From: "John T. Duryea" <jtduryea-AT-dmv.com>
Subject: Re: Nietzsche and Rationalism
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 20:13:23 -0600



-----Original Message-----
From: R.H. Albright <albright-AT-world.std.com>
To: nietzsche-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
<nietzsche-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>
Date: Tuesday, January 13, 1998 3:43 PM
Subject: Re: Nietzsche and Rationalism



>Hey Randall,
>
>>Certainly the Caesars will infuse their personalities into the
>>becoming Imperium, and the first to do so will have the greatest
>>opportunity. Is this what you mean by giving? Define tyranny.
>
>You have yet to define "the becoming Imperium", my friend. But for tyranny,
>I think I would go back to John Stuart Mill's still brilliant "On Liberty"
>essay, which warns that the majority can oppress the minority, that even
>when one considers another's "well being" as one perceives it (the threat
>of prohibition on alcohol was on the horizon), it is none of the
>government's business as long as the individual does not interfere with the
>well-being of others in society. Mill also does a valiant defense of
>"eccentricity", which people like Foucault might call civilization's way of
>delineating "mad" versus "sane" people. By diffusing it to "eccentric",
>Mill allows for the widest possible heterogeneous society possible, in my
>opinion.
>
Do you have an historical example wherein the course of the
state was guided by the 'majority', in fact?

>>>As he said in "The Birth of Tragedy", we have to distinguish WISDOM from
>>>mere KNOWLEDGE.
>>
>>And what greater wisdom is there than historical wisdom?
>>Do not all of man's creations have a history?
>
>Historical wisdom has nothing to do with "Dionysian" or GUT reactions to
>things, as well as to imagination or other intuitive faculties.

We strongly disagree here. Nietzsche was an adept at historical
wisdom. To be a judge of history requires insight as to the inner
meaning of facts.

>But, yes,
>for example, in trying to avoid a possible worldwide depression right now
>with the crisis in SouthEast Asia, people are drawing on lessons learned
>from the Great Depression, such as trade barriers, freezing money supply
>instead of loosening up (the hope is that the IMF will be funded enough to
>bail these countries out, while imposing control with the money to make
>sure that future disasters don't happen again, as in our S&L crisis of the
>early 1990s). So history is a guide. But then there is also what Blake
>called:
>
>        "What was once imagined is now proved."
>
>No one thought of the relativity theory before Einstein. And again, as I
>was saying that Nietzsche's thought does not eradicate, but rather
>counter-balances prevailing trends of thought in the Enlightenment-- my
>belief is that we need a BROADER tent of enlightenment, myself, in both the
>Eastern and Western senses of the word-- Einstein's theories did not simply
>replace Newton's. Newton's still have a great deal of validity in them.
>Galileo, Pythogorus, and others, too. But it would be a contracted state of
>knowledge, which I think Nietzsche (as well as the Dalia Lhama) would laugh
>at, which thinks that all we have is empirical evidence and past experience
>to build on, for future-- in many forms of the word. Be it a more tolerant
>society, a more creative inter-action with the arts, etc.

Is not hope simply cowardice to face the facts? Our fate is tragic.
Greatness lies in how we face this fact and willfully struggle against it.
As the proud Viking observed of the other, "Thy trust is in thy
sword more than in Thor".

>(I am also a fan of Roland Barthes, who uses Nietzsche a great deal as a
>proponent of reader's rights. Emerson, too, was a proponent of this, when
>he said, in "The American Scholar" address, to take only the stuff that's
>TRUE and leave the bunk behind.)


Or nobler still, face the facts.

>>I'm speaking of Rationalism losing everything
>>of real value along the lines of Goethe's _Faust_ and his criticism
>>of the logical dissection of the living whole yielding nothing
>>but a lifeless husk.
>
>Although I have not read _Faust_, I see this "lifeless husk" in many other
>arenas. The Cartesian mind/body split. The work, work, work, but have no
>play, of the Protestant Work Ethic. I don't know if you know, but I
>recently read that George Emerson, in Forster's _Room With A View_, was
>created largely as Forster's response to "Birth of Tragedy"... the
>de-stabilizing George against the prissy hovering woman that's guarding
>Lucy, or what would have been an ill-fated marriage to Cecil (sexless).


>From what you write, I think you'd enjoy Faust.

>>Does not becoming connote creativity and do we not at some
>>point exhaust the necessary creative inner chaos?
>
>"Becoming" connotes being alive, yes. I don't think we NEED to ever
>"exhaust" our own inner chaos, however, out of which much creativity comes.
>The de-centering--- the way we build a sandcastle up and up and up, and
>then it gets washed away. However, to counter-point this, William James
>once said that the most powerful revolutions leave the great majority of
>our world unchanged, which is interesting. His point is often that if we
>can simply TRY to break out of "habit", that we're doing a good job to try
>to stay on the "genius" side, versus "old-fogeyism" (_Principles of
>Psychology_)


And what of Nietzsche's 'last man'? Is not the product of history
the husks of formerly creative cultures? Tragic? yes!

