Some good points, and quite agreeable. As long as we are trapped in the
Christian worldview, life really is not worth living, since it is past sin
and the possible afterlife that rules us. We seem to agree thus far. To
overcome the Christian worldview, one must create a new perspective, that
of the overman, of which the ER is a essential part. This overcoming is not
a "leap to faith" and requires long and arduous work. For this reason, I
propose, we must "make" existence worthwhile, as we create any work of art.
Not only must we create an affirmative worldview based the the tragic, we
must make it our own, to the point where it becomes instinct. The ways for
an individual to do this may be as varied as fingerprints, but one way is
to "Know thyself," to dig beyond what we were taught and what we have done:
"That which you are doing and opining right now is not really you!" If this
person who was one part of the Christian worldview is not really the real
person, then who? This voyage to self discovery can result in the
experience of the ER. I think Hesse tried to reveal this idea through fiction.
>> >it's precisely Nietzsche attempt to break from
>> >such a hangman's metaphysics that wants to pass judgment on existence. It
>> >doesn't justify life because it's an empty, profitless repetition.
>>
>> "it" meaning the ER? and "it's" meaning life?
>
> "it" in the first instance as the doctrine though strangely either can
>be referenced by the final "it's" as in "it is", life or recurrence, an
>empty, profitless repetition.
So are you saying that the ER itself is an "empty, profitless repetition"?
Or that even with the ER life is such? If so, I disagree.
>
>> doesn't an overman type of response include overcoming even this
>> "in vain" and creating past it, beyond it?
>>
> Interesting, but even if one agreed with this would this change the
>"in vain"? Would it be erased or overcome, filled with something else, a
>new delusion perhaps?
No, not delusion, but affirmation. Yes, the world is the same, but one's
view of it can be different, less pessimistic. To use the painting analogy
again, and anyone who has completed a work of art will know the joy of it,
life becomes a whole, where all the we thought was bad (the dark colors
necessary in any painting) is really fine with us, since they are
necessary. We no longer resent those darker experiences because we love the
joy and wholeness of the now, of the complete painting. Under these
conditions, the punishment and revenge we may have once thought necessary
against certain deeds or personalities are now unnecessary, because the
deeds themselves are a necessary contribution to the painting. If we wanted
to eliminate all the "bad" from our past we would also have to eliminate
all the "good," or might as well, because we would in either case have a
different painting and not the one of the moment, which is reality. So, if
we resent the "bad," we should also resent the "good," since both are
equally important to the experiences required "to paint." Rather than
resent everything, then, why not affirm all.
The main idea involved here is an evolution in
>Nietzsche's thinking from the earliest Schoperhaurian attempts at giving
>metaphysical consolation to that coldness and hardness that is the abyss
>of the ER.
Sure, life is still cold and hard, but we can affirm and love even that, in
which case "coldness" and "hardness" may no longer contain their barbaric
undertones, which is not to say cruelty would not longer be cruelty or that
the tragic would longer be tragic. For example, one can take great delight
in the suffering requisite to a tragic play, but this suffering, borne out
of love of life, is not indifference--quite the opposite.
<snip>
>>
>> A question here: All that was not Greek was barbarian to the Greeks. Could
>> the rabble be the same for the overman? One who has experienced the ER, and
>> it is an experience at not some intellectual exercise, must look down upon
>> the rabble now because the latter must still cling to their petty politics
>> and morality and dogma and religion. It this N's elitism?
>>
>
> Yes, its anti-moralizing and anti-obligatory which makes mush of these
>little excessive claims as to what they "must" do or feel.
Would you expand on this?
>
>Keep Rockin'
>Leonardo Raggo///////\\\
>ac857@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca
>
George
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A man's maturity--consists in having found again the seriousness one had as
a child, at play" ~ Nietzsche.
--- from list nietzsche@jefferson.village.virginia.edu ---