some say that slavery is a natural state (Aristotle.)
I think Nietzsche is saying that these beliefs are what "humanity" is based on, and to some extent it's true. People form communities based on shared systems of beliefs, and others form other communities based on other beliefs, and within their individual communities these beliefs "enhance" humanity. Whether these beliefs are true is irrelevant, especially when the security of the community is at stake.
Xan Shadowflutter wrote: "So evil is as effective as good is in enhancing humanity? That is possible only if there is no morality. Right? "Good and evil are relative terms. Both sides in any conflict think they are fighting the good fight -- no one, except the deliberately perverse -- thinks he is fighting for evil. So really there is only good, except from the opposing side's perspective.
To go beyond good and evil is to withhold judgment, the judgment against the good/evil dichotomy notwithstanding. (This judgment stands, and apparently one is allowed to condemn it in the most flowingly eloquent terms.)
I'm not sure if this suspension of judgment is either realistic or possible... but I think that's what Nietzsche is saying the "free spirit" does.
I doesn't seem to me that Nietzsche was justifying behavior that we rightly look upon as repulsive, nor was he advocating any of it. It seems that he simply recognized that such conditions exist, and that when humanity has to overcome these situations, they become stronger by doing so.
I am one of those who has not "grasped in all its profundity WHAT there is to be excused" for Greece. Section 28.
Does anyone have thoughts on why Greece needed to be excused?
I'm like Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now. "I'm a little man." ["He's a great man. You can't judge the Colonel." ..... And yet.... all those heads...]
From Section 30: "Our supreme insights must -- and should! sound like follies, in certain cases like crimes, when they come to the ears of those not predisposed and predestined for them."
Does anyone have thoughts on why Greece needed to be excused?
I'm like Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now. "I'm a little man." ["He's a great man. You can't judge the Colonel." ..... And yet.... all those heads...]
From Section 30: "Our supreme insights must -- and should! sound like follies, in certain cases like crimes, when they come to the ears of those not predisposed and predestined for them."
Thomas wrote: "I'm not sure if this suspension of judgment is either realistic or possible... but I think that's what Nietzsche is saying the "free spirit" does. ..."
Thomas,
I disagree. Nietzsche is not calling for a suspension of judgement, but rather a deepening of judgement.- beyond good and evil means seeing the value of 'evil' and maybe the suspect intention of 'good motives.'
The questions he wants to raise are, for example, what happens to humanity without a goal? Does it become more than human, or less than human?
How much condemnation of 'evil' is really resentment of the superior? "You may lord it over us, but our god lords it over you, which you will find out sooner or later."
How much love and tolerance is really hate and intolerance?
etc.
Adelle wrote: "I am one of those who has not "grasped in all its profundity WHAT there is to be excused" for Greece. Section 28. Does anyone have thoughts on why Greece needed to be excused?..."
This calls for a bit of the history of European culture in the nineteenth century.
I suspect that what Nietzsche had in mind was the *real* classical Greece -- the brutal realities revealed in, say, Thucydides -- as against the idealized Greece of the writings of Winckelmann and Goethe, the latter of whom came up with the description of "noble simplicity and calm grandeur" (Kaufmann's translation of *edle Einfalt, stille Grösse*).
(Winckelmann, a pioneering, art historian and archaeologist, seems to have had a tremendous influence on especially German classicists, and on popular culture, but he doesn't get much explicit notice in modern Anglo-American popular writings on the classical world -- he is somewhere in the background of Edith Hamilton's "Mythology.". There is a Wikipedia introduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_... )
Kaufmann devotes a paragraph to this image in his introduction to the "Birth of Tragedy" (included in "Basic Writings"), the book which opens Nietzsche's war against the whole idea, instead pitting the calmness of Apollo against the equally Greek frenzy of Dionysus.
Kaufmann suggests that Matthew Arnold's then-recent "absurd ... formulation" of "sweetness and light" was the culmination of this idealization, pushed to the breaking point.
Arnold wasn't being *quite* as naive as he sounded: the "sweetness and light" image originally applied to the industrious bee, producing both honey and wax -- the latter useful for candles that didn't smoke or smell bad, an image largely lost since the introduction of electric lights.
He got the wording from Jonathan Swift's "the two noblest of things, sweetness and light," as he himself points out in the first chapter/lecture of his "Culture and Anarchy" (1869: available free from Project Gutenberg, and on Kindle: and there is also a cheap Kindle edition which looks a bit more elaborate, but may be the identical text).
I really need to re-read it (for the first time in a couple of decades), but I suspect that Arnold was implicitly referring to the pleasures of Greek art and literature on the one hand, and enlightening philosophical teachings on the other. But his main interest is the contrast between classical times and his hopelessly vulgar and practical-mind contemporaries.
