Thoughts about Friedrich Nietzsche and his work?

[j_j]

@Joshs

Difference is not just what appears between beings, but what constitutes beings, identity, subjectivity, and thought themselves.

I grant that some kind of pointing is going on here. I’m with you on groundlessness. But difference, as one more concept, is one more being.

So far, I’m not sold on Deleuze. I haven’t given up on his stuff, but it remains merely vaguely suggestive to me. Perhaps he is saying, in his own idiolect, what I’ve been saying about Plato’s unwritten doctrine. The “idea” is not “prior to” the quality it “informs.” We don’t need no mind of God before the creation.

Difference as “constituting beings” is already in Saussure, more or less, if one reads objects in the world as generalized signs.

@Joshs

Feuerbach replaces God with love, species-being, and human communion.But why is love , compassion and reconciliation privileged over a panoply of other affective attunements?

I find Feuerbach’s emphasis on love quite shocking and daring. Yes, it is narrow. But he’s almost a rational mystic. He wrote that a few years after The Essence of Christianity. So he’s strangely a religious thinker, obsessed with “God,” and yet an atheist.

@Joshs

Nietzsche, Deleuze and Foucault ground truth-effects in struggle among forces. This is also why Heidegger places anxiety as more primordial than love. Love is a deficient mode of uncanniness, not-being-at-home and radical alterity.

Are we to celebrate uncanniness ? For most the whole is precisely to feel intensely “at home” in the world. We might question whether uncanniness is the only way to open up our groundlessness. How do we forgive our own mortality ? For some, this involves a finding of ourselves in others, and of others in ourselves. Feuerbach’s first book attacked the attachment to personal immortality as missing the point. As I see it, we are talking about something that is not just fancy-people theory. And I like fancy-people theory. But I don’t like this framing of X who deconstructs Y who deconstructs Z ad infinitum. A guy wants told me that Ayler eats Coleman for breakfast. So I’m not going to listen to Ornette now ?

I don’t expect or demand a true and final pointing. Feuerbach is a profound thinker, somehow mostly forgotten, misremembered in terms of a tired caricature.

But I encourage you to tell me more about Deleuze. Paraphrase, example, whatever.

[Corvus]

@Arne

I suspect your answers are at least as good as mine.

I like interpretations that rings bell and make sense to me.

But there are definitely some interpretations which sound nonsense, which then I need to disagree with, or ask the poster what the hell do you mean by that.

[j_j]

I’d like to get your take on these passages from The Will to Power.

The concept of substance is a consequence of the concept of the subject: not the reverse! If we relinquish the soul, “the subject,” the precondition for “substance” in general disappears. One acquires degrees of being, one loses that which has being. Critique of “reality” : where does the “more or less real,” the gradation of being in which we believe, lead to?— The degree to which we feel life and power (logic and coherence of experience) gives us our measure of “being,” “reality,” not-appearance. The subject: this is the term for our belief in a unity underlying all the different impulses of the highest feeling of reality: we understand this belief as the effect of one cause— we believe so firmly in our belief that for its sake we imagine “truth,” “reality,” “substantiality” in general.— “The subject” is the fiction that many similar states in us are the effect of one substratum: but it is we who first created the “similarity” of these states; our adjusting them and making them similar is the fact, not their similarity (—which ought rather to be denied— ).

Note the complexity of the use of “fiction” here, even as reality is put in question. I don’t object. We need not read “fiction” so pseudo-literally. Need not presuppose that this is an attempt to mirror reality.

We would have to know what being is, in order to decide whether this or that is real (e.g., “the facts of consciousness” ); in the same way, what certainty is, what knowledge is, and the like.— But since we do not know this, a critique of the faculty of knowledge is senseless: how should a tool be able to criticize itself when it can use only itself for the critique? It cannot even define itself!

Must all philosophy not ultimately bring to light the preconditions upon which the process of reason depends?— our belief in the “ego” as a substance, as the sole reality from which we ascribe reality to things in general? The oldest “realism” at last comes to light: at the same time that the entire religious history of mankind is recognized as the history of the soul superstition. Here we come to a limit: our thinking itself involves this belief (with its distinction of substance, accident; deed, doer, etc. ); to let it go means: being no longer able to think.