>>At a glance, the predator sees the inner secret of its prey and then
>>fixes the prey in its minds eye. Modern human language, with
>>its words, came in the second stage of human development.
>>We were fully human before we created modern language. As such,
>>a physignomic sceptic places primary emphasis on the most
>>real form of human thought. BGE 209.
>
>Well... have you read Julian Jaynes' _The Origins of Consciousness in the
>Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_? Regardless of HOW it happened, here we
>are: in a too right-handed, Apollonian/Socrates-tilted world.

Here the newspaper reading denizens of the world city
megalopolis are. There is still in the West a will to power
which demands a destiny beyond the current rot.

>And yet to
>tilt it back too much to Dionysus would be dangerous, too: anarchy.

One would do well to reel Nietzsche back in when he
starts to disappear into his Dionysian mists.

> I
>disagree, by the way, with Nietzsche's construct that music is not "image".
>When you listen to something that's trying to express "The Blue Danube",
>that's musical imagery merely trying to re-create it in an art form, like
>any other language (I majored in what was then called Semiotics-- signs and
>symbols). Even something like Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" has a fairly
>predictable 1-2-3 bass line, upon which the sax can improvise.
>
>Still, I think it's an interesting construct. I happen to be a musician
>myself. Sometimes I write lyrics first, then put them to what feels like
>appropriate music. Other times I write music, then try to express the
>gesture further in poetry. Goes both ways, for me.
>

Cool. Each Culture has its own prime symbol. For Classical man
it was the corporal body, for Magian man it was the shaft of light
into the cavern, for Western man, infinite extension into space.

'All we see before us passing
Sign and symbol is alone."

final stanza _Faust II_ - Goethe

>>>>with a morphological insight
>>>>into the phenomenon of the cultural lifecycle, as well as human
ethology,
>>>>leading one to perceive the three stages of human development?
>
>>Which word don't you understand?
>
>Just--- what are you trying to say? That we need to reintegrate the
>hemispheres of our brain, as I think of it? The "three stages" sound to be
>like an interesting construct. Similarly, I've often thought of Freud's
>Id/Libido as Dionysus and Ego/Super-Ego as Apollo/Socrates. Civilization
>and Its Discontents...
>
>Question for me becomes: how to UNalienate. In Camus's words, how to make
>"the stranger" not estranged anymore. (Camus died with a copy of The Gay
>Science in his crashed car.)

Man is both creature and creator. It is part our tragic destiny that
we, of all the creatures, are the ultimate rebels against Nature and
it is the human condition to be tragically alienated from Nature, and
therefore, ourselves.

>>The final struggle for the soul of the state has already begun.
>
>There is no "final", just as there was no "beginning", in my opinion. It's
>evolution. We are where we are, and we take it from there.

Death is final, accept it. Everything born, dies. Is that
so unbearable?  BGE 209 ; 'cet esprit fataliste, ironique,
mephistophelique.' What could be better than a North Pole
expedition of the spirit beneath desolate and dangerous skies?

>>>
>>>Nietzsche provides no stable ground, which is similar to Keats' "negative
>>>capability", in my view. If there IS no stable ground, however... one
must
>>>have ideals, such as Siddhartha and Jesus had, don't you think?
>>>
>>>        ---Randall Albright
>>>
>>For the physiognomic sceptic, Nietzsche, with some judicious weeding
>>out here and there, provides a superlative foundation....
>
>Physiognomy: the study of facial features. What are you saying? Nietzsche
>was a dark, brooding guy. It was written on his face much of the time. I'd
>personally have that be ONE of my many rainbow of moods that I move
>through, myself.
>
>>As for Jesus, he was quite clear:
>>
>>1. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's
>>2. My kingdom is not of this world.
>
>Well... he DID say a few more things than that, John! Like:
>
>1. Love your neighbor as yourself. (Or some variation on that.)
>2. Forgive one another, as you would at least pretend that God is doing for
you.
>3. Care for the poor.
>
>Although Jesus died a martyr, and is something that perhaps Nietzsche would
>rather not like, I might point out that much of what Jesus said was
>reiterated hundreds of years earlier by Siddhartha, who lived a much longer
>life. As far as Jesus's kingdom not being of this world? Well...
>complicated, isn't it? Who's the first one in, last one out, to places like
>Ethiopia for famine much of the time? Catholic Church. Maybe it's just to
>save souls, but they're there. Jesus, in my book, was a nice guy. I have no
>problem, like Nietzsche's disciple, D.H. Lawrence, who tried to re-write
>his life ("The Man Who Died"), and have him come down off the cross. I
>think that's how Jesus wanted to go, and he had every right to do it
>(Pilate gave him at least a few chances to avoid it, as I recall.)
>

Between the hero and the saint lies not wisdom, but banality.
It behooves one to squarely face the issue of *which* world wherein
he chooses to fulfill his destiny.

>But, personally, I prefer Master mentality to Slave mentality because it's
>from a position of power that I can better help people. If I give all my
>money away to the poor, I then become poor and am dependent on the very
>hand-outs which I supposedly pitied. So that part of the Jesus doctrine
>doesn't make sense, whereas Nietzsche's does (at least the way *I*
>interpret it at this point).
>
>Take care---
>
>        Randall Albright
>                http://world.std.com/~albright/

Nietzsche was *off* on master/slave morality. The second phase
of human development wherein modern language was created was
collective action according to plan. What good is a will-less follower?

Regards--

         John T. Duryea



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