(Arnold missed the fact that British art already was increasingly being sponsored by newly wealthy industrialists and financiers, instead of the aristocracy, and that German cotton merchants in Manchester were supporting a new, and superior, orchestra, bringing British instrumental music back to life.)
Arnold's attitude still pays no great attention to, e.g., the fact that the ancient Greek economy was largely dependent on slavery, or to Greek misogyny, or to the massacres and murders that punctuate its history.
Not all of this was in need of "forgiveness" in Nietzsche's mind, of course -- he seems to be objecting to the obliviousness of his contemporaries to such things, of which they officially disapprove, rather than his own judgments of them. Still, Arnold's contemporaries were presumably opposed to at least two of them (and some, like John Stuart Mill, to all three).
Such attitudes were were not just cultural traits that everyone in antiquity accepted without question, either. The Sophists were criticized for absurd ideas, which included that slavery was bad and that women were as good as men. Also that there was no essential difference between Greeks and Barbarians. (It looks as if many Greeks considered themselves as different from non-Greeks as they were from animals. Modern racism has an ancient pedigree.) In "The Laws" Plato invented a kind of Inquisition to enforce philosophical orthodoxy against such nonsense.
Patrice wrote: "i really don’t understand why he says great accomplishments happen in times of hardship...."I still need to re-read this section, but I didn't think he meant that great things happen in times of hardship, I thought it was great things happen overcoming hardships. When I read this section, I thought of all the people in history I've read about who started with nothing and accomplished great things, but their children were unable to hold it together. The children didn't have any reason to overcome--their parents had already done so and provided the children with an easier life.
Obviously that's not a hard and fast rule, but there seems to be enough of it in life to support what N is saying here.
Christopher wrote: "I disagree. Nietzsche is not calling for a suspension of judgement, but rather a deepening of judgement.- beyond good and evil means seeing the value of 'evil' and maybe the suspect intention of 'good motives.' ..."I agree with this. I think this is also related to Xan's objection to my wording, "accept" [everything evil, terrible...] -- this isn't mere acceptance, he's saying this serves humanity. This is an unshy, in your face, unapologetic affirmation. Yes I say Yes I will Yes.
A bit like how the Greeks didn't just sing about life-affirming Odysseus. They also sang about destructive, terrifying, painful Achilles who turned heroes into bird-feeds.
Patrice wrote: "does N mean that slavery has served to free up men of the past to do great things? He only cares about the ubermensch, the rabble never move humanity forward. if you abandon morality and all ideals..."To me, I read this that overcoming slavery is a great thing. We are better people because of that struggle and struggling against its aftershocks. We could not have improved this part of our selves if slavery had not been there to overcome. Does that make slavery a good thing--no. No one in their right mind would say so. Would the world have been a better place if slavery had never existed--absolutely. But seeing how it existed since as far back as we have records of, it seems as though it was something that at one time was thought of as a natural state of affairs. We don't think that way anymore--that's a fundamental change.
So if an 'evil' brings about a 'good', can it be called evil? Or do we have to go beyond those categories?
I don't think N is just saying it's great that we got past the Master/Slave struggle and we are now better for it. Given how much he's dissing the levelers, the ones who cry for equality, humanism, the fiction of green pasteur etc, (it's not for nothing that I keep being amused by Mill and Nietzsche placed on the same list...) and his thing for "Will to Power," his description of philosophy as tyrannical drive to shape the world in their own image, I suspect Nietzsche affirms hierarchy, affirms life beyond merely tarrying along, staying alive, but also to order the world so that it conforms to your taste, your judgment.
Patrice wrote: "he refers to voltaire a lot. didn’t voltaire mock philosophers too? pangloss who could determine that this is the best of all possible worlds. a falsehood that he pushed as truth. the world is full..."Nietzsche's earlier publication, Human, All Too Human was originally dedicated to Voltaire, but he later removed that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human,_...
It seems, by the time he writes BGE (§ 35), even Voltaire is tarnished. He's refined his idea of what it means to be free-thinker and Voltaire is reduced to "nonsense" who found nothing.
31. In our youthful years we still venerate and despise without the art of nuance, which is the best gain of life, and we have rightly to do hard penance for having fallen upon men and things with Yea and Nay. Everything is so arranged that the worst of all tastes, the taste for the unconditional, is cruelly befooled and abused, until a man learns to introduce a little art into his sentiments, and prefers to try conclusions with the artificial, as do the real artists of life. The angry and reverent spirit peculiar to youth appears to allow itself no peace, until it has suitably falsified men and things, to be able to vent its passion upon them: youth in itself even, is something falsifying and deceptive.
