File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1998/nietzsche.9808, message 210


From: lambdac-AT-globalserve.net
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 03:54:45 -0500
Subject: Nietzsche & Bruno (was Re. Tolerance)



David RJ wrote-

>Isn't it where perspectivism shows up? Doesn't Nietzsche charge Giordano 
>Bruno in BGE of a "lack of philosophical good humor", by giving his life 
>for his ideas? Wasn't he christian here?

You would be making a legitimate assumption about this, had Nietzsche's
assessment been accurate.  But was it, in this respect?  Nietzsche
wrote  (BGE 25) - 

"How poisonous, how cunning, how bad every protracted war makes one when
it cannot be waged with open force!  How _personal_ a protracted fear
makes one, a protracted keeping watch for enemies, for possible
enemies!  These outcasts of society, long persecuted and sorely hunted-
also the enforced recluses, the Spinozas and Giordano Brunos- in the end
always become refined vengeance-seekers and brewers of poison, even if
they do so under the most spiritual masquerade and perhaps without being
themselves aware if it (just dig up the foundation of Spinoza's ethics
and theology!)- not to speak of the stupidity of moral indignation,
which is in the philosopher an unfailing sign that he has lost his
philosophical sense of humor.  The martyrdom of the philosopher, his
'sacrifice for truth', brings to light what there has been in him of
agitator and actor"

Leaving Spinoza aside  - did Bruno become a vengeance-seeker, a brewer
of poison or devoid of philosophical sense of humor, someone bent on a
martyrdom for truth?  

After 14 years of wandering throughout Europe Bruno, an ex-Dominican
monk, was invited to Venice by a young nobleman posing as a protector of
the arts, whose name was Mocenigo.  When Bruno sensed Mocenigo was a
vampire, he tried to leave but Mocenigo had him arrested and charged by
the Inquisition with atheism, infidel blasphemy, immoral conduct, heresy
in the matters of theology, philosophy and cosmology.  Bruno refused to
recant his books and his science and rotted in jail for six years in a
Papal prison.  The entire record of his interrogation and torture has,
to this day, never been released by the Vatican.  Maybe Mr. Rhodes can
tell us why.   He was sentenced to death and burned at the stake on the
Campo del Fiori in Rome, Feb. 17, 1600.  Upon hearing his sentence he
exclaimed - "Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me
with greater fear than I receive it.".  When the crucifix was brought to
his face, at the stake, he violently repelled it with derision.

Since his books were forbidden by the Index Expurgatorius of August 7,
1603, Bruno has been dismissed as a stage ranter who peddled Copernican
ideas, and yet was destitute of science.  Nothing could be further from
the facts - Bruno alone had outdone Copernicus, Kepler, Newton and even
modern astronomy: he had outdone a description of the Solar System which
was yet to be accepted, the heliocentric conception where planets
describe either closed circles or ellipses around the sun -- because he
had discovered the motion proper to the sun, a motion which, to this
day, has remained poorly understood as the galactic motion of the solar
system.  

Typically, what most commentators take of Bruno is:

"Bruno's cosmology is contained in his dialogue Del Infinito. In this
work he refutes the traditional Aristotelian cosmology and states that
the physical universe is infinite and includes an indefinite number of
worlds each consisting of a sun and several planets. The earth becomes
thus a small star among the others in an infinite universe."

Yet, Bruno did far more than that.  He began resolving the riddle of the
(vicious) circle long before Nietzsche even posed it to himself.  In
"Heroic Frenzies", 1st Part, 5th dialogue, he writes - 

"C. But what is the meaning of that figure of the sun with a circle
inside it and another circle outside of it, and of the motto, Circuit
('It revolves in a circle')? 

T. I'm sure I would never have understood the meaning of the figure if
the author himself had not explained it to me. Now it must be understood
that Circuit refers to the motion the sun makes around the double circle
drawn inside it and around it to signify that the sun both moves itself
and is moved at the same time. 

Granted that those circles express poorly the coexistence of movement
and rest, we can nevertheless say that they have been put there to
signify a single revolution. And so I am content with the subject and
form of the heroic emblem. "

The Circuit is not circular (nor elliptical) because the sun itself is
moved - moved with a moving mover (the Aether), not by an unmoving
mover.  Bruno, the aetheronaut.

So, back to those who write-

"An examination of his actions during this period of exile makes clear
that almost all of his misfortunes were brought down upon himself
without the Inquisition's help [!!!]. He outraged the faculty at Oxford
with his lectures, he became embroiled in violent quarrels over trivial
matters, and generally succeeded in alienating those people best able to
protect him. His actions during this period reveal the very hallmark of
folly, namely repeated failure to act in his own best interests even
when reasonable alternatives were available. (...) In many ways, Bruno
thrust himself into the flames that rose into the winter skies of the
Campo di Fiore on the 17th day of February in 1600."

Isn't this a bit easy?  Does it not smack of priestly justification? 
Did Bruno not try to leave Mocenigo's palace?  Once arrested, should he
have proclaimed himself a dupe just to save his skin?  Should he have
died instead in abject fear for his life - in bed with his shoes off, or
at the stake kissing the crucifix?  And was his imprisonment and murder
the outcome of his desire to seek vengeance and brew poison?  What
poison did he brew that to this day his books are basically unavailable,
unread and the record of his inquisition still secret?  Had Nietzsche
been arrested in the same fashion and told to recant his philosophy and
its plateaus, does anyone believe he would have recanted anything other
than in riddles, provocations, mockery and histrionics?  Isn't it to the
dung the crucifix belongs?  Why did Nietzsche sign his Dionysiac letters
as Dionysus the Crucified?  Isn't Survival the permanent crucifixion of
Life?  Did Reich also seek his own destruction?  And was Artaud a fool
when he wrote in his preface to The Theater and its Double - "and if
there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our
dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake,
signaling through the flames"?  It is when the tragedy ends that the
real cruelty begins - having to wage wars with open force (Reich did not
go far enough, it is not just the tragedy of knowledge...).  Wasn't
Bruno just another suicided of society?  Wasn't he signaling through the
flames?  If he died with joy and fearless, should we hold that against
him?

>Maybe it's perspectivism, not tolerance. And isn't this philosophical 
>good humor the joy- that is intrinsical to perspectivism- the joy of the 
>scientist that laughs after his discovery, for realizing that what he 
>found out is also a "useful fiction"? Doesn't this leads us to la gaya 
>scienza?
>
>One more question? Is perspectivism selective as the Deleuzian version 
>of the ER-for which, Lambda C, I agree, there have been no alternatives 
>lately - or does it assume that all perspectives are valid? This doesn't 
>seem very Nietzschean to me.

Nietzsche's assessment in BGE is poor precisely because the Dionysian
type knows that only the noble perspectives can become life-affirmative,
in thought and in action.  Bruno's fight was the fight of life-affirming
knowledge against the Life-denying organ-ization of the body, the
Judgement of God and its organic system.  Bruno did not die for himself,
nor for his knowledge or his truth.  He did not die for anything or
anyone.  He was murdered for his knowledge just as Life is murdered for
its power every day in a human world still ruled by the organized
emotional plague.

Lambda C

"Whereof, however obscure the night may be, I await the daybreak"
GB "Il Candelajo"

"Beyond the clouds, in the highest region, sometimes when I burn in
delirium, for the refreshment and deliverance of my spirit I form a
castle of fire in the air. "
GB "Heroic Frenzies"


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