Psychological derivation of our belief in reason.— The concept “reality,” “being,” is taken from our feeling of the “subject.” “The subject” : interpreted from within ourselves, so that the ego counts as a substance, as the cause of all deeds, as a doer. The logical-metaphysical postulates, the belief in substance, accident, attribute, etc., derive their convincing force from our habit of regarding all our deeds as consequences of our will—so that the ego, as substance, does not vanish in the multiplicity of change.— But there is no such thing as will.

-– We have no categories at all that permit us to distinguish a “world in itself” from a “world of appearance.” All our categories of reason are of sensual origin: derived from the empirical world. “The soul,” “the ego”— the history of these concepts shows that here, too, the oldest distinction (“breath,” “life”)— If there is nothing material, there is also nothing immaterial. The concept no longer contains anything. No subject “atoms.” The sphere of a subject constantly growing or decreasing, the center of the system constantly shifting; In cases where it cannot organize the appropriate mass, it breaks into two parts; On the other hand, it can transform a weaker subject into its functionary without destroying it, and to a certain degree form a new unity with it. No “substance,” rather something that in itself strives after greater strength, and that wants to “preserve” itself only indirectly (it wants to surpass itself— )

This is generally great, and of course the bolded part is especially liberating.

[Kit]

Want me to teach you something simple about Nietzsche? He’s not an idealist. His whole philosophy is mainly about cutting out the transcendental bullshit and talking about lived experiences and the psychology of those experiences…

If you’re looking for an over all system, it’s there but its bare bones. Like when you read the section on Beyond Good and Evil in Ecce Homo Nietzsche details to distinct periods in his works, a yea saying phase, and a negative portion which includes the transvaluation of all values. Zarathustra is a bridge that contains both portions.

It’s about how a difference in considering a multiplicity of perspectives can bring wisdom instead on everyone aiming for the same damn ideals.

Thia is why Nietzsche says the “overman” is only possible when one endures to suffer with others from themselves.

Nietzsche considers a Higher-Type of person to be a person who determines their own values. “What is injurious to you is injurious period.”

Idols is his term for all ideals, hence “Twilight of Idols.” Nationalism, racism, Nazism, antisemitism, all those lovely isms represent some type of ideal. “Idealism is the soil in which nothing grows.”

The idealism of Judaism was to transfigure the Dionysian forces of nature into the concept of Woman, and its aims were to extirpate half of humanity from humans through idealism.

Mind you these are all Nietzsche’s interpretation of moralizing and the “bad conscience.” Which Nietzsche claims becomes a pathology of all moralizing systems that presuppose an ideal type.

[Tom_Storm]

Thanks. Yes, I have a fair idea about his project(s) through wider reading. I’m not sure his work has much in it for me. I’m not looking to philosophy for answers; I’m more curious about what people believe and why.

I’m more interested in Nietzsche as a precursor to post-structuralist thinking. Lee Braver, for instance describes Nietzsche as a thinker who helps break down the idea that truth is a straightforward match with reality, and instead pushes the view that what we call truth is shaped by interpretation and perspective rather than fixed essences. I think if I found the writing style, the prose poetry engaging, I’d probably find him fun.

[Kit]

Will to Power is as Nietzsche details the primitive form of affect (BGE 36). Or as he details in Will to Power 619 I believe “the inner character of energy.”

As for this ststement, you’re reifying from tour own experience…

@praxis

I don’t think that creativity, self-overcoming, and the affirmation of life is a feeling. I think it’s something that you do, and it’s not easy. In fact, it’s very difficult.

We can see for Nietzsche he is the opposite of a heroic nature that needs to struggle. The below is from Ecce Homo:

For the task of transvaluing values, more capacities were needful perhaps than could well be found side by side in one individual; and above all, antagonistic capacities which had to be free from the mutual strife and destruction which they involve. An order of rank among capacities; distance; the art of separating without creating hostility; to refrain from confounding things; to keep from reconciling things; to possess enormous multifariousness and yet to be the reverse of chaos—all this was the first condition, the long secret work, and the artistic mastery of my instinct. Its superior guardianship manifested itself with such exceeding strength, that not once did I ever dream of what was growing within me—until suddenly all my capacities were ripe, and one day burst forth in all the perfection of their highest bloom. I cannot remember ever having exerted myself, I can point to no trace of struggle in my life; I am the reverse of a heroic nature. To “will” something, to “strive” after something, to have an “aim” or a “desire” in my mind—I know none of these things from experience.