And here is a quote from the preface to Human All Too Human- which I think is from the BGE period.Man, is this guy lonely:
Thus, then, have I evolved for myself the "free spirits" to whom this discouraging-encouraging work, under the general title "Human, All Too Human," is dedicated. Such "free spirits" do not really exist and never did exist. But I stood in need of them, as I have pointed out, in order that some good might be mixed with my evils (illness, loneliness, strangeness, acedia, incapacity): to serve as gay spirits and comrades, with whom one may talk and laugh when one is disposed to talk and laugh, and whom one may send to the devil when they grow wearisome. They are some compensation for the lack of friends. That such free spirits can possibly exist, that our Europe will yet number among her sons of to-morrow or of the day after to-morrow, such a brilliant and enthusiastic company, alive and palpable and not merely, as in my case, fantasms and imaginary shades, I, myself, can by no means doubt. I see them already coming, slowly, slowly. May it not be that I am doing a little something to expedite their coming when I describe in advance the influences under which I see them evolving and the ways along which they travel?
Christopher wrote: "I, myself, can by no means doubt. I see them already coming, slowly, slowly. May it not be that I am doing a little something to expedite their coming when I describe in advance the influences under which I see them evolving and the ways along which they travel?"what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
I find it interesting that Nietzsche's target in section 32 seems to be intentionalism a la Abelard. To my knowledge, that's never been a dominant ethical philosophy, any more than the consequentialism he attributes to "prehistorical times." I see where he's going--he wants to destroy moralism by undermining its introspection and self-denial--but this line of attack is mildly surprising from someone with such an emphasis on creative will.
Christopher wrote: "I disagree. Nietzsche is not calling for a suspension of judgement, but rather a deepening of judgement.- beyond good and evil means seeing the value of 'evil' and maybe the suspect intention of 'good motives.' "A deepening of judgment sounds like the opposite of going beyond good and evil; to me, it sounds like doubling down on dogma, a strengthening of good and evil, not going beyond it.
Certainly Nietzsche is suspicious of "good motives," but the reason for this is that good motives are based on a dogmatic belief system. These motives are neither intrinsically good or evil -- they are only judged good or evil because they comport with or violate accepted dogma. Resentment of the stronger throws light on this fact because it shows that "evil" is not the issue -- the stronger will always be cast as "evil" by the weaker so the valuation is meaningless.
37. "What? Doesn't this mean, to speak with the vulgar: God is refuted, but the Devil is not?" On the contrary! On the contrary, my friends. And the devil -- who forces you to speak with the vulgar?
The dogmatic truths upon which good and evil are based are fallacious, uncertain, or arbitrary. Both good and evil are therefore to be rejected. The free spirit makes his own morality, if it can be called that, but he bases it on something other than a good vs. evil mythology.
Lia wrote: "I agree with this. I think this is also related to Xan's objection to my wording, "accept" [everything evil, terrible...] -- this isn't mere acceptance, he's saying this serves humanity. This is an unshy, in your face, unapologetic affirmation. Yes I say Yes I will Yes."But it doesn't serve humanity, because a free spirit cannot be a part of humanity in any peaceful sense. I agree with Christopher @74 on this point -- this guy is lonely indeed. There ain't room enough in any town for more than one free spirit or there's gonna be a fight, because a free spirit cannot live by anyone's rules other his own. Eventually there will be a conflict, and that's where the issue of power comes in.
Thomas wrote: “But it doesn't serve humanity, because a free spirit cannot be a part of humanity in any peaceful sense. I agree with Christopher @74 ... There ain't room enough in any town for more than one free spirit ” I hesitate to take any one quote of Nietzsche (from another book which we’re not discussing) literally, in this case it seems impossible anyway: his work is for the free-spirits, i.e. more than one, and such work is discouraging-encouraging.
It also reminds me of Zarathustra: a book for Everyone and No One. So which one is it? Why not both?
He admired other thinkers in the past, and refined himself to a point where he doesn’t need them anymore, and then he kicked them away like unwanted ladders. Voltaire was one of his prototype free thinkers, until he realized he too wasn’t free and kicked him to the curb. (Wittgenstein did something like that too — burned about every bridge and friends and mentors that supported him and got him where he is.)
BGE is a prelude to a philosophy of the future. Maybe Nietzsche is playing Pygmalion. Because the free-thinkers that existed weren’t good enough for him, he endeavor to sculpt his own, by addressing future free-spirits, shaping their will after his own values and tastes and images.
As I said in #40 https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... at this point, I interpret Nietzsche’s “beyond” as temporal, as describing a historical philosophical development, and what the next “reversal” will be like in the future. That means he’s not against the usage or inclusion of concepts like “evil” in itself, he simply wants to fly past his contemporary attitude, against the idea of being entrapped within a moralizing value system where only one factor dominate taste, will, judgment unopposed.
I talked about the bow metaphor in the prelude — I suspect Nietzsche is promoting a kind of productive tension: Apollo against Dionysus in balance; will to value vs will to truth; moralizing “slave” ethos against “noble” creator out to order the world after their mind’s image. I suspect he isn’t throwing good and evil out completely, he wants that will in balance with previously inverted, negated part of human psyche.
