After-thought (Preface)

Through Nietzsche's writings one can comprehend better what other philosophers said - not a process of making sense, but comprehending nonsense!

2 thoughts

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.

United Colors

Ever since his inception, man has tried to woo his woman. He fought battles and jealous desires, created artworks and nations, sang poems and laments, and sacrificed his wealth and his health. He had to, for women are loftier creatures - more subtle, more seductive, more beautiful, more graceful, more lighter, nobler and higher, at least according to the order of projection of things. In his innocent state, man sometimes even wonders silently whether women even walk on feet, whether they do not just glide away over thin air, whether they even cough or sneeze. How many steep mountains man climbs, how many inner demons he scares away, and how many stormy seas he swims - only to compensate for his lowliness, to bring himself up to the level of the woman, to seem worthy in her eyes! Like a monkey or a slave hoping to please his queen!

This gender warfare is translated into a curious racial warfare in the modern day. Consider the relatively high number of inter-racial couples under these qualifications - the man belongs to a non-white race (either Asian or African) and the woman is white; AND the non-white male is either a celebrity, or a rich tycoon, or is extremely handsome, and the white female is not necessarily someone the whole world has caught sight of, before she entered into her famous alliance. Kofi Annan, Tiger Woods, Rajiv Gandhi, Imran Khan, Bruce Lee, Sidney Poitier, Zakir Hussain to name a few - were (are) all exceptional men who were the best at what they did, and were perhaps the best their native cultures had to offer to the world, and who were (are) all (incidentally?) married to white women. (Now, there may not be any suggestive pattern behind this phenomenon, but then there just might be). These men were the best their respective cultures had to offer to the world - this means that these men necessarily stood out from out of their own cultures, they, quite literally, overflowed or superseded them - in search for and attracted to something other - in this case, something seemingly lighter (in every sense of this word!), loftier and holier, in the same way a man has always, quite naturally, sought and fought for his woman. Therefore, in this example, it is not so much that men are attracted to their women, but more that exceptional men of non-white races, due to a natural propensity, sought out women of the white race, even if the latter were not so exceptional. It is as if the outstanding credentials of these men serve as compensations for the racial difference! Another order of projection of things! Well then. One has to ask whether the female gender can be compared to the white race as a whole whereas as the male can be compared to the non-white races. A cultural question!

To the naive and the sentimental

The confrontation and the critique of one philosopher with another betrays and hides a sequence of profound confusions - especially if the philosophers in question belong to different generations. For, if consistently thought out, no philosopher is refutable. Every philosophical doctrine about the world, and against it, are true within the limitations of a certain given perspective - the feeling that one is right about oneself and about one's beliefs cannot be dispensed with, even if one's belief about oneself changes. This self-feeling then has its right too!

For instance, Kant did not "refute" Hume's skepticism; he was no more "truthful" than Hume, but at bottom one reads Kant more than Hume because Kant has come to capture the spirit and the mood of the generations that followed him (a mood of a certain serious gloominess tempered by cautious restraint, I might say!). Or as I say I find Kant more "tasteful" (in sentimental scholarly circles, more "profound") than Hume. But I also read Nietzsche more than Kant, although Nietzsche in many ways is more playful, more joyous, and hence more closer to Hume than to Kant.

To give an example of how enormous and uncharted this field of underlying confusion can be: One of the mostly-unconscious issues with respect to which most of these philosophers wrestle with is whether or not there should be a distinction between (their) "life" and (their) "philosophy" or between "reality" and "thought"; and if there is a distinction, how can the line between the two be unambiguously drawn. This question plagues many of these thinkers (Wittgenstein), and if it does not directly plague their own thinking process, it will play a sleight of hand in determining how their successors interpret them (ex: how the early-modern writers like Leibniz, Descartes, Spinoza appear archaic and irrelevant to OUR post-modern life). Wittgenstein, who was more aware of this particular issue than many, sought in his earlier work to clearly differentiate between "life" and "philosophy," and by doing so, sought to completely eliminate the latter. However the bunny popped up again, like a shadow which kept following him until he decided to be a philosopher again! (But if there is no distinction between the two, how would thought (philosophy) get its material, its "phenomena"?) Nietzsche was not so naive. He sought to entangle philosophy and life in endless crisscross ways, constantly denying any clear distinction between them. In fact, his whole polemic can be read as against those philosophies which sought (unconsciously) to rise above the sphere of life (which presupposes a clear distinction between the two), to transcend, comprehend and comment on the latter. Nietzsche found a place for philosophy within life, and for life within philosophy. Heidegger, his interpreter, unhappily does not see the struggle of Nietzsche's polemic. He brings his own set of assumptions, unawares, into his study of Nietzsche, and like most others his assumptions too (more than any others') tries to find a unique place for thought in spite of reality. Hence he reads Nietzsche's so-called "perspectivism" and "phenomenalism" as aspects of a subjectivist line of thought to which Nietzsche belongs with the likes of Descartes. What do we get? One more instance of confusion. Now, all of these three writers are "right" in their own ways, given their presuppositions. But to clarify these latter one needs another polemic. And so on.

Strategies

To wit: Why does one write? What goes through one when one writes? Is writing an apology? - Perhaps, to write about precisely this question of writing, in a hope to slyly seduce its mystery through self-referentiality. Or perhaps, the author vindicates himself through his writing, which hence becomes his self-purgatory device - writing as an occasion and a confession. (A more playful version of this latter technique has become too commonplace nowadays - I encounter many bloggers where the author talks about himself and his 'experiences',(as if they are all worth talking about), deliberately and quite modestly, exposing his 'follies' and his presumptions, choosing his written piece as an occasion to laugh at himself, all the while conscious that he is appearing more and more endearing and adorable to his unsuspecting reader, and therefore quite immodestly enjoying this feeling of self-gratification). Or perhaps, writing represents the writer's ugly side; he writes to bare his thoughts, to get rid of them, since he cannot bear them - writing as therapy (another cunning strategy, since this writer writes because he feels that his tormenting thoughts are too noble for his current way of life; so instead of changing the way he lives (which is more of a challenge), he opts to expose his thoughts by writing, hoping either that his readers will readily gaze, admire and fathom his inner potentialities and greatness - which he himself does not comprehend - thereby exonerating him; or else, if this does not happen, he would have at the very least compromised the profundity of his thoughts by exposing them and bring them into life). An apology, an occasion, a therapy - 3 varieties of self-deception; Strategies of writing, from the point of view of a writer.