File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1995/nietzsche_Dec17.95, message 28


Date: Tue, 19 Dec 1995 11:32:55 -0500 (EST)
From: V200KG6U-AT-ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
Subject: Re: superWOman was here



Babette,

You have slightly altered the terms of Nietzsche's injunction by
saying 'become the one you are', or rather your gloss suggests
a diferent interpretation of the phrase 'how one becomes *what*
one is'.  All well and fine.

Nietzsche will say 'make of yor life a work of art', and urge
that we live life as an experiement as he himself has done.  And
both of these remarks refer to something beyond playing mere dress-up.
In the formula 'I am what I do' I hear a variety of possible
implications, existential, as well as Platonic (existential in
the Sartrean sense, that is).  And in the case of the former I
hear an attribution of responsibility, a kind of ethico-moral
guideline that would, when applied, make the individual solely
responsible for their actions regardless of contexts and/or
circumstances.  It is the individualist basis, along with the
disregard for the conditions, contexts, and philosophical and
ideological surroundings within which the individual is 'made'
which sounds so un-Nietzschean in the formula 'you are what you do'.

Given the context of this present discussion the formula 'you are
what you do' has a certain force that I, in fact, agree with.  However,
Nietzsche's words concerning the aesthetics of life, and the
questioning disposition implied by living life as if it were an
experiment, seems to me to undercut any given--phenomenological
or otherwise--facticity, be it of an ego, or even a life-world.
An aesthetic foundation? What exactly would that *look* like?
The short answer is life--but here we need to look closely at the
second essay of the Genealogy (and I do not have my copy with me)
where Nietzsche writes of the thoroughly un-democratic, non-egalitarian
flux and flow of force that underwrites life otherwise conceived
within political and ethico-moral discourses, al ultimately debased and
profane.  

[the computer room here at the University is about to be used for
a class, and so I must go.  I will write more on this later today from
home where I can also consult my texts.  I hope, though, that this
is at least enoug to begin to clarify . . .]

All the Best,

Chris Devenney
Dept. of Comp. Lit.
SUNY -AT- Buffalo

"The true way is along a rope that is not spanned high in the air, but
only just above the ground.  It seems intended more to cause stumbling
than to be walked along."
                              --Kafka, "Octavehefte"


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