Going back to the beginning of Part Two, Nietzsche explicitly said the program is not outright rejection but refinement:
|§24| And only on this now solid, granite foundation of ignorance could knowledge rise so far-the will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will: the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as its opposite, but-as its refinement!
Now, I know, he’s talking about truth/falsification, knowledge/ignorance. But if he isn’t tossing that out after the dress-down in Part One, my hunch is that he also isn’t tossing the creative tension of good-and-evil out. He’s going to refine it and shoot for something further, something futuristic.
Thomas wrote: "Christopher wrote: "I disagree. Nietzsche is not calling for a suspension of judgement, but rather a deepening of judgement.- beyond good and evil means seeing the value of 'evil' and maybe the sus..."Thomas, whatever this is you're espousing, it isn't Nietzsche.
eta: I'm sure I don't mean "espousing.' Maybe expounding on? You are making a case for something which is not your philosophy, certainly, but is it anyone's?
Also, this |§ 29| Independence Is for the very few; it is a privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it even with the best right but without inner constraint proves that he is probably not only strong. but also daring to the point of recklessness. He enters into a labyrinth. he multiplies a thousandfold the dangers which life brings with it in any case, not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes lonely, and is torn piecemeal by some Minotaur of conscience.Seems to suggest that conscience — the preoccupation of good-and-evil — is one of the forces that threatens to keep you stuck in the labyrinth. Freedom, or independence at any rate, belongs to those who feel the pull but can fly past it anyway. It’s not that they are without conscience, without concept or acknowledgement of good and evil, they are susceptible to its pull, but do not let that pull drag them down, dominate them.
Granted, finally, that we succeeded in explaining our entire instinctive life as the development and ramification of one fundamental form of will—namely, the Will to Power, as my thesis puts it; granted that all organic functions could be traced back to this Will to Power, and that the solution of the problem of generation and nutrition—it is one problem—could also be found therein: one would thus have acquired the right to define ALL active force unequivocally as WILL TO POWER. The world seen from within, the world defined and designated according to its "intelligible character"—it would simply be "Will to Power," and nothing else.
37. "What? Does not that mean in popular language: God is disproved, but not the devil?"—On the contrary! On the contrary, my friends! And who the devil also compels you to speak popularly!
Thomas writes: The dogmatic truths upon which good and evil are based are fallacious, uncertain, or arbitrary.
How do you get what you say here from what Nietzsche says?
Another passage that might support the idea that Nietzsche is not abolishing “Evil” as a concept, but merely deepening / refining our (well, the free ones anyway) response to it, from the previous section :|§23| A genuine physio-psychology has to struggle with unconscious resistances in the heart of the investigator, it has ‘the heart’ against it: even a theory of the mutual dependence of the ‘good’ and the ‘wicked’ impulses causes, as a more refined immorality, revulsion to a conscience still strong and hearty – and even more a theory of the derivation of all good impulses from wicked ones. Supposing, however, that someone goes so far as to regard the emotions of hatred, envy, covetousness, and lust for domination as life-conditioning emotions, as something which must fundamentally and essentially be present in the total economy of life, consequently must be heightened further if life is to be heightened further – he suffers from such a judgement as from seasickness. And yet even this hypothesis is far from being the strangest and most painful in this tremendous, still almost unexplored realm of dangerous knowledge – and there are in fact a hundred good reasons why everyone should keep away from it who – can On the other hand: if your ship has been driven into these seas, very well! Now clench your teeth! Keep your eyes open! Keep a firm hand on the helm! – We sail straight over morality and past it, we flatten, we crush perhaps what is left of our own morality by venturing to voyage thither – but what do we matter! Never yet has a deeper world of insight revealed itself to daring travellers and adventurers: and the psychologist who in this fashion ‘brings a sacrifice’ – it is not the sacrifizio dell'intelletto, on the contrary! – will at least be entitled to demand in return that psychology shall again be recognized as the queen of the sciences, to serve and prepare for which the other sciences exist. For psychology is now once again the road to the fundamental problems.
Sounds a lot like he’s asking the rare few Odysseus out there to choose to sail over morality if in dire straits, even if it’s nauseating. So, again, not that he doesn’t instinctively respond to evil, but he holds his repulsion down and sails on to witness evilium (or undiscovered realms anyway).
Lia wrote: "It also reminds me of Zarathustra: a book for Everyone and No One. So which one is it? Why not both? "Yes! Why not both? I think it could be for everyone in isolation, and for no one in society. That's what it means to be a free spirit, and I think it's probably inhuman to be one.
Going back to the beginning of Part Two, Nietzsche explicitly said the program is not outright rejection but refinement:
|§24| And only on this now solid, granite foundation of ignorance could knowledge rise so far-the will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will: the will to ignorance, to the uncertain, to the untrue! Not as its opposite, but-as its refinement!
