What a curious phenomenon it is to see the living ones scavenge the remains of the dead! Waiting for our geniuses, writers, and leaders to die, we excavate our spoils, not sparing their secret diaries, intimate details, drafts and undelivered performances. How much we do not believe in an after-life! We gossip about them, slander them, appraise them, especially since our voice was choked when the "voice of our generation" was still alive and speaking. And all in the name of respect for our heroes - bad manners with a clear conscience! Like the vulture which prefers to have a bald head, devoid of feathers, to avoid spattering of blood as it feeds on its dead carcass - we prefer to be ugly than have a bad conscience! We live only as spies, and hence inspite of our lack of right to do so.
Nietzsche achieves the thorough-going self-contradictory nature of his thought - by means of which he earns, in truth, his right to criticize philosophy, and criticize it inexhaustively - by means of compromising the innocence of his reader. This compromise appears as Nietzsche's unpleasant need for self-criticism, that is, his need to retract instinctively what the uncritical forward impulse of his life puts forward. Why? : In search of an innocence not condemned to forceful retraction.
The prodigal submits his work to the world and remains silent, as he has to be. What that work is, Who the author really is -- regarding these the genius keeps silent and lets the course of things take its toll. And this out of modesty, out of abundance, out of style. -- General Economy The average great man (ex: a scholar) imposes his work onto the world, and proceeds to "clarify" it or himself. He speaks where he has to keep quiet. He always feels that he has inadequately expressed himself in his work. (Consider the feminists interpreting Nietzsche: "Nietzsche is wrong here. Not ALL feminists imitate men... look at us!"). He says he started to compose after his inspiration already had whizzed passed him. He says he is too profound even for himself! His clumsy footnotes are more important than the main body of his work. He has a rejoinder for everything -- he mistrusts the imagination of his reader. Hence the scholar, the laborer, the working class. He hides behind the purdah and chooses to remain silent when he ought to speak. -- Restricted Economy
"Why this stupid knowledge of the impending hurricane if we cannot do anything to stop it?"
"Doesn't this knowledge show our baseness... doesn't it mock and ridicule us, as we stupidly wait two days in advance as some other part of the world get hit by it?" "To report and move on!"
"Why are the news-channels so worried about the few hundred honeymooners in Cancun?"
"Aren't we better off without this knowledge, we spies-of-nature?"
"Dinosaurs were wiser than us... they lived and got extinguished royally"
"Why tabulate nature if we cannot totally control it?"
"Isn't it obvious that we can never completely subdue it?"
"If we didn't think that we were superior, that the process of nature culminates in us, we would not fight against nature.... we would happily give way to better and higher creatures!"
"This doesn't mean that we happily surrender to any calamity approaching us... Here, it is the question of a quality of existence ... of a certain nobility"
"Why the placid indifference, which makes us neither animals nor Gods?"
"Our arrogance! How badly we need to be slapped!"
-- The frustrated but passionate rants of a friend. Not romanticism. No tree-hugging, love-for-all philosophy. Calling the bluffs.
Globalization is the latest form of the white race's unscrupulosity. Another of its prejudices, which it knavishly deems is "good for all", despite the self-proclamation of the dimming of its own lofty radiance- nothing but a strategy of dumping on others. But who are these "others"? The Orients, the Africans, and everyone in between. Why do these others agree to be dumped upon? But do they have a choice?
For instance, what defines an Indian? None of the popular tags designating some cultural virtuosity! Rather, what defines him is a kind of profound non-awareness about himself, of his own capabilities, of his profundity and his stupidities, of his limitations and the powers of his arsenal, and sometimes of his own greatness. He is waiting to be defined - that's his definition - and he has been waiting for centuries, in a kind of sheepish innocence, hoping that this innocence about himself will redeem him. The others - Africans and the Orients share this characteristic of innocence with the Indians, to a greater or to a lesser degree - and this innocence is precisely what the westeners have lacked. Why? Because they could not afford to be otherwise! You see, it is a question of economy, of give and take. Because, at some point in their history, they gauged that the inner-greatness of their spirit was not all that great, the westeners had to limit themselves, and thereby become aware of themselves. In fact, they limited themselves only to be aware of themselves! A closure just for the heck of it! They sought death before they died. It was on the pangs of this irony that the Western culture and philosophy came into being -- indicating that their culture and philosophy came into being only after their race was on the decline. The "decline of the West" has a prior decline, which has perhaps gone undocumented -- just like the decline of the Orient and the African race have gone undocumented. A speech where no writing has reached! The only difference, then, between the two sets of cultures is that it was only the west, in a defining historical moment of existential inspiration, grasped itself in its decline, took measure of its own scopes and limitations. A Kantian operation before Kant was even born! A re-birth before death! All this goes to show how comically inappropriate the ultrasonic bells of technology and globalization are for the non-western man. Of course, it does not matter since the latter will never hear this inappropriateness as such in his being, since he does not have anything within himself, which he himself has sized up, to compare this external noise to. He deposits layers and layers of smuggled gadgets on his undetermined essence, frittering away in decaying innocence. What unseasoned processes happen behind the smoke-screens when an Indian becomes a software engineer!
