There are many wonderful things in Nietzsche and he is not difficult to understand or in need of endless scholarly exegesis to understand him. He speaks plainly. Let me list the good things:
1) He prefers the ever assertive and irrepressible Dionysian life-force to the hyper-rationalistic and sometimes life-denying Apollonian. He puts reason and science in their place in relation to instinct. This seems in accord with the Creator of Haydn's 'Die Schöpfung' type who looks on creation and finds it good.
"....That contempt has been taught for the primary instincts of life; that 'a soul', 'a spirit' has been lyingly invented in order to destroy the body; that one teaches that there is somethingunclean in the precondition of life, sexuality."
'Why I am Destiny' 7 - 'Ecce Homo'
"...The concept 'soul', 'spirit', finally even 'immortal soul, invented so as to despise the body, so as to make it sick - 'holy'...
'Why I am Destiny' 8 - 'Ecce Homo'
2) He hates life-postponing or life-avoiding idealism of the Platonic or, in some cases, "Christian" kind which seeks .
"The concept 'the Beyond', 'real world' invented so as to deprive of value the only world which exists - so as to leave over no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality!"
'Why I am Destiny' 8 - 'Ecce Homo'
3) He hates servile passive-aggressive people filled with the vengeful ressentiment of the weak. These people very much resemble the 'clod' in Blake's 'The Clod and the Pebble' or his 'modest rose' and 'threatening sheep in 'The Lily'.
4) He hates the Pharisaical priesthoods that contrive to subjugate and control people.
"...that parasitic species of man the priest, who, with the aid of morality has lied himself up to being the determiner of mankind's values - who divines in Christian morality his means to power......And that is in fact my insight: the teachers, the leaders of mankind, theologians included, have also one and all been décadent: thence the revaluation of all values into the inimical to life, thence morality.....Definition of morality: morality - the idiosyncrasy of décadents with the hidden intention of avenging themselves on life - and successfully."
'Why I am Destiny' 7 - 'Ecce Homo'
5) He advocates 'selfishness' in contract to a hand-wringing, virtue-signalling 'selflessness.' In this he is simply asserting the importance of self-possession and maintaining a proper distance from others in order to sustain a proper personal integrity.
"........that the evil principle is sought in that which is most profoundly necessary for prosperity, in strict selfishness (- the very word is slanderous!); that on the other hand one sees in the typical signs of decline and contradictoriness of instinct, in the 'selfless', in loss of centre of gravity, in 'depersonalisation' and 'love of one's neighbour' ( - lust for one's neighbour!) the higher value, what am I saying! value in itself!...."
How could one disagree with any of these things?
His mistakes:
1) See 4) above. He completely fails to notice that the four Gospels are configured to give a narrative of an uncompromising and ever-mounting battle between Christ and the religious priesthood who eventually seem to triumph over his provocations by achieving his judicial murder. This should have given Nietzsche pause for thought as Christ seems to be playing a role consonant with his own take on religion.
2) He dubs himself 'the immoralist' 'beyond Good and Evil.' But then he has Zarathustra say:
"You highest men my eyes have encountered! This is my doubt of you and my secret laughter: I think you would call my superman a devil!
Your souls are so unfamiliar with what is is great that the superman would be fearful to you in his goodness......"
'Also Sprach Zarathustra' Part II - 'Of Manly Prudence' quoted in 'Ecce Homo'
So, yes, he goes beyond a kind of bourgeois concept of good and evil but simply hits up against the concepts of good and evil which are, in practice, indispensable in human affairs. What he's really saying is that the bourgeois scale of values imposed by little people is inadequate and not real good and evil which is fair enough. His works include strings of value judgements which can only relate to a perceived, admittedly, in his mind, higher, moral framework.
3) "Have I been understood? - Dionysus against the crucified?" The closing words of 'Ecce Homo.' He misunderstands that the crucified is the God of the 'Schöpfung' who created the life-force , instinct and 'the Dionysian'. Christ explicitly battles the priestly forces of death whom he terms 'whited sepulchres.' Compare that to the raising of Lazarus from the bone-filled sepulchre. So the world, even in the Christian era, is always configured of those pro-life and those anti-life who may even use religion to impose their anti-life power. But the crucified is the opposite to that and the opponent of it. If I am right in this it inverts, in a very Nietzschean manner, Nietzsche's framework.
No comments :
Post a Comment