What is the granite foundation of ignorance? Isn't this sarcasm? It's pure disgust, the way I read it. But this so-called "foundation" leads to something else: the will. Specifically, the will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will: the will to the uncertain and the untrue. Not as its opposite (which is the certain) but as its refinement. Meaning the refinement of ignorance -- and in the next paragraph he makes clear that he's talking about degrees. Rather than absolute faith-based certainty, degrees of understanding that make no such pretensions.
How does one judge a degree of good when the standard for good is itself based on ignorance? I don't think it's possible, which is why the "coming philosophers" are "probably" friends of truth, for all philosophers so far have loved their truths. But they certainly will not be dogmatists. (43) Truth for these folks will be no truth for everyman, but subjective truth -- as it must be, since it is based on a "degree" and not a standard.
I don't see any way to admit to this subjective degree of truth and not jettison the accepted standards of good and evil, to go beyond them.
Christopher wrote: "Thomas, whatever this is you're espousing, it isn't Nietzsche."
That's okay, Christopher. Feel free to disagree -- please! -- and explain why. I invite your dialogue, but I'm not looking for your approval.
Christopher wrote: "How do you get what you say here from what Nietzsche says? "
Section 36 presents an understanding of the "real" based on drives, and ultimately on the will. The world is viewed not on the basis of a philosophical understanding of good and evil, but on the will. If this is taken as a refutation of God, as the giver and arbitrator of good and evil -- as some might believe it to be -- then it must also, of course, be a refutation of the Devil, of evil. The issue is the standard of good and evil, which must of course include both good and evil.
Cphe wrote: "So Nietzsche is saying that only suffering counts towards growth?Is that right?"
I think he's saying at least that there's no growth without suffering.
But he would not be the first ever to assert that.
"...Not to remain stuck to one's own detachment, to that voluptuous remoteness and strangeness of the bird who flees ever higher to see more below him—the danger of the flier...." (§41)Lines like these resonate deeply with me. His diagnosis of moralistic malaise has a lot of truth to it, I think, though I draw back from his conclusion that we ought therefore to pitch our ideals of self-sacrifice and compassion overboard.
Thomas wrote: "Christopher wrote: "Thomas, whatever this is you're espousing, it isn't Nietzsche."
That's okay, Christopher. Feel free to disagree -- please! -- and explain why. I invite your dialogue, but I'm ..."
Thanks, Thomas. More than fair.
Thomas wrote: "How does one judge a degree of good when the standard for good is itself based on ignorance? I don't think it's possible, which is why the "coming philosophers" are "probably" friends of truth, for all philosophers so far have loved their truths. But they certainly will not be dogmatists. (43) Truth for these folks will be no truth for everyman, but subjective truth -- as it must be, since it is based on a "degree" and not a standard. I don't see any way to admit to this subjective degree of truth and not jettison the accepted standards of good and evil, to go beyond them."
I think you’re focusing on whether it is possible to establish an objective, clear, solid granite foundational standard of what is good and evil, and that “knowledge” of what is good and what is evil is what’s being examined, tossed, and we henceforth march beyond that.
Whereas I think Nietzsche rejects “ defenders of truth ” as morally good, he mocks them as "refined vengeance-seekers and brewers of poison,” and ask free-spirits (? or intended audience) to "Take care, philosophers and friends of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom!” He says
|25| suffering ‘for the sake of truth’! Even of defending yourselves! It spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience , it makes you obstinate against rebuffs and red rags, it makes you stupid, brutal and bullish if in the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, casting out and even grosser consequences of hostility you finally even have to act as defenders of truth on earth as if ‘truth’ were so innocuous and inept a person she stood in need of defending! And precisely by you...
So he’s accusing “defenders of truth” of making knowledge/ truth out to be a moral issue, and advises free-spirits to free themselves from such “minotaur of conscience.”
Also from |25|
Flee away and conceal yourselves! And have your masks and subtlety, so that you may be misunderstood! Or feared a little! And do not forget the garden, the garden with golden trellis-work. And have about you people who are like a garden – or like music on the waters in the evening, when the day is already becoming a memory; – choose the good solitude, the free, wanton, easy solitude which gives you too a right to remain in some sense good! How poisonous, how cunning, how bad every protracted war makes one when it cannot be waged with open force!
We see that Nietzsche at least accepts good-in-some-sense, and fleeing away from the moral/mortal-combat (i.e. the GOOD kind of solitude, the kind he approves) over “truth” is the condition for acquiring this new-and-improved (refined?) “good."