And we can see how this is clarified in Will to Power:

His friends say this or that illness is the cause of it I say: the fact that he became ill, the fact that he did not resist illness, was in itself already the outcome of impoverished life, of hereditary exhaustion. The newspaper reader says: such and such a party by committing such an error will meet its death. My superior politics say: a party that can make such mistakes, is in its last agony—it no longer possesses any certainty of instinct. Every mistake is in every sense the sequel to degeneration of the instincts, to disintegration of the will. This is almost the definition of evil, Everything valuable is instinct—and consequently easy, necessary, free. Exertion is an objection, the god is characteristically different from the hero (in my language: light feet are the first attribute of divinity).

[Kit]

Aye, and Analytic Philosophy came rightfully after Nietzsche’s casting of doubt upon the psychology of grammar and how it can trick us into poor interpretations especially when all of our interpretations of things are secretly lead on by our instincts.

Lile there’s surprisingly alot of Nietzsche in Wittgenstein and Quine for example… just like Heraclitus and others were in Nietzsche. I like tracing thoughts. A bit of a philologist. And Nietzsche’s a good center for that because its a before and after period with Nietzsche.

[praxis]

I haven’t made any metaphysical claims or moral judgments, and I can acknowledge difficulty without it defining who I am.

You’re probably right though, I was born with a devilishly poor capacity for introspection. It’s just who I am.

[Joshs]

@j_j

I’d like to get your take on these passages from The Will to Power.

Note the complexity of the use of “fiction” here, even as reality is put in question. I don’t object. We need not read “fiction” so pseudo-literally. Need not presuppose that this is an attempt to mirror reality.

Yes, the world is appearance but if there is no ‘real’ than there is no appearance either. The world is a fiction but without truth there can be no fiction. Nietzsche admits to being playful with grammar here.

It is no more than a moral prejudice that the truth is worth more than appearance; in fact, it is the world’s most poorly proven assumption. Let us admit this much: that life could not exist except on the basis of perspectival valuations and appearances; and if, with the virtuous enthusiasm and inanity of many philosophers, someone wanted to completely abolish the “world of appearances,” – well, assuming you could do that, – at least there would not be any of your “truth” left either! Actually, why do we even assume that “true” and “false” are intrinsically opposed?

Isn’t it enough to assume that there are levels of appearance and, as it were, lighter and darker shades and tones of appearance – different valeurs, to use the language of painters? Why shouldn’t the world that is relevant to us – be a fiction? And if someone asks: “But doesn’t fiction belong with an author?” – couldn’t we shoot back: “Why? Doesn’t this ‘belonging’ belong, perhaps, to fiction as well? Aren’t we allowed to be a bit ironic with the subject, as we are with the predicate and object? Shouldn’t philosophers rise above the belief in grammar?

With all due respect to governesses, isn’t it about time philosophy renounced governess-beliefs?” – The world with which we are concerned is false, i.e., is not fact but fable and approximation on the basis of a meager sum of observations; it is “in flux,” as something in a state of becoming, as a falsehood always changing but never getting near the truth: for–there is no “truth” (Will to Power.)

[j_j]

@Joshs

Yes, the world is appearance but if there is no ‘real’ than there is no appearance either. The world is a fiction but without truth there can be no fiction. Nietzsche admits to being playful with grammar here.

I think Nietzsche, in some passages, comes off as metaphysical realist. This adds significance to his questioning of the will-to-truth. Why not untruth, if we thrive thereby ?

We get, even in late works like Ecce Homo, passages like this:

He who knows how to breathe in the air of my writings is conscious that it is the air of the heights, that it is bracing. A man must be built for it, otherwise the chances are that it will chill him. The ice is near, the loneliness is terrible—but how serenely everything lies in the sunshine! how freely one can breathe! how much, one feels, lies beneath one! Philosophy, as I have understood it hitherto, is a voluntary retirement into regions of ice and mountain-peaks—the seeking—out of everything strange and questionable in existence, everything upon which, hitherto, morality has set its ban. Through long experience, derived from such wanderings in forbidden country, I acquired an opinion very different from that which may seem generally desirable, of the causes which hitherto have led to men’s moralising and idealising. The secret history of philosophers, the psychology of their great names, was revealed to me. How much truth can a certain mind endure; how much truth can it dare?—these questions became for me ever more and more the actual test of values. Error (the belief in the ideal) is not blindness; error is cowardice… Every conquest, every step forward in knowledge, is the outcome of courage, of hardness towards one’s self, of cleanliness towards one’s self. I do not refute ideals; all I do is to draw on my gloves in their presence… Nitimur in vetitum; with this device my philosophy will one day be victorious; for that which has hitherto been most stringently forbidden is, without exception, Truth.

