File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1995/nietzsche_Aug.95, message 107


Date: Wed, 16 Aug 1995 18:00:05 -0700
From: callihan-AT-callihan.seanet.com (Steven E. Callihan)
Subject: Re: eliminating recuperation: ethical stoicism


Chris, I have to say I share somewhat your distaste for what you refer
to as the various "posty-isms," but I think one must be mindful of
whether one is actually dealing with, say, a Derrida, or his "ape."
Certainly, Nietzsche goes to no uncommon lengths to defend himself
against exactly this.  Like I said, I'm not familiar enough with
Derrida to judge whether he may or may not be contradicting himself,
but from the bits I was able to fish out of _The Ear of the Other_, he
doesn't seem to be doing what you say he is.  Actually, I think his
identification of "the Other" with the Eternal Return of the Same is
quite marvelous, especially if you locate the complement as
Self/Identity and Will to Power.  (A friend of mine recently asked me,
"What returns?," and my immediate, un-prethought response was, "The
Will to Power, of course.")  I guess what I'm trying to do is get past
the immediate "foreground" debate and get to what the real underlying
issues are.  It seems to me that the problem you have with the whole
issue of otherness and "alterity" (a fancy name for the same thing?)
is exactly its identity with "selflessness" (and community?) and its
contrast with "selfness" (or "selfishness"?) and the whole bundle of
issues surrounding the concept of Will to Power.   Mind you, I agree
with you that any attempt to make hay out of otherness, per se, is
misguided (I may be a lefty, but I'm no "posty"!)--but so is the
opposite.  One could hypothesize, for instance, that self identity
(upon which all other identity would seem to rest) is formed from the
outside-in, the ego, in other words, as a social fiction, thus putting=7F
the stress on the primacy of otherness and alterity as a kind of pre-
representational matrix, if you will, rather than otherness merely as
a representational projection.  (For instance, when I go out to Rialto
Beach on the Olympic Peninsula, and get out of the concrete canyons of
the city, it seems absolute folly to me to deny the "other" or my
place in it--_dasein_ suddenly becomes quite _concrete_--otherwise, a
knowledge we are shielded from unless we step "outside" of society.)
It seems to me that Self and Other are tied together in an eternal
dance.  Or Identity and Representation, if you will.  Dissolve them
and you dissolve the dance, itself.  Nietzsche, of course, uses a
number of strategies to get around this, not the least of which is his
recourse to irony (not to mention his recourse to counter-dialectic,
if you will, or "genealogical" analysis which is intimately tied to
his irony).  As such, he undermines the concepts of Self, Will, _and_
Power, if you will, and resolves it all back into the Eternal Return,
no longer as a mere "otherness" (the big "O"), but as the dance, the
game, the play, life, itself (the Eternal Return, not as a mere
circle, but as a mobius strip, perhaps?).  This is not to counter the
relevance of the connection between Will to Power and "difference,"
but merely to point out that what is "different" is, ultimately, "the
Same."  (Or, the only thing that is not redundant is redundancy
itself.)  Two sides of the same coin, in other words.  The question I
have is whether or not you are making a rather "Stirner-esque," and
one-sided, reading of Nietzsche, and whether that is "just" to
Nietzsche, if you will.  Not that I dislike Stirner (actually I _like_
Stirner!), but as with so many other "influences," once they get into
Nietzsche's hands they seldom stay the same, but become "full," or,
shall we say, _pregnant_ (the whole "master/slave" dialectic was
derived, for instance, from Hegel).  Anyway, it seems to me that what
you are doing is marshalling your forces to buttress and support what
is essentially a "social thesis" centered around the notions of Will
to Power and "difference" as somehow sanctioning an unbridled egoic-
ness (society as a free-market, and mayhem, of clashing selves?) as a
kind of positive antithesis to what you see as being an otherwise
negative thesis (nihilist Christianity or "why can't we all just get
along?").  All sung along to the lyric, "It's alright ma, it's only
Will to Power."  At least, that seems to be the implication of what
you are saying.  Or, as you penned it, "let the slaves continue to
believe in reason, freedom, and other illusion; all the better to
exploit their stupidity."  Another way of saying "might makes right,"
in other words, or the survival of the fittest (Nietzsche as a social
darwinist), if you will, which I thought was an issue re Nietzsche
that was put to bed a _long_ time ago.  If so, it seems to me that it
is exactly Nietzsche's "higher men" who would be the first to get
trampled.  True, the "higher man" in Nietzsche is often characterized
as a "hot-house plant," i.e., requiring special, unique, and, shall we
say, _different_, even opposite, conditions if he is to flourish than
what might generally hold true for other, more common men (who only
require "common" conditions, by definition), and thus requiring a
different, even opposite, "morality," if you will, but that doesn't in
any sense justify him in a bald-faced squelching of others, by or in
and of itself (rather, the real danger is that he, himself, will be
the one to get _squelched_--"It is the weak who destroy the strong").
I can't believe that this is what you are _really_ saying, but it
seems to be the implication of at least some of what you are saying--
or am I missing your irony?  Please, correct me if I'm wrong (I have
no desire to "ape" you here)!

I don't think it is simply a matter of two choices--between socialism,
on the one hand, and what might be termed, I suppose, "anti-
socialism," on the other.  Between progress and reaction, if you will.
I reject both, at least so far as either may be said to exclude the
other.  Virtue divorced from vice is vicious.  (Or, in cabalistic
terms, Sephiroth divorced from Qliphoth are Qliphoth.)  I don't
believe Nietzsche feels he is stuck with this particular either/or
either--don't be duplicit; be triplicit, in other words!

===============================================================================
            Steven E. Callihan -- callihan-AT-callihan.seanet.com

       What does it matter if _I_ remain right.  I am much too right.
            And he who laughs best today will also laugh last."

              --Friedrich Nietzsche, _Twilight of the Idols_,
                    "Maxims and Arrows," Section 43.
===============================================================================



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