That is, I don’t think Nietzsche is against free-spirits having the sensibility for (a will to —?) good-and-evil, it’s clear that he is a skeptic when it comes to knowledge/ truth, it’s not clear to me that THAT is the war he’s waging here: it seems he’s fighting those who treat will-to-truth as moral issue, and his refinement is to remove that moralizing stain, and make the next generation of philosophers love truth, seek truth, but with laughter, not martyrdom.
I was out yesterday. I thought it a bright idea to take a hike on the dirt trail that surrounds a lake. An hour into the hike, with no end in sight, I started thinking about Nietzsche and how little truth and morality matter when lost in the woods . . .No, wait, let me try that again. An hour into the hike, with no end in sight, I stated thinking about Nietzsche and how introducing yourself to him by starting with BGE is a bit like walking into the middle of a conversation between two people speaking a foreign language -- one you thought you knew but now realize how woefully inadequate your training was. That or Nietzsche is lost in the woods.
Of course, not knowing what I'm talking about -- or perhaps more to the point, not knowing what Nietzsche is talking about -- has never stopped me from contributing before, and it won't now, so I'm not going anywhere. THERE!! How's that for Will to Power.
That felt good. Maybe there's something to this Will to Power stuff.
Xan Shadowflutter wrote: "walking into the middle of a conversation between two people speaking a foreign language ..."Eh? I think you’re exactly right about this situation, except we were all with you on that walk (hope that didn’t creep you out!!)
From § 27
when one thinks and lives gangasrotogati among men who think and live otherwise, namely kurmagati or at best ‘as the frog goes’, mandeikagati – I am certainly doing everything I can to be hard to understand myself! – and one ought to be heartily grateful even for the will to some subtlety in interpretation.
Ganga — what? Mandeikagati-huh? Um, okay Nietzsche. You look like you’re enjoying yourself in your little gnome garden with your select group of friends! (Who knows? Maybe he wasn’t mocking Epicurus afterall.)
Xan Shadowflutter wrote: "Of course, not knowing what I'm talking about -- or perhaps more to the point, not knowing what Nietzsche is talking about -- has never stopped me from contributing before, and it won't now, so I'm not going anywhere. THERE!! How's that for Will to Power.That felt good. Maybe there's something to this Will to Power stuff. ..."
Xan: +1. A sense of humor is always an asset.
Cphe wrote: "What would occur if there wasn't a herd and all were free spirits?Would there be chaos?
He appears to look down on the herd but there is safety within a herd.
Immunisation depends on the herd ..."
On that topic, I just finished an interesting book, Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of natural selection and inheritance to political society
Man, being the strongest of all animals, differs from the rest; he was obliged to be his own domesticator; he had to tame himself. And the way in which it happened was, that the most obedient, the tamest tribes are, at the first stage in the real struggle of life, the strongest and the conquerors. All are very wild then; the animal vigour, the savage virtue of the race has died out in none, and all have enough of it. But what makes one tribe—one incipient tribe, one bit of a tribe—to differ from another is their relative faculty of coherence. The slightest symptom of legal development, the least indication of a military bond, is then enough to turn the scale. The compact tribes win, and the compact tribes are the tamest.
In reference to message 95 (I forgot to click "reply" before starting), Kaufmann has a couple of mildly interesting notes on this passage, but they help make sense of it.First of all, with the aid of an Indologist, he deciphers Nietzsche's misspelled Sanskrit (some of the errors may have been due to misreading of Nietzsche's barely legible handwritten manuscript*), and then explains their meaning.
I won't give the Indological spellings, with diacritics, but the words mean "as the Ganges flows," (like a river): "as a frog goes" (by leaps): and finally "as the tortoise goes," i.e. slowly.
This all links up with an argument concerning the tempo of writing styles and languages -- in the following section! Talk about being subtle.....
Using Sanskrit was rather strange, as Nietzsche admits, since hardly anyone would recognize it (even correctly spelled), let alone understand it without his vague explanations. Nietzsche could have been expected to favor Greek and Latin (he was a classical philologist, after all), and, as a "Good European," he used Italian or French when he didn't think German was adequate.
The mystery is partly explained by the fact that one of his few friends, one who shared Nietzsche's early admiration of Schopenhauer, was Paul Deussen (1845-1919), one of the leading Sanskrit scholars of the day. (And his influence lingers: his translation into German of some sixty of the Upanishads was fairly recently translated into English -- in India....)
Some think that Deussen's studies of the Vedanta were too much under Schopenhauer's influence, but part of the attraction to the subject may have been that Schopenhauer had himself been influenced by early, not very reliable, reports about Hindu and Buddhist thought.
*Nietzsche actually acquired an early typewriter, but apparently he could never get it to work very well. He was trying to use a strange new machine while nearly blind, which couldn't have helped, but a lot of the early models were pretty fragile. It is said that the counter-intuitive QWERTY keyboard layout was intended to slow down typists, so they wouldn't break anything as they got better, and faster, at using it.