This to me suggests something like psycho-analytic truth. Nietzsche discusses “heights,” but opposes the “ideal.” His heights are just as much depths. He can endure staring into the abyss, gazing on the “face of God,” a lethal experience for most.

While this side of Nietzsche is too self-celebrating for some, I think it’s the core pose of philosophy. The truth hurts, and pain is weakness leaving the body. “God hates a coward.” Those who mock it engage in what they mock, the one game of assertion of a greater proximity to X, with X varying in flavor but not in its role.

Even stepping back from that role looks like an inversion of the proximity game, with \neg X substituted for X. A closer walk with dog.

[Joshs]

@j_j

I think Nietzsche, in some passages, comes off as metaphysical realist. This adds significance to his questioning of the will-to-truth. Why not untruth, if we thrive thereby ?

We get, even in late works like Ecce Homo, passages like this: How much truth can a certain mind endure; how much truth can it dare

Foucault has a distinctly non-realist take on what Nietzsche means here. He distinguishes two uses of truth:

There are therefore two “truths without truth”: —the truth that is error, lie, illusion: the truth that is not true; —the truth freed from this truth-lie: the truthful truth, the truth that is not reciprocable with being.

—Truth is not true if it is knowledge, since all knowledge is an illusion. —Truth is not true insofar as it is non-knowledge, since it superim-poses on knowledge or replaces knowledge with a system of error. —Truth is not true when it claims to be knowledge, it is lie.

Which allows us:

a—to lay down as principle that truth cannot be the predicate of itself. Truth is not true. All truth is deployed in the non-true; the truth is non-true. There is no ontology of truth. In the predicative judgment: truth is true, the verb to be has the ontological meaning: truth exists. Nietzsche transforms the skeptical assertion “truth does not exist” into a series of paradoxes deriving from the proposition: truth is not true.

b—to distribute the major categories of the non true truth:

—illusion, that is to say, truth insofar as it is a mode of knowledge; —error, insofar as it is violence done to knowledge (and therefore non-knowledge); —lie, insofar as this non-knowledge claims to dissipate the illusion of all knowledge although it is knowledge.

Starting from here, we can see the Nietzschean task: to think the history of truth without relying on truth. In an element where truth does not exist: this element is appearance. Appearance, this is the element of the non-true within which the truth dawns. And in doing so it redistributes appearance into the cat-egories of illusion, error, and lie. Appearance is the indefinite of truth. Illusion, error, and lie are the differences introduced by truth into the game of appearance. But these differences are not only the effects of truth; they are truth itself. We can also say:

—Truth makes appearance appear as illusion, error, lie.

Or:

—Illusion, error, and lie is the mode of being of truth in the indefinite element of appearance. —Illusion, or the root of truth. —Error, or the system of truth. —Lie, or the operation of truth.

See the texts on truth as error:

“Truth is a sort of error.”

“What in the final instance are man’s truths? They are irrefutable errors.”

On the renunciation of truth:

“The belief that there is no truth , the nihilist belief, is a great relaxation of all the limbs for the champion of knowledge who is constantly struggling with ugly truths.”

A conviction that no epoch has ever had: we do not have the truth. Previously everybody had the truth, even the skeptics. On appearance:

“‘ Appearance ,’ as I understand it, is the true and sole reality of things, that to which all existing predicates are suited … I do not posit ‘appearance’ as the opposite of ‘reality’; I assert rather that appearance is reality, that it is that which is opposed to what transforms reality into an imaginary ‘true world‘.

To summarize: In Aristotle, the will to know derived from the preexistence of knowledge; it was nothing other the delay of knowledge with regard to itself and that is why it was desire, even less than “desire,” it was desire-pleasure. And this was possible only insofar as knowledge (in the most elementary form of sensation) was already related to truth. In Nietzsche, knowledge is an illusory effect of the fraudulent assertion of truth: the will that brings both of them has this double character: (1) of not being will to know but will to power; (2) of founding a relationship of reciprocal cruelty and destruction between knowledge and truth. The will is what says in a double and superimposed voice: I want the truth so much that I do not want to know and I want to know up to that point and that limit that I wish there was no longer any truth. The will to power is the breaking point at which both truth and knowledge come apart and destroy each other.

