Date: Tue, 04 Feb 1997 18:14:03 +0000
From: Joćo Paulo Monteiro <jpmonteiro-AT-mail.telepac.pt>
Subject: M-I: Nietzsche


=ABI love those who have a great contempt, for they bring with them the
supreme respect; they are the arrows of desire pointing to the other
margin.

I love the one whose soul is profound, even on its wounds, and that can
die of any futile accident; for it is willingly that he will cross the
bridge.

I love the one whose soul overwhelms him, to the point of losing
self-conscience, and in him carries all things! It's then the totality
of things that causes his loss.=BB


Thus Spoke Zarathustra




I wanted to say a couple of things about Nietzsche. I have read all of
his books in my youth and I grow up found of him. Of course, to arrive
at that I've largely created my own N. and put aside all of his texts
that didn't fit in it (and there are certainly some ugly ones).
What I like is the N. of the finest morning light, of laughter and
dancing, of supreme daring and sacrifice, of the purest, unreflected,
highest skim in the wave of life. He had his dark side too, yes.

I stop reading N. long ago because I was already heavily engaged in
marxism he was of no use for what I wanted to do. He'll probably live
longer than any modern thinker and be discussed 1000 years from now, but
he tells you virtually nothing on "what's to be done". To keep reading
him over and over again is only for professional philosophers, artists
or lunatics. He was anti-socialist but the socialism he had in mind was
of christian inspiration: lacrimose, piously humanist and gregarious. He
certainly never put his eyes on any Marx. It's uncertain what would he
have thought of Lenin for instance. He could have liked him. Lenin's
relentlesness and shrewdness (the bourgeoisie would call it amorality)
would certainly have pleased him. I once came accross a Gorky
discription of Lenin that sounded strikingly nietzschean:

"He would throw his head back, then incline it over the shoulder while
he put his fingers on the waistcoat's diggings, under the arm-pits. On
that position there was something tremendously funny and sharming about
him. He looked like a victorious cock (...) He liked amusing things and
he would laugh with the whole body, truly inundated with joy."

The proletarian revolutionary movement could be seen as a vitalist,
soberb, transvaluationist agent. I don't know. What he definitely hated
was bourgeois democracy. But then again maybe that isn't very important.
He wasn't a man of his time.

Deleuze's book on N. is fascinating, as I recall it. I particularly
liked the emphasis put on two fundamental nietzschean concepts: the
couple active/reactive. I still use it
and find it most illuminating. N.'s perspectivism and
anti-foundationalism are at such ontological heights that lets me live
with them without worrying too much. It's very probable indeed that all
human knowledge is but lies we keep telling ourselves to go on living
and not fall into the abyss. But we definitely need such lies like bread
to our mouths. I choosed marxism.

Some people say N. was a proto-nazi but he consistently hated
anti-semitism and the german brewery vulgarity. He wanted nothing for
himself, lived poorly and kissed nobody's asses. He aimed high and ended
up talking to a pair of donkeys on the street.
Maybe he isn't one of us, but I'm grateful to this guy and I'm not going
to hide it here.


Jo=E3o Paulo Monteiro



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