I had a philosophy professor who walked into the class once and said: "Let's confess: we are not and will never be as good as a Nietzsche or a Kierkegaard or a Hegel. Our levels are somewhat below. So now let us proceed and discuss their works!"
At this point I had a series of reactions which I rehearsed in my head:
"Speak for yourself, missy!"
"If we really are not as good as these guys, then why bother discussing their work? Why pretend that we fathom even a word of what they write? Why not concede that they write for themselves and then sing our own songs, even if no one listens to them? For no one listens to them either... hehe..."
"How happily you believe in degrees of goodness - 'we are not as good as [them]' - as if you are initiating us to the secrets of the wretched, as if the latter deserve their happiness too... Isn't it true that even the presumed readers of these people's works are also on the same level as these people, that there is only an absolute understanding of them, corresponding to that sublime level where no words can reach, and that the half-way understandings of the average have no reality whatsoever?"
"Can you show some modesty please?"
Then I was briefly woken up from my imaginative musings by these judgmental words from the one person who was actually speaking in the class: "Nietzsche... hmmph... if that sort of surrender to nature and appeal to child-like playfulness appeals to you....!" Well.
I went back to my dreamworld to raise a few more questions...
Experimenting with oneself brings about periods of intense creativity: One confines oneself to regimented diets, regular habits, isolated wintery walks and controlled sitings; One disciplines oneself against one's playful (now seen as "childish") and frivolous instincts, channeling these energies, almost forcibly, into a particular direction - the direction of one's chosen artistic endeavor. One has to - for one has chosen this art itself out of disregard for one's instincts - one does not believe in their frivolity anymore, one mistrusts their happiness, although previously it was the joy of precisely these instincts that created one's being. This is what happens when one's being has been internalized - one is subjected to the almost-mechanical rule of economy. One does not squander away; one preserves - A Buddha of self-severity, an artist who creates to live, out of nothing, out of death.
Many artists have created this way: They pay internally, often indebting oneself forever, almost out of guilt, for the sake of creating something for the exterior -- ex: one creates love, and sometimes even a life-form which one wants to love. But can one love now without comprising one's artistry? Can one not lose what one has created? Can one break out of the clutches of economy?
On Nietzsche: 1. It's a typical misunderstanding of the naïve to suppose that Nietzsche's main polemic was directed against philosophers. Nietzsche could care less for philosophers and the history of their "tradition" - a testament to his honesty and "realism," to the fact that his investigations were held in the absolute vicinity of (his) life and its pulsating movements. But this does not change the fact that Nietzsche himself was "philosophizing," a term to which he then obviously wanted to give a new meaning. Sure, he had something to say about (or against) philosophy, but this polemic is only an off-shoot of his main concern with morality as the slanderer of life. Morality, as he encounters it, is the name for the existential problem facing contemporary existence. If Nietzsche were writing during the time of Ancient Greeks, he would have still philosophized, but with a slightly different spirit, perhaps with much more joy and innocence than he could afford during his actual time (the meaning of "untimely meditations"). Religion and philosophy are subjected to hammering in his works only insofar as they naïvely subscribe to moral evaluations. This hammering is an off-shoot in the same sense in which "consciousness" itself is something of an off-shoot, a late and a relatively imperfect development in the progression of instincts. Nietzsche's writings delve into the very profound, yet changing, quandaries of existence - a testament to his so-called "existentialism" - irrespective of whether "philosophy" - previous or contemporary - affirmed or denied existence. This is the meaning of Nietzsche's a-historicism, the very endlessness of his polemical works - he would have produced his works even if there existed no philosophy before him, which is not what one can say regarding a Kant or a Hegel, who are so much dependent about a certain tradition of thought. Tardy "scholars" who take what Nietzsche says to be a version of "relativism", "nihilism" "naturalism" or dismiss him because he is being "self-contradictory" are confused about themselves. Nietzsche's writings, in one sense, exhibit all these tendencies, but they also exceed these latter. His writings thus breathe the air of life. They exist...!
2. Another proof of Nietzsche's a-historicism - the lack of technical language in his writings. But he does not just present a common, everyday language without making this language undergo real, life-like mutations and variations. When these writings are recast in a technical mould, as if this recasting does not change the nature of what is said, (which is another naïvety of philosophy scholars), then what emerges is an isolated philosopher, who has nothing to do with life, who thinks he has attained the right to abstract from the latter, preserving the purity of his philosophy from all "ontic" considerations. How a change in style of writing results in a different philosopher! A blot, to be more precise! This philosopher we call by the name - Heidegger. Heidegger - as a result of a profound confusion about Nietzsche's writings, about the importance of how Nietzsche said what he said.