Cphe wrote: "What would occur if there wasn't a herd and all were free spirits?Would there be chaos?
He appears to look down on the herd but there is safety within a herd.
Immunisation depends on the herd ..."
Everybody can’t all be free-spirits. In §29 he seems to be saying few have the independence for it, in §30 he goes into exoteric/esoteric ways of seeing — meaning he expects an “exo” group that will look at his “eso” in-group and what they espouse (!) as follies. Not only do they (free-spirits) feel no obligation to prove their “truth” to everybody, they jealously guard it — nobody else is *easily* entitled to it (§43). (I.e. you should only “get” what they really mean after great difficulties.)
Ian wrote: "Using Sanskrit was rather strange, as Nietzsche admits, since hardly anyone would recognize it, let alone understand it without his vague explanations. And Nietzsche could have been expected to favor Greek and Latin (he was a classical philologist, after all), and, as a "Good European," he used Italian or French when he didn't think German was adequate."The tempo stuff is clearly important and interesting, thanks. Though I think, Nietzsche is also showing-not-telling, how you have to work at translating his strange-sounding “new language” (§4) to slowly, with difficulties, make it make sense.
Also, this makes me wonder if Eliot’s Waste Land is more an allusion to Nietzsche than an actual exploration of Indic root of Indo-European languages. (Though, Eliot also used Greek and Latin and Spanish and German on top of Sanskrit ...)
Alternatively, to look at this in reverse: might Nietzsche also be seeking a “return” (the eternal recurrence!) to the root? (That’s a common interpretation of Eliot’s usage). This would assume philologists / linguists back then knew / believed European languages had Indic roots.
Lia wrote: "That is, I don’t think Nietzsche is against free-spirits having the sensibility for (a will to —?) good-and-evil, it’s clear that he is a skeptic when it comes to knowledge/ truth, it’s not clear to me that THAT is the war he’s waging here: it seems he’s fighting those who treat will-to-truth as moral issue, and his refinement is to remove that moralizing stain, and make the next generation of philosophers love truth, seek truth, but with laughter, not martyrdom.Thanks, Lia. I dont' disagree with this entirely, but I think the truth issue forms the basis for the moral one, and I am suspicious of the idea that morality and truth are conceptually separable. None of this "free spirit' stuff makes any sense without first demolishing the notion of objective and/or universal truth. He connects the two (truth and the good) explicitly in section 43, and this makes sense to me -- he's freeing truth and goodness together, since they're inextricably linked.
My judgment is my judgment : no one else is easily entitled to it-- that is what such a philosopher of the future may say of himself.
One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it. And how should there ever be a "common good"! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value.
If by "good" Nietzsche means that the free spirit sits apart from society in mask in a garden with a nice cup of tea, hoarding his truth and telling no one, well, he can call that "good" ... but there's nothing separating that "good" from a private delusion.
Thomas wrote: “I think the truth issue forms the basis for the moral one, and I am suspicious of the idea that morality and truth are conceptually separable...He connects the two (truth and the good) explicitly in section 43, and this makes sense to me -- he's freeing truth and goodness together, since they're inextricably linked.If by "good" Nietzsche means that the free spirit sits apart from society in mask in a garden with a nice cup of tea, hoarding his truth and telling no one, well, he can call that "good" ... but there's nothing separating that "good" from a private delusion”
I think we interpret those passages differently too, which seems inevitable when it comes to reading Nietzsche =/
Note he did say no one else is easily entitled to it, meaning it’s not something to be handed out like candies to a democratic herd. But to those willing to work hard and bear the burden and survive the labyrinth, presumably they should be able to “get it.” So not quite private or delusion, but open only to a gated garden party for the chosen few.
I think the ugliest thing for me is that I read this as Nietzsche defending his anti-modernity, anti-democratic instinct: the modern man wants to abolish hierarchy and flatten everything, equal rights for everyone, every gender, when Nietzsche thinks different strokes are meant for different folks, and the “truth”, the kind a philosopher seeks, is clearly not meant for everyone.
Hence an injunction to appeal to their sense of laughter, to make them think of the free-spirits as fools (the burro!), as opposed to self-righteous martyr.
Does Nietzsche really mean that the Free Spirit must suppress and disregard his natural or learned conscience so that he can choose his own morality? By what criteria will he choose? Just pick the first thing that comes out of his id? Or perhaps whatever promotes the Will to Power? This sure sounds like a green light for psychopathy.
Patrice wrote: "n makes me think of his time, the industrial revolution. The robber barons. Do we look at the tremendous progress that Carnegie, Ford, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, created or do we look at the abuse of..."I'm not sure that Nietzsche would have thought that way.
Besides being pretty much oblivious to real-world economics (and politics, except that he didn't like them), he didn't see the "improvement" of daily life, and the extension of its comforts, as entirely desirable, considered as an end in itself.
