Subject: Re: obeying
Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2001 11:06:39 -0400




>
> "To obey, in a single direction, and for a long time, ---"
>
"... A yes, a no, a straight line..."

Nietzsche says this often. He had his evanescent horizon which the
philosophy of the hammer allow him to see. The way I understand this is that
the hammer dissolved the rigid shells that obscured the horizon and one can
described these protective envelopes as being constructed by a consumptive
principle of desire in pursuit of moral ideals, of idols. The reactive
lifeforce is just this sort of astringent bitter resentment which is not
able to check itself and so preserve the lifeforce or virtue in the Italian
rennaissance sense as Nietzche would say. The active lifeforce is the way of
the convalescent which restores the health of  a human being which keeps you
hard, which, yes, it's not that easy to do. And yet this inexorable command
to become hard, and stay hard, Nietzsche saw also as a lightness that let's
you keep moving your feet and dance with the keyboard or your very life
becomes such an expression.  One could perhaps do a neokantian reading at
this point where the horizon that is left amongst the dust left behind by
the hammer is a regulative principle, a negative presention that is leftover
by the necessary passage through nihilism that leaves you without value,
principles, ideals, or guidance of any kind or just the purposeless purpose
in the manner of a wild flower. And if the hammer dissolves the cobwebs
within which our thoughts are entangled and that constitutes our subjective
life then that means that we become attentive to the objective, the real
that is there in our everyday situations. We are then prepared to deal well
with everyday affairs because we are not lost in our own subjective thoughts
constantly interpreting the world. We are at the ready so to speak, in
attention, ready to sieze the moment and act well. We then know how to make
the most of the present. The Latin had an expression for this, "diem
carpere".  If we are prepared because we follow an unquestioned principle of
self-restraint, then, even in the most difficult or aporetic situations; we
can pluck out a fruit, a kernel of enjoyment. There is nothing to be said in
general about everyday affairs, the clearing of a particular situation;
since it's different for everyone and not a geographical situation. There is
no general rule just the ability to act on the go without a rule and that
ability is virtue, strenght of heart.

Gulio



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