Drumroll . . . OK here is the one page extravaganza of the great
genius of the philosophy of Fred Nietzsche. It's the section "Twilight
of the Idols" entitled "How the 'True' World Finally Became a Fable".
(that's in ALL CAPS in my edition)
1. The true world--attainable for the sage, the pious, the virtuous
man; he lives in it, _he is it_. (The oldest form of the idea,
relatively sensible, simple, and persuasive. A cir***locution for the
sentence, "I, Plato, _am_ the truth.")
I would continue but since it starts off so badly I must stop here and
question M. Heidegger and M. Nietzsche:
What kind of lame ass philosophy education did you poor rascals
receive that Plato's doctrine of forms was the actual centerpiece of
Platonic philosophy?
Luckily my educators were minimally competent. And they explained that
all the theory and the dogma and the doctrine in Plato and Socrates is
almost entirely beside the point. What gives it the oomph is a _way_
of thinking, of speaking, of questioning. That way is peerless better
even than the Tao. To get distracted by the true world beyond the cave
is to miss the forest and focus on an odd end of one pine needle on
one tree.
Wise men do not build their houses in the lowest contour of a flood
zone. I _know_ their educators were up to giving them that.
I agree whole heart with Anton's observation that Nietzsche is great
in small doses. You cannot make a meal out of chocolate bars without
getting at least a little ill. If you limit yourself to thirty minute
doses, it's great stuff. Now that I think about it, I could make a
satisfying meal out of chocolate bars when I was a fifteen-year old,
so my analogy has a lot of will to power in it.
Here's a dose of Heidegger. The lecture 13 "Six Basic Developments in
the History of Aesthetics" is riveting. A tiny excerpt: "Aesthetics
begins with the greeks . . . One of those basic notions is the
conceptual pair hyle-morphe, materia-forma, matter-form."
There is a Kabbalah interpretation of divine energy which is very
similar to this, force & form (pillar of justice, pillar of mercy). I
just finished reading Gershom Scholem's "Origins of the Kabbalah" and
he is more concerned with rudiments prior to the full extent of the
teaching and the historical genesis of it. But the matter-form thing
really hit home with me. I ended up thinking Nietzsche's aesthetic
shortcomings for my taste boil down to unbalance, too little form and
too much force. The idea that "Twilight of the Idols" has got anything
going for it aesthetically boggles my mind.
Some people really like it.
This morning I did my income taxes. Ouch. Monetizing your integrity is
not painless. Nothing comes for free, warfare and hegemony and empire
being particularly pricey items. What do we value? Look at the budget!
Also keeping old people on medical sup****t. That I am in favor of.
OK here is what I like about Nietzsche. He had a humble birth. How
many times do you see somebody's bio and they have there the father
was a college professor, the family background was respectable, his
dad was one of the wealthiest industrialists in Austria? More often
than not in my experience. Nietzsche's father croaked when he was a
child; he was raised in a house full of poor women, and the state paid
for his education on scholar****p. He was upwardly mobile (until he
took ill from the syphilis or the generalized anxiety disorder or
whatever--apparently his worst symptom was migraine which even in 2008
medical science is leaning toward psychosomatic roots). I admire
upwardly mobile. I love the Horatio Alger myth.
My family is poor and I'm a bourgeois. I'm sympathetic. Maybe I will
rent myself a Maserati if I can ever convince Mary Poppins to go out
on another date.
B.
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