So far as I can recall, this doesn't show up in "Beyond Good and Evil," at least not clearly. But part 5 of "Zarathustra's Prologue" (in "Also Sprach Zarathustra," of course) is given over to a vision of the meaningless life of the "Last Man," (*der letzte Mensch*) who has achieved material comfort, and has no idea of doing anything except enjoy it. (At points it sounds a bit like an anticipation of "Brave New World.")
This description is there offered in contrast to the strenuous (mental) existence of the Overman (*Übermensch*), the message Zarathustra has just preached to an uncomprehending multitude. But Nietzsche avoided direct references to the Overman concept in BGE, along with Eternal Recurrence, another difficult main theme of Zarathustra.
(The Overman is NOT an evolutionary concept -- one can appear at any time in human history, like Leonardo da Vinci, and it is a goal to be striven for individually, not collectively. Nietzsche called those who thought otherwise "Darwinian Oxen," which, of course, did nothing to remove the misunderstanding. Remembering the label was much easier than reading what he had to say about it. There is a certain inconsistency here, since Nietzsche was a Lamarckist, who thought that the mechanism of evolution was the inheritance of acquired characteristics, including mental habits. But then, he didn't think that the trend of evolution was toward "higher" types, whether natural selection was involved or not.)
Nietzsche often sounds heartless towards those who don't meet his standards, but at the end of his productive life, in "The Antichrist" (section 57), he declared (in Kaufmann's translation):
"When the exceptional human being treats the mediocre more tenderly than himself and his peers, this is not mere courtesy of the heart -- it is simply his duty"
Roger wrote: "Does Nietzsche really mean that the Free Spirit must suppress and disregard his natural or learned conscience so that he can choose his own morality? By what criteria will he choose? Just pick the ..."This is the question I've been struggling with. The Free Spirit sounds to me like Plato's Philosopher King, but one without ideas (in the Platonic sense) and maybe without a coherent philosophy. The Free Spirit is replacing common values with his own, and there is no gauge by which to judge his values. He is in that sense "very very free."
How he chooses his values remains to be seen, but Part 7 is called "Our Virtues" and Part 9 is on "What is Noble." That should be... interesting.
.Patrice wrote: i am certainly willing to accept my error but i wonder what do you think he means by results. its results that count...I'm not sure you are wrong about a logical conclusion from what Nietzsche is saying at particular points: only that Nietzsche himself doesn't seem to have drawn it.
(And he seems unimpressed by feats of engineering: in the preface to BGE, he attributed the Asian and Egyptian "grand style" of architecture to astrological concerns, as an example of things proceeding from incorrect premises.)
Ian wrote: "Nietzsche often sounds heartless towards those who don't meet his standards, but at the end of his productive life, in "The Antichrist" (section 57), he declared (in Kaufmann's translation):"When the exceptional human being treats the mediocre more tenderly than himself and his peers, this is not mere courtesy of the heart -- it is simply his duty" "
Thanks, Ian. This is is fascinating. I see nothing in BGE so far that would prevent the "free spirit" from having tender values, but nothing that would make tenderness a duty either. It's nice to think that this is at least a possibility though.
Cphe wrote: "What would occur if there wasn't a herd and all were free spirits?
Would there be chaos?
He appears to look down on the herd but there is safety within a herd.
Immunisation depends on the herd ..."
Good question/good points. It seems to me N isn't particularly concerned about society. The few who are strong enough to be independent free-spirits don't have to be concerned with society---the masses are always going to be there down below.
Not everyone can be special or special ceases to mean anything.
The few who don't immunize their children can afford to do so---avoiding potential bad reactions for their children---because the mass of children accepted the dogma that it was the right thing to do.
Edit added: Just saw Lia already responded to Cphe's post.
Would there be chaos?
He appears to look down on the herd but there is safety within a herd.
Immunisation depends on the herd ..."
Good question/good points. It seems to me N isn't particularly concerned about society. The few who are strong enough to be independent free-spirits don't have to be concerned with society---the masses are always going to be there down below.
Not everyone can be special or special ceases to mean anything.
The few who don't immunize their children can afford to do so---avoiding potential bad reactions for their children---because the mass of children accepted the dogma that it was the right thing to do.
Edit added: Just saw Lia already responded to Cphe's post.
Lia wrote: "[spoiler!] (BGE 260) "Let's try not to jump ahead to material we haven't read yet.
I know why you're doing it here, and it makes sense... but spoilers are strictly verboten in this group. Even Free Spirits must follow the rules here. :>)
Classics and the Western Canon
Books mentioned in this topic
Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of natural selection and inheritance to political society (other topics)Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits (other topics)
Nope, I'm quoting Judith Norman. I got sick of photographing and OCR'ing my print copy of Kaufmann. I decided to grab a PDF for quoting purposes...