[Joshs]

@j_j

I think Nietzsche, in some passages, comes off as metaphysical realist. This adds significance to his questioning of the will-to-truth. Why not untruth, if we thrive thereby ?

We get, even in late works like Ecce Homo, passages like this: How much truth can a certain mind endure; how much truth can it dare

Foucault has a distinctly non-realist take on what Nietzsche means here. He distinguishes two uses of truth:

There are therefore two “truths without truth”: —the truth that is error, lie, illusion: the truth that is not true; —the truth freed from this truth-lie: the truthful truth, the truth that is not reciprocable with being.

—Truth is not true if it is knowledge, since all knowledge is an illusion. —Truth is not true insofar as it is non-knowledge, since it superim-poses on knowledge or replaces knowledge with a system of error. —Truth is not true when it claims to be knowledge, it is lie.

Which allows us:

a—to lay down as principle that truth cannot be the predicate of itself. Truth is not true. All truth is deployed in the non-true; the truth is non-true. There is no ontology of truth. In the predicative judgment: truth is true, the verb to be has the ontological meaning: truth exists. Nietzsche transforms the skeptical assertion “truth does not exist” into a series of paradoxes deriving from the proposition: truth is not true.

b—to distribute the major categories of the non true truth:

—illusion, that is to say, truth insofar as it is a mode of knowledge; —error, insofar as it is violence done to knowledge (and therefore non-knowledge); —lie, insofar as this non-knowledge claims to dissipate the illusion of all knowledge although it is knowledge.

Starting from here, we can see the Nietzschean task: to think the history of truth without relying on truth. In an element where truth does not exist: this element is appearance. Appearance, this is the element of the non-true within which the truth dawns. And in doing so it redistributes appearance into the cat-egories of illusion, error, and lie. Appearance is the indefinite of truth. Illusion, error, and lie are the differences introduced by truth into the game of appearance. But these differences are not only the effects of truth; they are truth itself. We can also say:

—Truth makes appearance appear as illusion, error, lie.

Or:

—Illusion, error, and lie is the mode of being of truth in the indefinite element of appearance. —Illusion, or the root of truth. —Error, or the system of truth. —Lie, or the operation of truth.

See the texts on truth as error:

“Truth is a sort of error.”

“What in the final instance are man’s truths? They are irrefutable errors.”

On the renunciation of truth:

“The belief that there is no truth , the nihilist belief, is a great relaxation of all the limbs for the champion of knowledge who is constantly struggling with ugly truths.”

A conviction that no epoch has ever had: we do not have the truth. Previously everybody had the truth, even the skeptics. On appearance:

“‘ Appearance ,’ as I understand it, is the true and sole reality of things, that to which all existing predicates are suited … I do not posit ‘appearance’ as the opposite of ‘reality’; I assert rather that appearance is reality, that it is that which is opposed to what transforms reality into an imaginary ‘true world‘.

To summarize: In Aristotle, the will to know derived from the preexistence of knowledge; it was nothing other the delay of knowledge with regard to itself and that is why it was desire, even less than “desire,” it was desire-pleasure. And this was possible only insofar as knowledge (in the most elementary form of sensation) was already related to truth. In Nietzsche, knowledge is an illusory effect of the fraudulent assertion of truth: the will that brings both of them has this double character: (1) of not being will to know but will to power; (2) of founding a relationship of reciprocal cruelty and destruction between knowledge and truth. The will is what says in a double and superimposed voice: I want the truth so much that I do not want to know and I want to know up to that point and that limit that I wish there was no longer any truth. The will to power is the breaking point at which both truth and knowledge come apart and destroy each other.

[Kit]

You didn’t, no, I was merely giving Nietzsche’s own detailing of his conception of Will to Power in a few 4 word statements “Primitive form of Affect,” and “inner character of energy.” To give some semblance of a backdrop to what he means by “Power.”

Which seems to be some notion of reaching out and affecting the world.

[Joshs]

@Kit

Which seems to be some notion of reaching out and affecting the world.

I would say it’s more of a being-affected-by the world, or that the world reaches out and affects itself.
Power isn’t something owned or utilized by a controlling subject. The subject is a mere effect of the circulation of power relations.

[Kit]

Well, sure, I mean I did after all just throw together a quick reply. It’s that there is a certain immanence of a “thing” that generally makes it readily apparent. This immanence of a thing is often clouded by the testimony we give about its appearance. And it’s obvious to me you’re well aquainted with Twilight, and the seduction of the psychology of grammar. The majority of all testimonies are reductionist in the sense of reducing multiplicity and becoming to unity and being. Another factor of grammar psychology that’s hard to overcome is thinking in the Linear sense, like how grammar tends to have us think one link in a chain following another.

[j_j]

@Joshs

The will is what says in a double and superimposed voice: I want the truth so much that I do not want to know and I want to know up to that point and that limit that I wish there was no longer any truth.

I’m with that. To me it’s basically cynically humorous psychology.

I’ll share an old favorite passage from unjustly neglected Sartre.

To know is to devour with the eyes. … We remarked that the work of art is like a fixed emanation of the mind. The mind is continually creating it and yet it stands alone and indifferent in relation to that creation.
…
This same relation exists in the act of knowing, but its opposite is not excluded. In knowing, consciousness attracts the object to itself incorporates it in itself. Knowledge is assimilation. The writings of French epistomology swarm with alimentary metaphors (absorption, digestion, assimilation). There is a movement of dissolution which passes from the object to the knowing subject.
…
The known is transformed into me; it becomes my thought and thereby consents to receive its existence from me alone. But this movement of dissolution is fixed by the fact that the known remains in the same place, indefinitely absorbed, devoured, and yet indefinitely intact, wholly digested and yet wholly outside, as indigestible as a stone.
…
For naive imaginations the symbol of the “digested indigestible” is very important; for example, the stone in the stomach of the ostrich or Jonah in the stomach of the whale. The symbol represents the dream of a non-destructive assimilation. It is an unhappy fact — as Hegel noted — that desire destroys its object. In this sense, he said, desire is the desire of devouring.
…
In reaction against this dialectical necessity, the For-itself dreams of an object which may be entirely assimilated by me, which would be me, without dissolving into me but still keeping the structure of the in-itself; for what I desire exactly is this object; and if I eat it, I do not have it any more, I find nothing remaining except myself.
…
This impossible synthesis of assimilation and an assimilated which maintains its integrity, has deep-rooted connections with basic sexual drives. The idea of “carnal possession” offers us the irritating but seductive figure of a body perpetually possessed and perpetually new, on which possession leaves no trace. This is deeply symbolized in the quality of “smooth” or “polished.”
…
What is smooth can be taken and felt but remains no less impenetrable, does not give way in the least beneath the appropriative caress-it is like water. This is the reason why erotic descriptions insist on the smooth whiteness of a woman’s body. Smooth is what reforms itself under the caress, as water re-forms itself in its passage over the stone which has pierced it. At the same time, as we have seen earlier, the lover’s dream is to identify the beloved object with himself and still preserve for it its own individuality; let the Other become me without ceasing to be the Other.
…
It is at this point that we encounter the similarity to scientific research: the known object, like the stone in the stomach of the ostrich, is entirely within me, assimilated, transformed into myself, and it is entirely me; but at the same time it is impenetrable, untransformable, entirely smooth, with the indifferent nudity of a body which is beloved and caressed in vain.
…
Knowledge is at one and the same time a penetration and a superficial caress, a digestion and the contemplation from afar of an object which will never lose its form, the production of a thought by a continuous creation and the establishment of the total objective independence of that thought.
…
The known object is my thought as a thing This is precisely what I profoundly desire when I undertake my research — to apprehend my thought as a thing and the thing as my thought.
…
That is why the desire to know, no matter how disinterested it may appear, is a relation of appropriation.

[Corvus]

@j_j

unjustly neglected Sartre.

Why do you think Sartre is unjustly neglected? What would be the reasons for that?

[j_j]

@Corvus

Why do you think Sartre is unjustly neglected? What would be the reasons for that?

He was hugely popular at one time. So people got burnt out. Derrida read him as a teen and downplayed him later. Heidegger is greater IMV, but Sartre has some flavors of his own.

This also happened to G. B. Shaw, who is great ( for instance, check out Man and Superman). But I only know G.B. Shaw because I happened to find his stuff dirt cheap at a used bookstore. His prefaces are philosophy, and his plays are brilliantly constructed and funny, like Oscar Wilde if Wilde had a point to make. You might know Pygmalion. But I wouldn’t assume that most people even know his name.

Another example is Norman O. Brown. Very fascinating reader of Marx and Freud in the direction of a “carnal mysticism.”

Can’t resist sharing the flavor of Shaw:

However, I am digressing, as a man with a grievance always does. And after all, the main thing in determining the artistic quality of a book is not the opinions it propagates, but the fact that the writer has opinions. The old lady from Colchester was right to sun her simple soul in the energetic radiance of Bradlaugh’s genuine beliefs and disbeliefs rather than in the chill of such mere painting of light and heat as elocution and convention can achieve. My contempt for belles lettres, and for amateurs who become the heroes of the fanciers of literary virtuosity, is not founded on any illusion of mind as to the permanence of those forms of thought (call them opinions) by which I strive to communicate my bent to my fellows. To younger men they are already outmoded; for though they have no more lost their logic than an eighteenth century pastel has lost its drawing or its color, yet, like the pastel, they grow indefinably shabby, and will grow shabbier until they cease to count at all, when my books will either perish, or, if the world is still poor enough to want them, will have to stand, with Bunyan’s, by quite amorphous qualities of temper and energy. With this conviction I cannot be a bellettrist. No doubt I must recognize, as even the Ancient Mariner did, that I must tell my story entertainingly if I am to hold the wedding guest spellbound in spite of the siren sounds of the loud bassoon. But “for art’s sake” alone I would not face the toil of writing a single sentence. I know that there are men who, having nothing to say and nothing to write, are nevertheless so in love with oratory and with literature that they keep desperately repeating as much as they can understand of what others have said or written aforetime. I know that the leisurely tricks which their want of conviction leaves them free to play with the diluted and misapprehended message supply them with a pleasant parlor game which they call style. I can pity their dotage and even sympathize with their fancy. But a true original style is never achieved for its own sake: a man may pay from a shilling to a guinea, according to his means, to see, hear, or read another man’s act of genius; but he will not pay with his whole life and soul to become a mere virtuoso in literature, exhibiting an accomplishment which will not even make money for him, like fiddle playing. Effectiveness of assertion is the Alpha and Omega of style. He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have none: he who has something to assert will go as far in power of style as its momentousness and his conviction will carry him. Disprove his assertion after it is made, yet its style remains. Darwin has no more destroyed the style of Job nor of Handel than Martin Luther destroyed the style of Giotto. All the assertions get disproved sooner or later; and so we find the world full of a magnificent debris of artistic fossils, with the matter-of-fact credibility gone clean out of them, but the form still splendid. And that is why the old masters play the deuce with our mere susceptibles. Your Royal Academician thinks he can get the style of Giotto without Giotto’s beliefs, and correct his perspective into the bargain. Your man of letters thinks he can get Bunyan’s or Shakespear’s style without Bunyan’s conviction or Shakespear’s apprehension, especially if he takes care not to split his infinitives. And so with your Doctors of Music, who, with their collections of discords duly prepared and resolved or retarded or anticipated in the manner of the great composers, think they can learn the art of Palestrina from Cherubim’s treatise. All this academic art is far worse than the trade in sham antique furniture; for the man who sells me an oaken chest which he swears was made in the XIII century, though as a matter of fact he made it himself only yesterday, at least does not pretend that there are any modern ideas in it, whereas your academic copier of fossils offers them to you as the latest outpouring of the human spirit, and, worst of all, kidnaps young people as pupils and persuades them that his limitations are rules, his observances dexterities, his timidities good taste, and his emptinesses purities. And when he declares that art should not be didactic, all the people who have nothing to teach and all the people who don’t want to learn agree with him emphatically.

[Corvus]

@j_j

Another example is Norman O. Brown. Very fascinating reader of Marx and Freud in the direction of a “carnal mysticism.”

Can’t resist sharing the flavor of Shaw:

Fascinating stuff. Thank you for sharing.

[Corvus]

@waarala

His basic “fatalistic” idea: we are not healthy because we (consciously) eat healthy but we (or some of us) eat healthy because we (i.e. our bodies) are (already, instinctively) healthy. Our constitution determines us.

Did Nietzsche suggest any way, hope or possibility that human could overcome limitation of the constitution?